when they speak to her, and goes about the house in a most bewildering way. I am
the interpreter; poor Charlotte is much too timid to speak when I am by. I have
rubbed up the old French which we learned at Chiswick at Miss Pinkerton's; and I
find my Hindostanee of great help: which I use it when we are at a loss for a
word, and it answers extremely well. We pay for lodgings, the whole
house��francs per month. Butchers' meat and poultry plentiful but dear. A grocer
in the Grande Rue sell excellent wine at fifteenpence per bottle; and groceries
pretty much at English prices. Mr. Blowman at the English chapel of the
Tintelleries has a fine voice, and appears to be a most excellent clergyman. I
have heard him only once, however, on Sunday evening, when I was so agitated and
so unhappy in my mind that I own I took little note of his sermon.
"The cause of that agitation you know, having imparted it to you in my letters
of July, June, and 24th of May, ult. My poor simple, guileless Baynes was
trustee to Mrs. Dr. Firmin, before she married that most unprincipled man. When
we were at home last, and exchanged to the 120th from the 99th, my poor husband
was inveigled by the horrid man into signing a paper which put the doctor in
possession of all his wife's property; whereas Charles thought he was only
signing a power of attorney, enabling him to receive his son's dividends. Dr.
F., after the most atrocious deceit, forgery, and criminality of every kind,
fled the country; and Hunt and Pegler, our solicitors, informed us that the
general was answerable for the wickedness of this miscreant. He is so weak that
he has been many and many times on the point of going to young Mr. F. and giving
up everything. It was only by my prayers, by my commands, that I have been
enabled to keep him quiet; and, indeed, Emily, the effort has almost killed him.
Brandy repeatedly I was obliged to administer on the dreadful night of our
arrival here.
"For the first person we met on landing was Mr. Philip Firmin, with a pert
friend of his, Mr. Pendennis, whom I don't at all like, though his wife is an
amiable person like Emma Fletcher of the Horse Artillery: not with Emma's style,
however, but still amiable, and disposed to be most civil. Charlotte has taken a
great fancy to her, as she always does to every new person. Well, fancy our
state on landing, when a young gentleman calls out, 'How do you do, general?'
and turns out to be Mr. Firmin! I thought I should have lost Charles in the
night. I have seen him before going into action, as calm, and sleep and smile as
sweet, as any babe. It was all I could do to keep up his courage: and, but for
me, but for my prayers, but for my agonies, I think he would have jumped out of
bed, and gone to Mr. F. that night, and said, 'Take everything I have.'
"The young man I own has behaved in the most honourable way. He came to see us
before breakfast on Sunday, when the poor general was so ill that I thought he
would have fainted over his tea. He was too ill to go to church, where I went
alone, with my dear ones, having, as I own, but very small comfort in the
sermon: but oh, Emily, fancy, on our return, when I went into our room, I found
my general on his knees with his Church service before him, crying, crying like
a baby! You know I am hasty in my temper sometimes, and his is indeed an
angel's��and I said to him, 'Charles Baynes, be a man, and don't cry like a
child!' 'Ah,' says he, 'Eliza, do you kneel, and thank God too;' on which I said
that I thought I did not require instruction in my religion from him or any man,
except a clergyman, and many of these are but poor instructors, as you know.
"'He has been here,' says Charles; when I said, 'Who has been here?' 'That noble
young fellow,' says my general; 'that noble, noble Philip Firmin.' Which noble
his conduct I own it has been. 'Whilst you were at church he came again��here
into this very room, where I was sitting, doubting and despairing, with the Holy
Book before my eyes, and no comfort out of it. And he said to me, "General, I
want to talk to you about my grandfather's will. You don't suppose that because
my father has deceived you and ruined me, I will carry the ruin farther, and
visit his wrong upon children and innocent people?" Those were the young man's
words,' my general said; and, 'oh, Eliza!' says he, 'what pangs of remorse I
felt when I remembered we had used hard words about him,' which I own we had,
for his manners are rough and haughty, and I have heard things of him which I do
believe now can't be true.
