The History of Pendennis

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  CHAPTER XXI. Flight after Defeat

  Everybody who has the least knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage mustbe aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis wasa member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking atthe ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully suppliesthe little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to theheraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely femalepelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their youngones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure,which we men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of beingscarified, and indeed I believe some women would rather actually sosuffer than not. They like sacrificing themselves in behalf of theobject which their instinct teaches them to love. Be it for a recklesshusband, a dissipated son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how readytheir hearts are to pour out their best treasures for the benefit of thecherished person; and what a deal of this sort of enjoyment are we, onone side, ready to give the soft creatures! There is scarce a manthat reads this, but has administered pleasure in this fashion to hiswomankind, and has treated them to the luxury of forgiving him. Theydon't mind how they live themselves; but when the prodigal comes homethey make a rejoicing, and kill the fatted calf for him: and at the veryfirst hint that the sinner is returning, the kind angels prepare theirfestival, and Mercy and Forgiveness go smiling out to welcome him. Ihope it may be so always for all: if we have only Justice to look to,Heaven help us!

  During the latter part of Pen's residence at the University of Oxbridge,his uncle's partiality had greatly increased for the lad. The Major wasproud of Arthur, who had high spirits, frank manners, a good person, andhigh gentleman-like bearing. It pleased the old London bachelor to seePen walking with the young patricians of his university, and he (who wasnever known to entertain his friends, and whose stinginess had passedinto a sort of byword among some wags at the Club, who envied his manyengagements, and did not choose to consider his poverty) was charmed togive his nephew and the young lords snug little dinners at his lodgings,and to regale them with good claret, and his very best bons mots andstories: some of which would be injured by the repetition, for theMajor's manner of telling them was incomparably neat and careful; andothers, whereof the repetition would do good to nobody. He paid hiscourt to their parents through the young men, and to himself as it wereby their company. He made more than one visit to Oxbridge, where theyoung fellows were amused by entertaining the old gentleman, and gaveparties and breakfasts and fetes, partly to joke him and partly to dohim honour. He plied them with his stories. He made himself juvenile andhilarious in the company of the young lords. He went to hear Pen at agrand debate at the Union, crowed and cheered, and rapped his stickin chorus with the cheers of the men, and was astounded at the boy'seloquence and fire. He thought he had got a young Pitt for a nephew.He had an almost paternal fondness for Pen. He wrote to the lad letterswith playful advice and the news of the town. He bragged about Arthurat his Clubs, and introduced him with pleasure into his conversation;saying, that, Egad, the young fellows were putting the old ones to thewall; that the lads who were coming up, young Lord Plinlimmon, a friendof my boy, young Lord Magnus Charters, a chum of my scapegrace, etc.,would make a greater figure in the world than even their fathers haddone before them. He asked permission to bring Arthur to a grand feteat Gaunt House; saw him with ineffable satisfaction dancing with thesisters of the young noblemen before mentioned; and gave himself as muchtrouble to procure cards of invitation for the lad to some good houses,as if he had been a mamma with a daughter to marry, and not an oldhalf-pay officer in a wig. And he boasted everywhere of the boy's greattalents, and remarkable oratorical powers; and of the brilliant degreehe was going to take. Lord Runnymede would take him on his embassy, orthe Duke would bring him in for one of his boroughs, he wrote overand over again to Helen; who, for her part, was too ready to believeanything that anybody chose to say in favour of her son.

  And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampleddown by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen'sfeelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He hadslept, and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outsetwhat might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously intoa generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so tender.And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done to others, are we to supposethat a young gentleman of his vanity did not feel still more keenly theshame he had brought upon himself? Let us be assured that there is nomore cruel remorse than that; and no groans more piteous than those ofwounded self-love. Like Joel Miller's friend, the Senior Wrangler, whobowed to the audience from his box at the play, because he and the kinghappened to enter the theatre at the same time, only with a fatuity byno means so agreeable to himself, poor Arthur Pendennis felt perfectlyconvinced that all England would remark the absence of his name from theexamination-lists, and talk about his misfortune. His wounded tutor,his many duns, the skip and bed-maker who waited upon him, theundergraduates of his own time and the years below him, whom he hadpatronised or scorned--how could he bear to look any of them in the facenow? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there hepenned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, anddespair, requesting that his name might be taken off the college books,and intimating a wish and expectation that death would speedily end thewoes of the disgraced Arthur Pendennis.

  Then he slunk out, scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanicallytaking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges, untilhe cleared the university precincts, and got down to the banks of theCamisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the boat-races, andthe crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he foundhimself at some miles' distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found bysome acquaintances leaving that city.

