Boys and girls from Thackeray - Kate Dickinson Sweetser
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And so with flushing cheeks and eyes bright with anger this young
creature reasoned, and went up and seized Helen's hand and kissed her in
the Doctor's presence; and her looks braved the Doctor and seemed to ask
how he dared to say a word against her darling mother's Pen?
Directly the Doctor was gone, Laura ordered fires to be lighted in Mr.
Arthur's rooms, and his bedding to be aired; and by the time Helen had
completed a tender and affectionate letter to Pen, Laura had her
preparations completed, and, smiling fondly, went with her mamma into
Pen's room, which was now ready for him to occupy. Laura also added a
postscript to Helen's letter, in which she called him her dearest friend,
and bade him come home _instantly_ and be happy with his mother and his
affectionate Laura.
That night when Mrs. Pendennis was lying sleepless, thinking of Pen, a
voice at her side startled her, saying softly: "Mamma, are you awake?"
It was Laura. "You know, Mamma," this young lady said, "that I have been
living with you for ten years, during which time you have never taken
any of my money, and have been treating me just as if I were a charity
girl. Now, this obligation has offended me very much, because I am proud
and do not like to be beholden to people. And as, if I had gone to
school, only I wouldn't, it must have cost me as least fifty pounds a
year, it is clear that I owe you fifty times ten pounds, which I know
you have put into the bank at Chatteris for me, and which doesn't belong
to me a bit. Now, to-morrow we will go to Chatteris, and see that nice
old Mr. Rowdy, with the bald head, and ask him for it,--not for his
head, but for the five hundred pounds; and I daresay he will lend you
two more, which we will save and pay back, and we will send the money to
Pen, who can pay all his debts without hurting anybody, and then we will
live happy ever after."
What Mrs. Pendennis replied to this speech need not be repeated, but we
may be sure that its terms were those of the deepest gratitude, and that
the widow lost no time in writing off to Pen an account of the noble, the
magnificent offer of Laura, filling up her letter with a profusion of
benedictions upon both her children.
As for Pen, after being deserted by the Major, and writing his letter to
his mother, he skulked about London streets for the rest of the day,
fancying that everybody was looking at him and whispering to his
neighbour, "That is Pendennis of Boniface, who was plucked yesterday."
His letter to his mother was full of tenderness and remorse: he wept the
bitterest tears over it, and the repentance soothed him to some degree.
On the second day of his London wanderings there came a kind letter from
his tutor, containing many grave and appropriate remarks upon what had
befallen him, but strongly urging Pen not to take his name off the
University books, and to retrieve a disaster which everybody knew was
owing to his own carelessness alone, and which he might repair by a
month of application.
On the third day there arrived the letter from home which Pen read in his
bedroom, and the result of which was that he fell down on his knees, with
his head in the bedclothes, and there prayed out his heart, and humbled
himself; and having gone downstairs and eaten an immense breakfast, he
sallied forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth, Piccadilly, on
the Chatteris coach for that evening.
And so the Prodigal came home, and the fatted calf was killed for him,
and he was made as happy as two simple women could make him.
For some time he said no power on earth could induce him to go back to
Oxbridge again after his failure there; but one day Laura said to him,
with many blushes, that she thought, as some sort of reparation, or
punishment on himself for his idleness, he ought to go back and get his
degree if he could fetch it by doing so; and so back Mr. Pen went.
A plucked man is a dismal being in a university; belonging to no set of
men there and owned by no one. Pen felt himself plucked indeed of all the
fine feathers which he had won during his brilliant years, and rarely
appeared out of his college; regularly going to morning chapel and
shutting himself up in his rooms of nights, away from the noise and
suppers of the undergraduates. The men of his years had taken their
degrees and were gone. He went into a second examination, and passed with
perfect ease. He was somewhat more easy in his mind when he appeared in
his bachelor's gown, and could cast aside the hated badge of disgrace.
On his way back from Oxbridge he paid a visit to his uncle in London,
hoping that gentleman would accept his present success in place of his
past failure, but the old gentleman received him with very cold looks,
and would scarcely give him his forefinger to shake. He called a second
time, but the valet said his master was not at home.
So Pen went back to Fair-Oaks. True, he had retrieved his failure, had
won his honours, but he came back to his home a very different fellow
from the bright-faced youth who had gone out into college life some years
before. He no longer laughed, sang, or rollicked about the house as of
old; he had tasted of the fruit of the awful Tree of Life which from the
beginning had tempted all mankind, and which had changed Arthur Pendennis
the light-hearted boy into a man. Young, he is, of course, and still
awaiting the development which life's deeper experiences are to bring,
but nevertheless he is not again to taste the joy, the zest, or the
enthusiasm which come to careless boyhood.