"All Monday my poor man was obliged to keep his bed with a smart attack of his
fever. But yesterday he was quite bright and well again, and the Pendennis party
took Charlotte for a drive, and showed themselves most polite. She reminds me of
Mrs. Tom Fletcher of the Horse Artillery, but that I think I have mentioned
before. My paper is full; and with our best to MacWhirter and the children, I am
always my dearest Emily's affectionate sister,
"Eliza Baynes."
VOL. II.
CHAPTER I. BREVIS ESSE LABORO.
Never, General Baynes afterwards declared, did fever come and go so pleasantly
as that attack to which we have seen Mrs. General advert in her letter to her
sister, Mrs. Major MacWhirter. The cold fit was merely a lively, pleasant
chatter and rattle of the teeth; the hot fit an agreeable warmth; and though the
ensuing sleep, with which I believe such aguish attacks are usually concluded,
was enlivened by several dreams of death, demons, and torture, how felicitous it
was to wake and find that dreadful thought of ruin removed which had always, for
the last few months, ever since Dr. Firmin's flight and the knowledge of his own
imprudence, pursued the good-natured gentleman! What, this boy might go to
college, and that get his commission; and their meals need be embittered by no
more dreadful thoughts of the morrow, and their walks no longer were dogged by
imaginary baliffs, or presented a gaol in the vista? It was too much bliss; and
again and again the old soldier said his thankful prayers, and blessed his
benefactor.
Philip thought no more of his act of kindness, except to be very grateful, and
very happy that he had rendered other people so. He could no more have taken the
old man's all, and plunged that innocent family into poverty, than he could have
stolen the forks off my table. But other folks were disposed to rate his virtue
much more highly; and amongst these was my wife, who chose positively to worship
this young gentleman, and I believe would have let him smoke in her drawing-room
if he had been so minded, and though her genteelest acquaintances were in the
room. Goodness knows what a noise and what piteous looks are produced if ever
the master of the house chooses to indulge in a cigar after dinner; but then,
you understand, I have never declined to claim mine and my children's right
because an old gentleman would be inconvenienced: and this is what I tell Mrs.
Pen. If I order a coat from my tailor, must I refuse to pay him because a rogue
steals it, and ought I to expect to be let off? Wome
n won't see matters of fact
in a matter-of-fact point of view; and justice, unless it is tinged with a
little romance, gets no respect from them.
So, forsooth, because Philip has performed this certainly most generous, most
dashing, most reckless piece of extravagance, he is to be held up as a perfect
preux chevalier. The most riotous dinners are ordered for him. We are to wait
until he comes to breakfast, and he is pretty nearly always late. The children
are to be sent round to kiss uncle Philip, as he is now called. The children? I
wonder the mother did not jump up and kiss him too. Elle en �tait capable. As
for the osculations which took place between Mrs. Pendennis and her new-found
young friend, Miss Charlotte Baynes, they were perfectly ridiculous; two school
children could not have behaved more absurdly; and I don't know which seemed to
be the younger of these two. There were colloquies, assignations, meetings on
the ramparts, on the pier, where know I?��and the servants and little children
of the two establishments were perpetually trotting to and fro with letters from
dearest Laura to dearest Charlotte, and dearest Charlotte to her dearest Mrs.
Pendennis. Why, my wife absolutely went the length of saying that dearest
Charlotte's mother, Mrs. Baynes, was a worthy, clever woman, and a good
mother��a woman whose tongue never ceased clacking about the regiment, and all
the officers and all the officers' wives, of whom, by the way, she had very
little good to tell.
"A worthy mother, is she, my dear?" I say. "But, oh, mercy! Mrs. Baynes would be
an awful mother in-law!"
I shuddered at the thought of having such a commonplace, hard, ill-bred woman in
a state of quasi authority over me.
On this Mrs. Laura must break out in quite a petulant tone��"Oh, how stale this
kind of thing is Arthur, from a man qui veut passer pour un homme d'esprit! You
are always attacking mothers-in-law!"