  As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in his face, andhis ragged gown flying behind him--for he had not divested himself ofhis academical garments since the morning--a postchaise came rattlingup the road, on the box of which a servant was seated, whilst within, orrather half out of the carriage window, sate a young gentleman smoking acigar, and loudly encouraging the postboy. It was our young acquaintanceof Baymouth Mr. Spavin, who had got his degree, and was drivinghomewards in triumph in his yellow postchaise. He caught a sight of thefigure, madly gesticulating as he worked up the hill, and of poor Pen'spale and ghastly face as the chaise whirled by him.

  "Wo!" roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses stopped in theirmad career, and the carriage pulled up some fifty yards before Pen. Hepresently heard his own name shouted, and beheld the upper half of thebody of Mr. Spavin thrust out of the side-window of the vehicle, andbeckoning Pen vehemently towards it.

  Pen stopped, hesitated--nodded his head fiercely, and pointed onwards,as if desirous that the postillion should proceed. He did not speak:but his countenance must have looked very desperate, for young Spavin,having stared at him with an expression of blank alarm, jumped outof the carriage presently, ran towards Pen holding out his hand, andgrasping Pen's, said, "I say--hullo, old boy, where are you going, andwhat's the row now?"

  "I'm going where I deserve to go," said Pen, with an imprecation.

  "This ain't the way," said Mr. Spavin, smiling. "This is the Fenburyroad. I say, Pen, don't take on because you are plucked. It's nothingwhen you are used to it. I've been plucked three times, old boy--andafter the first time I didn't care. Glad it's over, though. You'll havebetter luck next time."

  Pen looked at his early acquaintance,--who had been plucked, who hadbeen rusticated, who had only, after repeated failures, learned toread and write correctly, and who, in spite of all these drawbacks, hadattained the honour of a degree. "This man has passed," he thought, "andI have failed!" It was almost too much for him to bear.

  "Good-bye, Spavin," said he; "I'm very glad you are through.
Don't letme keep you; I'm in a hurry--I'm going to town to-night."

  "Gammon," said Mr. Spavin. "This ain't the way to town; this is theFenbury road, I tell you."

  "I was just going to turn back," Pen said.

  "All the coaches are full with the men going down," Spavin said. Penwinced. "You'd not get a place for a ten-pound note. Get into my yellow;I'll drop you at Mudford, where you have a chance of the Fenbury mail.I'll lend you a hat and a coat; I've got lots. Come along; jump in,old boy--go it, leathers!"--and in this way Pen found himself in Mr.Spavin's postchaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the Ram Innat Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge; where the Fenbury mail changedhorses, and where Pen got a place on to London.

  The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface College,Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumour prevailed, to the terrorof Pen's tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, maddened at losing hisdegree, had made away with himself--a battered cap, in which his namewas almost discernible, together with a seal bearing his crest of aneagle looking at a now extinct sun, had been found three miles on theFenbury road, near a mill-stream, and, for four-and-twenty hours, it wassupposed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until lettersarrived from him, bearing the London post-mark.

  The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five; and he hastened tothe inn at Covent Garden, at which he was accustomed to put up, wherethe ever-wakeful porter admitted him, and showed him to a bed. Penlooked hard at the man, and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked?When in bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until theappearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up desperately,and walked off to his uncle's lodgings in Bury Street; where the maid,who was scouring the steps, looked up suspiciously at him, as he camewith an unshaven face, and yesterday's linen. He thought she knew of hismishap, too.

  "Good 'evens! Mr. Harthur, what as 'appened, sir?" Mr. Morgan, the valet,asked, who had just arranged the well-brushed clothes and shiny bootsat the door of his master's bedroom, and was carrying in his wig to theMajor.

  "I want to see my uncle," he cried, in a ghastly voice, and flunghimself down on a chair.

  Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young man, withterrified and wondering glances, and disappeared in his master'sapartment.

  The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon as he had hiswig on.

  "What? examination over? Senior Wrangler, double First Class, hay? saidthe old gentleman--I'll come directly;" and the head disappeared.

  "They don't know what has happened," groaned Pen; "what will they saywhen they know all?"

  Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to such a dubiouslight as Bury Street enjoys of a foggy January morning, so that hisuncle could not see the expression of the young man's countenance, orthe looks of gloom and despair which even Mr. Morgan had remarked.

  But when the Major came out of his dressing-room neat and radiant, andpreceded by faint odours from Delcroix's shop, from which emporium MajorPendennis's wig and his pocket-handkerchief got their perfume, he heldout one of his hands to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheeryhigh-toned voice, when he caught sight of the boy's face at length, anddropping his hand, said, "Good God! Pen, what's the matter?"

  "You'll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir," Pen said.

  "See what?"

  "My name isn't there, sir."

  "Hang it, why should it be?" asked the Major, more perplexed.

  "I have lost everything, sir," Pen groaned out; "my honour's gone; I'mruined irretrievably; I can't go back to Oxbridge."

  "Lost your honour?" screamed out the Major. "Heaven alive! you don'tmean to say you have shown the white feather?"

  Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. "No, it isn'tthat, sir. I'm not afraid of being shot; I wish to God anybody would. Ihave not got my degree. I--I'm plucked, sir."

  The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and cursory way,and concluded that it was some ceremony performed corporally uponrebellious university youth. "I wonder you can look me in the faceafter such a disgrace, sir," he said; "I wonder you submitted to it as agentleman."

  "I couldn't help it, sir. I did my classical papers well enough: it wasthose infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected."

  "Was it--was it done in public, sir?" the Major said.

  "What?"

  "The--the plucking?" asked the guardian, looking Pen anxiously in theface.

  Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was labouring, andin the midst of his misery the blunder caused the poor wretch a faintsmile, and served to bring down the conversation from the tragedy-key,in which Pen had been disposed to carry it on. He explained to his unclethat he had gone in to pass his examination, and failed. On which theMajor said, that though he had expected far better things of his nephew,there was no great misfortune in this, and no dishonour as far as hesaw, and that Pen must try again.

  "Me again at Oxbridge," Pen thought, "after such a humiliation as that!"He felt that, except he went down to burn the place, he could not enterit.

  But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that the otherfelt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out in speeches mostsevere upon Pen, which the lad bore, as best might, without flinching.He had determined to make a clean breast, and had formed a full, true,and complete list of all his bills and liabilities at the university,and in London. They consisted of various items, such as:

  London Tailor. Oxbridge do. Oxbridge do. Bill for horses. Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves. Printseller. Jeweller. Books. College Cook. Binding. Grump, for desserts. Hairdresser and Perfumery. Bootmaker. Hotel bill in London. Wine Merchant in London. Sundries.

  All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure--such accountshave been inspected by the parents of many university youth,--and itappeared that Mr. Pen's bills in all amounted to about seven hundredpounds; and, furthermore, it was calculated that he had had more thantwice that sum of ready money during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum hehad spent, and for it had to show--what?

  "You need not press a man who is down, sir," Pen said to his uncle,gloomily. "I know very well, sir, how wicked and idle I have been. Mymother won't like to see me dishonoured, sir," he continued, with hisvoice failing; "and I know she will pay these accounts. But I shall askher for no more money."

  "As you like, sir," the Major said. "You are of age, and my hands arewashed of your affairs. But you can't live without money, and have nomeans of making it that I see, though you have a fine talent in spendingit, and it is my belief that you will proceed as you have begun, andruin your mother before you are five years older.--Good morning; it istime for me to go to breakfast. My engagements won't permit me to seeyou much during the time that you stay in London. I presume that youwill acquaint your mother with the news which you have just conveyed tome."

  And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs somewhat, MajorPendennis walked out of his lodgings before his nephew, and wentruefully off to take his accustomed corner at the Club. He saw theOxbridge examination-lists in the morning papers, and read over thenames, not understanding the business, with mournful accuracy. Heconsulted various old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of theday, at his Clubs; Wenham, a Dean, various Civilians; and, as it iscalled, "took their opinion," showing to some of them the amount ofhis nephew's debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a card, andasking what was to be done, and whether such debts were not monstrous,preposterous? What was to be done?--There was nothing for it but topay. Wenham and the others told the Major of young men who owed twiceas much--five times as much--as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay.The consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted the Majorsomewhat. After all, he was not to pay.

  But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed to make a mano
f his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner inwhich he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman,informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and beggingthe Doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old gentlemanpreserved the regular routine in all things, and was of opinion that itwas more correct to "break" a piece of bad news to a person by means ofa (possibly maladroit and unfeeling) messenger, than to convey it simplyto its destination by a note. So the Major wrote to Doctor Portman,and then went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in any Londondining-room that day.

  Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets forthe rest of the day, fancying that everybody was looking at him andwhispering to his neighbour, "That is Pendennis of Boniface, who wasplucked yesterday." His letter to his mother was full of tenderness andremorse: he wept the bitterest tears over it--and the repentance andpassion soothed him to some degree.

  He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in the coffee-roomof his hotel, and slunk away from them, and paced the streets. Heremembers, he says, the prints which he saw hanging up at Ackermann'swindow in the rain, and a book which he read at a stall near the Temple:at night he went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss Fotheringay, buthe doesn't in the least recollect in what piece.

  On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, containingmany grave and appropriate remarks upon the event which had befallenhim, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the universitybooks, and to retrieve a disaster which, everybody knew, was owingto his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a month'sapplication. He said he had ordered Pen's skip to pack up some trunks ofthe young gentleman's wardrobe, which duly arrived with fresh copies ofall Pen's bills laid on the top.

  On the third day there arrived a letter from home; which Pen read in hisbedroom, and the result of which was that he fell down on his knees withhis head in the bedclothes, and then prayed out his heart and humbledhimself; and having gone downstairs and eaten an immense breakfast hesallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth, Piccadilly, bythe Chatteris coach for that evening.