Arthur Pendennis is now a competitor among the ranks of men striving
after life's prizes, and this narrative of his boyhood ends.
CAROLINE
[Illustration: Miss CAROLINE AND BECKY.]
Since the time of Cinderella the First there have been many similar
instances in real life of the persecution of youth by family injustice
and cruelty, and no case more strikingly similar than that of Miss
Caroline Brandenburg Gann, whose youthful career was one of monotonous
hardship and injustice until the arrival of her fairy prince.
The story is a short one to relate, but to live through the days and
months of sixteen unhappy years seemed an eternal process to the young
heart beating high with hopes which must constantly be stifled, and give
place to bitter disappointment.
But to go back for a moment to the time when Louis XVIII. was restored a
second time to the throne of his father, and all the English who had
money or leisure rushed over to the Continent. At that time there lived
in a certain boarding-house at Brussels a lady who was called Mrs. Crabb;
and her daughter, a genteel young widow, who bore the name of Mrs.
Wellesley McCarty. Previous to this Mrs. McCarty, who was then Miss
Crabb, had run off one day with a young Ensign, who possessed not a
shilling, and who speedily died, leaving his widow without property, but
with a remarkably fine pair of twins, named Rosalind Clancy and Isabella
Finigan Wellesley McCarty.
The young widow being left penniless, her mother, who had disowned the
runaway couple, was obliged to become reconciled to her daughter and to
share her small income of one hundred and twenty pounds a year with her.
Upon this at the boarding-house in Brussels the two managed to live. The
twins were put out, after the foreign fashion, to nurse, and a village in
the neighbourhood, and the widow and her mother maintained a very good
appearance despite their small income; and it was not long before the
Widow McCarty married a young Englishman, James Gann, Esq.--of the great
oil-house of Gann, Blubbery, and Gann,--who was boarding in the same
house with Mrs. Crabb and her daughter. These ladies, who had their full
share of common sense, took care to keep the twins in the background
until such time as the Widow McCarty had become Mrs. Gann. Then on the
day after the wedding, in the presence of many friends who had come to
offer their congratulations, a stout nurse, bearing the two chubby little
ones, made her appearance; and these rosy urchins, springing forward,
shouted affectionately, "_Maman! Maman_!" to the great astonishment and
bewilderment of James Gann, who well-nigh fainted at this sudden
paternity so put upon him. However, being a good-humoured, soft-hearted
man, he kissed his lady hurriedly, and vowed that he would take care of
the poor little things, whom he would also have kissed, but the darlings
refused his caress with many roars.
Soon after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. James Gann returned to England and
occupied a house in Thames Street, City, until the death of Gann, Sr.,
when his son, becoming head of the firm, mounted higher on the social
ladder and went to live in the neighbourhood of Putney, where a neat box,
a couple of spare bedrooms, a good cellar, and a smart gig made a real
gentleman of him. About this period, a daughter was born to him, called
Caroline Blandenburg Gann, so named after a large mansion near
Hammersmith, and an injured queen who lived there at the time of the
little girl's birth.
At this time Mrs. James Gann sent the twins, Rosalind Clancy and Isabella
Finigan Wellesley McCarty, to a boarding-school for young ladies, and
grumbled much at the amount of the bills which her husband was obliged to
pay for them; for, although James discharged them with perfect
good-humour, his lady began to entertain a mean opinion indeed of her
pretty young children. They could expect no fortune, she said, from Mr.
Gann, and she wondered that he should think of bringing them up
expensively, when he had a darling child of his own for whom to save all
the money that he could lay by.
Grandmamma, too, doted on the little Caroline Brandenburg, and vowed
that she would leave her three thousand pounds to this dear infant; for
in this way does the world show its respect for that most respectable
thing, prosperity, and little Caroline was the daughter of prosperous
James Gann.
Little Caroline, then, had her maid, her airy nursery, her little
carriage to drive in, the promise of her grandmamma's money, and her
mamma's undivided affection. Gann, too, loved her sincerely in his
careless good-humoured way; but he determined, notwithstanding, that his
step-daughters should have something handsome at his death, but--but for
a great But.