"Witness Mrs. Mackenzie, my love��Clive Newcome's mother-in-law. That's a nice
creature; not selfish, not wicked, not��"
"Not nonsense, Arthur!"
"Mrs. Baynes knew Mrs. Mackenzie in the West Indies, as she knew all the female
army. She considers Mrs. Mackenzie was a most elegant, handsome, dashing
woman��only a little too fond of the admiration of our sex. There was, I own, a
fascination about Captain Goby. Do you remember, my love, that man with the
stays and dyed hair, who��"
"Oh, Arthur! When our girls marry, I suppose you will teach their husbands to
abuse, and scorn, and mistrust their mother-in-law. Will he, my darlings? will
he, my blessings?" (This apart to the children, if you please.) "Go! I have no
patience with such talk!"
"Well, my love, Mrs. Baynes is a most agreeable woman; and when I have heard
that story about the Highlanders at the Cape of Good Hope a few times more" (I
do not tell it here, for it has nothing to do with the present history), "I
daresay I shall begin to be amused by it."
"Ah! here comes Charlotte, I'm glad to say. How pretty she is! What a colour!
What a dear creature!"
To all which, of course, I could not say a contradictory word, for a prettier,
fresher lass than Miss Baynes, with a sweeter voice, face, laughter, it was
difficult to see.
"Why does mamma like Charlotte better than she likes us?" says our dear and
justly indignant eldest girl. "I could not love her better if I were her
mother-in-law," says Laura, running to her young friend, casting a glance at me
over her shoulder; and that kissing nonsense begins between the two young
ladies. To be sure, the girl looks uncommonly bright and pretty with her pink
cheeks, her bright eyes, her slim form, and that charming white India shawl
which her father brought home for her.
To this osculatory party enters presently Mr. Philip Firmin, who has been
dawdling about the ramparts ever since breakfast. He says he has been reading
law there. He has found a jolly quiet place to read. Law, has he? And much good
may it do him! Why has he not gone back to his law, and his reviewing?
"You must��you must stay on a little longer. You have only been here five days.
Do, Charlotte, ask Philip to stay a little."
All the children sing in a chorus, "Oh, do, uncle Philip, stay a little longer!"
Miss Baynes says, "I hope you will stay, Mr. Firmin," and looks at him.
"Five days has he been here? Five years. Five lives. Five hundred years. What do
you mean? In that little time of��let me see, a hundred and twenty hours, and at
least a half of them for sleep and dinner (for Philip's appetite was very
fine)��do you mean that in that little time his heart, cruelly stabbed by a
previous monster in female shape, has healed, got quite well, and actually begun
to be wounded again? Have two walks on the pier, as many visits to the
Tintelleries (where he hears the story of the Highlanders at the Cape of Good
Hope with respectful interest), a word or two about the weather, a look or two,
a squeezekin, perhaps, of a little handykin��I say, do you mean that this absurd
young idiot, and that little round-faced girl, pretty, certainly, but only just
out of the school-room�� do you mean to say that they have��Upon my word, Laura,
this is too bad. Why, Philip has not a penny-piece in the world."
"Yes, he has two hundred pounds, and expects to sell his mare for ninety at
least. He has excellent talents. He can easily write three articles a week in
the Pall Mall Gazette. I am sure no one writes so well, and it is much better
done and more amusing than it used to be. That is three hundred a year. Lord
Ringwood must be applied to, and must and shall get him something. Don't you
know that Captain Baynes stood by Colonel Ringwood's side at Busaco, and that
they were the closest friends? And pray, how did we get on, I should like to
know? How did we get on, baby?"
"How did we det on?" says the baby.
"Oh, woman! woman!" yells the father of the family. "Why, Philip Firmin has all
the habits of a rich man with the pay of a mechanic. Do you suppose he ever sate
in a second-class carriage in his life, or denied himself any pleasure to which
he had a mind? He gave five francs to a beggar girl yesterday."
"He had always a noble heart," says my wife. "He gave a fortune to a whole
family a week ago; and" (out comes the pocket-handkerchief��oh, of course, the
pocket-handkerchief)��"and��'God loves a cheerful giver!'"
"He is careless; he is extravagant; he is lazy;��I do not know that he is
remarkably clever��"
"Oh, yes! he is your friend, of course. Now, abuse him��do, Arthur!"
"And, pray, when did you become acquainted with this astounding piece of news?"
I inquire.
"When? From the very first moment when I saw Charlotte looking at him, to be
sure. The poor child said to me only yesterday, 'Oh, Laura! he is our
preserver!' And their preserver he has been, under heaven."
"Yes. But he has not got a five-pound note!" I cry.
"Arthur, I am surprised at you. Oh, men, men are awfully worldly! Do you suppose
heaven will not send hi
m help at its good time, and be kind to him who has
rescued so many from ruin? Do you suppose the prayers, the blessings of that
father, of those little ones, of that dear child, will not avail him? Suppose he
has to wait a year, ten years, have they not time, and will not the good day
come?"
Yes. This was actually the talk of a woman of sense and discernment when her
prejudices and romance were not in the way, and she looked forward to the
marriage of these folks, some ten years hence, as confidently as if they were
both rich, and going to St. George's tomorrow.
As for making a romantic story of it, or spinning out love conversation between
Jenny and Jessamy, or describing moonlight raptures and passionate outpourings
of two young hearts and so forth��excuse me, s'il vous plait. I am a man of the
world, and of a certain age. Let the young people fill in this outline, and
colour it as they please. Let the old folks who read, lay down the book a
minute, and remember. It is well remembered, isn't it, that time? Yes, good John
Anderson, and Mrs. John. Yes, good Darby and Joan. The lips won't tell now what
they did once. To-day is for the happy, and to-morrow for the young, and
yesterday, is not that dear and here too?
I was in the company of an elderly gentleman, not very long since, who was
perfectly sober, who is not particularly handsome, or healthy, or wealthy, or
witty; and who, speaking of his past life, volunteered to declare that he would
gladly live every minute of it over again. Is a man, who can say that, a
hardened sinner, not aware how miserable he ought to be by rights, and therefore
really in a most desperate and deplorable condition; or is he fortunatus nimium,
and ought his statue to be put up in the most splendid and crowded thoroughfare
of the town? Would you, who are reading this, for example, like to live your
life over again? What has been its chief joy? What are to-day's pleasures? Are
they so exquisite that you would prolong them for ever? Would you like to have
the roast beef on which you have dined brought back again to table, and have
more beef, and more, and more? Would you like to hear yesterday's sermon over
and over again��eternally voluble? Would you like to get on the Edinburgh mail,
and travel outside for fifty hours as you did in your youth? You might as well
say you would like to go into the flogging-room, and take a turn under the rods:
you would like to be thrashed over again by your bully at school: you would like
to go to the dentist's, where your dear parents were in the habit of taking you:
you would like to be taking hot Epsom salts, with a piece of dry bread to take
away the taste: you would like to be jilted by your first love: you would like
to be going in to your father to tell him you had contracted debts to the amount
of x + y + z, whilst you were at the university. As I consider the passionate
griefs of childhood, the weariness and sameness of shaving, the agony of corns,
and the thousand other ills to which flesh is heir, I cheerfully say for one, I
am not anxious to wear it for ever. No. I do not want to go to school again. I
do not want to hear Trotman's sermon over again. Take me out and finish me. Give
me the cup of hemlock at once. Here's a health to you, my lads. Don't weep, my
Simmias. Be cheerful, my Ph�don. Ha! I feel the co-o-ld stealing, stealing
upwards. Now it is in my ancles��no more gout in my foot: now my knees are numb.
What, is��is that poor executioner crying too? Good-by. Sacrifice a cock to
�scu��to �scula��... Have you ever read the chapter in Grote's History? Ah? When
the Sacred Ship returns from Delos, and is telegraphed as entering into port,
may we be at peace and ready!
What is this funeral chant, when the pipes should be playing gaily, as Love, and
Youth, and Spring, and Joy are dancing under the windows? Look you. Men not so
The Adventures of Philip Page 30