Gann and Blubbery were in the oil line; their profits arose from
contracts for lighting a great number of streets in London; and about
this period gas came into use. The firm of Gann and Blubbery had been so
badly managed, I am sorry to say, and so great had been the extravagance
of both partners and their ladies, that they only paid their creditors
fourteen-pence halfpenny in the pound.
When Mrs. Crabb heard of this dreadful accident she at once proclaimed
James Gann to be a swindler, a villain, a disreputable, vulgar man, and
made over her money to the Misses Rosalind Clancy and Isabella Finigan
McCarty, leaving poor little Caroline without a cent of legacy. Half of
one thousand five hundred pounds allotted to each twin was to be paid at
marriage, the other half on the death of Mrs. James Gann, who was to
enjoy the interest thereof. Thus did the fortunes of little Caroline
alter in a single night! Thus did Cinderella enter upon the period of her
loneliness!
After James Gann's failure his family lived in various uncomfortable
ways, until at length Mrs. Gann opened a lodging-house in a certain back
street in the town of Margate, on the door of which house might be read
in gleaming brass the name of MR. GANN. It was the work of a single
smutty servant-maid to clean this brass plate every morning, and to
attend to the wants of Mr. Gann, his family, and lodgers. In this same
house Mr. Gann had his office, though if truth be told he had nothing to
do from morning until night. He was very much changed, poor fellow! He
was now a fat, bald-headed man of fifty whose tastes were no longer
aristocratic, and who loved public-house jokes and company.
As for Mrs. Gann, she had changed, too, under the pressure of
misfortune. Her chief occupation was bragging of her former
acquaintances, taking medicine, and mending and altering her gowns. She
had a huge taste for cheap finery, loved raffles, tea-parties, and walks
on the pier, where she flaunted herself and daughters as gay as
butterflies. She stood upon her rank, did not fail to tell her lodgers
that she was "a gentlewoman," and was mighty sharp with Becky, the
maid, and Carrie, her youngest child.
For the tide of affection had turned now, and the Misses Wellesley
McCarty were the darlings of their mother's heart, as Caroline had been
in the early days of Putney prosperity. Mrs. Gann respected and loved her
elder daughters, the stately heiresses of L1500, and scorned poor
Caroline, who was likewise scorned, like Cinderella, by her brace of
haughty, thoughtless sisters. These young women were tall, well-grown,
black-browed girls, fond of fun, and having great health and spirits.
They had pink cheeks, white shoulders, and many glossy curls about their
shining foreheads. Such charms cannot fail of having their effect, and it
was very lucky for Caroline that she did not possess them, or she might
have been as vain, frivolous, and vulgar as these young ladies were. As
it was, Caroline was pale and thin, with fair hair and neat grey eyes;
nobody thought her a beauty in her moping cotton gown, and while her
sisters enjoyed their pleasures and tea-parties abroad, it was Carrie's
usual fate to remain at home and help the servant in the many duties
which were required in Mrs. Gann's establishment. She dressed her mamma
and her sisters, brought her papa his tea in bed, kept the lodgers'
bills, bore their scoldings, and sometimes gave a hand in the kitchen if
any extra cookery was required. At two she made a little toilette for
dinner, and was employed on numberless household darnings and mendings in
the long evenings while her sisters giggled over the jingling piano.
Mamma lay on the sofa, and Gann was at the club. A weary lot, in sooth,
was yours,--poor little Caroline. Since the days of your infancy, not one
hour of sunshine, no friendship, no cheery playfellows, no mother's love!
Only James Gann, of all the household, had a good-natured look for her,
and a coarse word of kindness, but Caroline did not complain, nor shed
any tears. Her misery was dumb and patient; she felt that she was
ill-treated, and had no companion; but was not on that account envious,
only humble and depressed, not desiring so much to resist as to bear
injustice, and hardly venturing to think for herself. This tyranny and
humility served her in place of education and formed her manners, which
were wonderfully gentle and calm. It was strange to see such a person
growing up in such a family, and the neighbours spoke of her with much
scornful compassion. "A poor half-witted, thing," they said, "who could
not say bo! to a goose." And I think it is one good test of gentility to
be thus looked down on by vulgar people.
I have said that Miss Caroline had no friend in the world except her
father, but one friend she most certainly had, and that was honest Becky,
the smutty maid, whose name has been mentioned before. A great comfort it
was for Caroline to descend to the calm kitchen from the stormy
back-parlour, and there vent some of her little woes to the compassionate
servant of all work.
When Mrs. Gann went out with her daughters Becky would take her work and
come and keep Miss Caroline company; and, if the truth must be told, the
greatest enjoyment the pair used to have was in these afternoons, when
they read together out of the precious, greasy, marble-covered volumes
that Mrs. Gann was in the habit of fetching from the library. Many and
many a tale had the pair so gone through. I can see them over "Manfrone;
or the One-handed Monk," the room dark, the street silent, the hour ten,
the tall, red, lurid candlewick waggling down, the flame flickering pale
upon Miss Caroline's pale face as she read out, and lighting up honest
Becky's goggling eyes, who sat silent, her work in her lap; she had not
done a stitch of it for an hour. As the trapdoor slowly opens, and the
scowling Alonzo, bending over the sleeping Imoinda, draws his pistol,
cocks it, looks well if the priming be right, places it then to the
sleeper's ear, and--_thunder under-under_--down fall the snuffers! Becky
has had them in her hand for ten minutes, afraid to use them. Up starts
Caroline and flings the book back into mamma's basket. It is only that
lady returned with her daughters from a tea-party, where they have been
enjoying themselves.
For the sentimental, too, as well as the terrible, Miss Caroline and the
cook had a strong predilection, and had wept their poor eyes out over
"Thaddeus of Warsaw" and the "Scottish Chiefs." Fortified by the examples
drawn from those instructive volumes, Becky was firmly convinced that her
young mistress would meet with a great lord some day or other, or be
carried off, like Cinderella, by a brilliant prince, to the mortification
of her elder sisters, whom Becky hated.
When, therefore, a new lodger came, lonely, mysterious, melancholy,
elegant, with the romantic name of George Brandon--when he actually wrote
a letter directed to a lord, and Miss Caroline and Becky together
examined the superscription, Becky's eyes were lighted up with a
preternatural look of wondering wisdom; whereas, after an instant,
Caroline dropped hers, and blushed and said, "Nonsense, Becky!"
"Is it nonsense?" said Becky, grinning, and snapping her fingers with a
triumphant air; "the cards come true; I knew they would. Didn't you have
a king and queen of hearts three deals running? What did you dream about
last Tuesday, tell me that?"
But Miss Caroline never did tell, for just then her sisters came bouncing
down the stairs, and examined the lodger's letter. Caroline, however,
went away musing much upon these points; and she began to think Mr.
Brandon more wonderful and beautiful every day, whereas he was remarkable
for nothing except very black eyes, a sallow face, and a habit of smoking
cigars in bed till noon. His name of George Brandon was only an assumed
one. He was really the son of a half-pay Colonel, of good family, who had
been sent to Eton to acquire an education. From Eton he went to Oxford,
took honours there, but ran up bills amounting to two thousand pounds.
Then there came fury on the part of his stern old "governor"; and final
payment of the debt, but while this settlement was pending Master George
had contracted many more debts and was glad to fly to the Continent as
tutor to young Lord Cinqbars, and afterwards went into retirement at
Margate until his father's wrath should be appeased. For that reason we
find him a member of the Gann establishment, flirting when occasion
seemed to demand it with mother and daughters, and taking occasional
notice of little Caroline, who frequently broiled his cutlets.
Mrs. Gann's other lodger was a fantastic youth, Andrea Fitch, to whom his
art, and his beard and whiskers, were the darlings of his heart. He was a
youth of poetic temperament, whose long pale hair fell over a high
polished brow, which looked wonderfully thoughtful; and yet no man was
more guiltless of thinking. He was always putting himself into attitudes,
and his stock-in-trade were various theatrical properties, which when
arranged in his apartments on the second floor made a tremendous show.
The Misses Wellesley McCarty voted this Mr. Fitch an elegant young
fellow, and before long the intimacy between the young people was
considerable, for Mr. Fitch insisted upon drawing the portraits of the
whole family.
"I suppose you will do my Carrie next?" said Mr. Gann, one day,
expressing his approbation of a portrait just finished, wherein the
Misses McCarty were represented embracing one another.
"Law, sir," exclaimed Miss Linda, "Carrie, with her red hair!--"
"Mr. Fitch might as well paint Becky, our maid!" cried Miss Bella.
"Carrie is quite impossible, Gann," said Mrs. Gann; "she hasn't a gown
fit to be seen in. She's not been at church for thirteen Sundays in
consequence."
"And more shame for you, ma'am," said Mr. Gann, who liked his child;
"Carrie shall have a gown, and the best of gowns;" and jingling three and
twenty shillings in his pocket, Mr. Gann determined to spend them all in
the purchase of a robe for Carrie. But, alas, the gown never came; half
the money was spent that very evening at the tavern.
"Is that--that young lady your daughter?" asked Mr. Fitch, surprised, for
he fancied Carrie was a humble companion of the family.
"Yes, she is, and a very good daughter, too, sir," answered Mr. Gann.
"_Fetch_ and Carrie I call her, or else Carry-van; she is so useful.
Ain't you, Carrie?"
"I'm very glad if I am, Papa," said the young lady, blushing violently.
"Hold your tongue, Miss!" said her mother; "you are, very expensive to
us, that you are, and need not brag about the work you do, and if your
sisters and me starve to keep you, and some other folks" (looking
fiercely at Mr. Gann), "I presume you are bound to make some return."
Poor Caroline was obliged to listen to this harangue on her own
ill-conduct in silence. As it was the first lecture Mr. Fitch had heard
on the subject, he naturally set down Caroline for a monster. Was she not
idle, sulky, scornful, and a sloven? For these and many more of her
daughter's vices Mrs. Gann vouched, declaring that Caroline's behaviour
was hastening her own death; and she finished by a fainting fit. In the
presence of all these charges, there stood Miss Caroline, dumb, stupid
and careless; nay, when the fainting-fit came on, and Mrs. Gann fell back
on the sofa, the unfeeling girl took the opportunity to retire, and never
offered to rub her mamma's hands, to give her the smelling bottle, or to
restore her with a glass of water.
Mr. Fitch stood close at hand, for at the time he was painting Mrs.
Gann's portrait--and he was hastily making towards her with his tumbler,
when Miss Linda cried out, "Stop! the water is full of paint!" and
straightway burst out laughing. Mrs. Gann jumped up at this, cured
suddenly, and left the room, looking somewhat foolish.
"You don't know Ma," said Miss Linda, still giggling; "she's always
fainting."
"Poor dear lady!" said the artist; "I pity her from my inmost soul.
Doesn't the himmortal bard observe how sharper than a serpent's tooth it
is to have a thankless child? And is it true, ma'am, that that young
woman has been the ruin of her family?"
"Ruin of her fiddlestick!" replied Miss Bella. "Law, Mr. Fitch, you don't
know Ma yet; she is in one of her tantrums."
"What, then, it _isn't_ true!" cried simple-minded Fitch. To which
neither of the young ladies made any answer in words, nor could the
little artist comprehend why they looked at each other and burst out
laughing. But he retired pondering on what he had seen and heard, and
being a very soft young fellow, most implicitly believed the accusations
of poor dear Mrs. Gann for a time.
Presently, however, those opinions changed, and the change was brought
about by watching closely the trend of domestic affairs in the Gann
establishment. After a fortnight of close observation the artist, though
by no means quick of comprehension, began to see that the nightly charges
brought against poor Caroline could not be founded upon truth.
"Let's see," mused he to himself. "Tuesday the old lady said her daughter
was bringing her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, because the cook
had not boiled the potatoes. Wednesday she said Caroline was an assassin,
because she could not find her own thimble. Thursday she vowed Caroline
had no religion, because that old pair of silk stockings were not darned;
and this can't be," reasoned Fitch. "A gal ain't a murderess, because her
ma can't find her thimble. A woman that goes to slap her grown-up
daughter on the back, and before company too, for such a paltry thing as
an old pair of stockings, can't be surely speaking the truth." And thus
gradually his first impression against Caroline wore away, and pity took
possession of his soul, pity for the meek little girl, who, though
trampled upon, was now springing up to womanhood; and though pale,
freckled, thin, meanly dressed, had a certain charm about her which some
people preferred to the cheap splendours and rude red and white of the
Misses McCarty, and which was calculated to touch the heart of anyone who
watched her carefully.
On account of Mr. Brandon's correspondence with the aristocracy that
young gentleman was highly esteemed by the family with whom he lodged for
a time. Then, however, he bragged so much, and assumed such airs of
superiority, that he perfectly disgusted Mrs. Gann and the Misses
McCarty, who did not at all like his way of telling them that he was
their better. But James Gann looked up to Mr. Brandon with deepest
wonder as a superior being. And poor little Caroline followed her
father's faith and in six weeks after Mr. Brandon's arrival had grown to
believe him the most perfect, polished, agreeable of mankind. Indeed, the
poor girl had never seen a gentleman before, and towards such her gentle
heart turned instinctively. Brandon never offended her by hard words; or
insulted her by cruel scorn such as she met with from her mother and
sisters; and so Caroline felt that he was their superior, and as such
admired and respected him.