homage before it. In fact they indulged in a hundred sports, jocularities, waggeries and petits jeux innocens: so that the second and third floors of Number 6, Lamb Court, Temple, rang with more cheerfulness and laughter than had been known in those precincts for many a long day. At last, after about ten days of this life, one evening when the little spy of the court came out to take her usual post of observation at the lamp, there was no music from the secondfloor window, there were no lights in the third-story chambers, the windows of each were open, and the occupants were gone. Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, told Fanny what had happened. The ladies and all the party had gone to Richmond for change of air. The antique travelling chariot was brought out again and cushioned with many pillows for Pen and his mother; and Miss Laura went in the most affable manner in the omnibus under the guardianship of Mr. George Warrington. He came back and took possession of his old bed that night in the vacant and cheerless chambers, and to his old books and his old pipes, but not perhaps to his old sleep. The widow had left a jar full of flowers upon his table, prettily arranged, and when he entered they filled the solitary room with odor. They were memorials of the kind, gentle souls who had gone away, and who had decorated for a little while that lonely, cheerless place. He had had the happiest days of his whole life, George felt he knew it now they were just gone he went and took up the flowers and put his face to them, smelt them perhaps kissed them. As he put them down, he rubbed his rough hand across his eyes with a bitter word and laugh. He would have given his whole life and soul to win that prize which Arthur rejected. Did she want fame? He would have won it for her:― devotion? -a great heart full of pent-up tenderness and manly love and gentleness was there for her, if she might take it. But it might not be. Fate had ruled otherwise. Even if I could, she would not have me," George thought. "What has an ugly, rough old fellow like me, to make any woman like him? I'm getting old, and I've made no mark in life. I've neither good looks, nor youth, nor money, nor reputation. A man must be able to do something besides stare at her and offer on his knees his uncouth devotion, to make a woman like him. What can I do? Lots of young fellows have passed me in the race-what they call the prizes of life didn't seem to me worth the trouble of the struggle. But for her. If she had been mine and liked a diamond - ah! shouldn't she have worn it! Psha, what a fool I am to brag of what I would have done! We are the slaves of destiny. Our lots are shaped for us, and mine is ordained long ago. Come, let us have a pipe, and put the smell of these flowers out of court. Poor little silent flowers! You'll be dead to-morrow. What business had you to show your red cheeks in this dingy place?" By his bed-side George found a new Bible which the widow had placed there, with a note inside saying that she had not seen the book amongst his collection in a room where she had spent a number of hours, and where God had vouchsafed to her prayers the life of her son, and that she gave to Arthur's friend the best thing she could, and besought him to read in the volume sometimes, and to keep it as a token of a grateful mother's regard and affection. Poor George mournfully kissed the book as he had done the flowers; and the morning found him still reading in its awful pages, in which so many stricken hearts, in which so many tender and faithful souls have found comfort under calamity, and refuge and hope in affliction. CHAPTER XVI. FANNY'S OCCUPATION'S GONE. GOOD Helen, ever since her son's illness, had taken, as we have seen, entire possession of the young man, of his drawers and closets and all which they contained: whether shirts that wanted buttons, or stockings that required mending, or, must it be owned? letters that lay amongst those articles of raiment, and which of course it was necessary that somebody should answer during Arthur's weakened and incapable condition. Perhaps Mrs. Pendennis was laudably desirous to have some explanations about the dreadful Fanny Bolton mystery, regarding which she had never breathed a word to her son, though it was present in her mind always, and occasioned her inexpressible anxiety and disquiet. She had caused the brass knocker to be screwed off the inner door of the chambers, whereupon the postman's startling double rap would, as she justly argued, disturb the rest of her patient, and she did not allow him to see any letter which arrived, whether from boot-makers who importuned him, or hatters who had a heavy account to make up against next Saturday, and would be very much obliged if Mr. Arthur Pendennis would have the kindness to settle, &c. Of these documents, Pen, who was always freehanded and careless, of course had his share, and though no great one, one quite enough to alarm his scrupulous and conscientious mother. She had some savings; Pen's magnificent self-denial, and her own economy, amounting from her great simplicity and avoidance of show to parsimony almost, had enabled her to put by a little sum of money, a part of which she delightedly consecrated to the paying off the young gentleman's obligations. At this price, many a worthy youth and respected reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and perhaps there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of a rat-tat! The good are eager for it but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or answering letters during his illness. There could have been nothing in the young man's chests of drawers and wardrobes which could be considered as inculpating him in any way, nor any satisfactory documents regarding the Fanny Bolton affair found there, for the widow had to ask her brother-in-law if he knew anything about the odious transaction, and the dreadful intrigue in which her son was engaged. When they were at Richmond one day, and Pen with Warrington had taken a seat on a bench on the terrace, the widow kept Major Pendennis in consultation, and laid her terrors and perplexities before him, such of them at least (for as is the wont of men and women, she did not make quite a clean confession, and I suppose no spendthrift asked for a schedule of his debts, no lady of fashion asked by her husband for her dressmaker's bills ever sent in the whole of them yet)—such, we say, of her perplexities, at least, as she chose to confide to her Director for the time being. When, then, she asked the Major what course she ought to pursue, about this dreadful this horrid affair, and whether he knew anything regarding it? the old gentleman puckered up his face, so that you could not tell whether he was smiling or not; gave the widow one queer look with his little eyes; cast them down to the carpet again, and said, "My dear, good creature, I don't know anything about it; and I don't wish to know anything about it; and, as you ask me my opinion, I think you had best know nothing about it too. Young men will be young men; and, begad, my good ma'am, if you think our boy is a Jo—” "Pray, spare me this," Helen broke in, looking very stately. "My dear creature, I did not commence the conversation, permit me to say," the Major said, bowing very blandly. "I can't bear to hear such a sin such a dreadful sin spoken of in such a way," the widow said, with tears of annoyance starting from her eyes. "I can't bear to think that my boy should commit such a crime. I wish he had died, almost, before he had done it. I don't know how I survive it myself; for it is breaking my heart, Major Pendennis, to think that his father's son my child whom I remember so good — oh, so good, and full of honor! - should be fallen so dreadfully low, "As to flirt with a little grisette, my dear creature?" said the Major. "Egad, if all the mothers in England were to break their hearts because - Nay, nay; upon my word and honor, now, don't agitate yourself, don't cry. I can't bear to see a woman's tears I never could - never. know that anything serious has happened? Has Arthur said anything?" "His silence confirms it," sobbed Mrs. Pendennis, behind her pocket-handkerchief. "Not at all. There are subjects, my dear, about which a young fellow cannot surely talk to his mamma," insinuated the brother-in-law. "She has written to him," cried the lady, behind the cambric. "What, before he was ill? Nothing more likely." "No, since," the mourner with the batiste mask gasped out; "not before; that is, I don't think so that is, I 66 Only since; and you have - yes, I understand. I suppose when he was too ill to read his own correspondence, you took charge of it, did you?" "I am the most unhappy mother in the world,” cried out the unfortunate Helen. If "The most unhappy mother in the world, because your son is a man and not a hermit! Have a care, my dear sister. you have suppressed any letters to him, you may have done yourself a great injury; and, if I know anything of Arthur's spirit, may cause a difference between him and you, which you'll rue all your life a difference that's a dev'lish deal more important, my good madam, than the little-little — trumpery cause which originated it." "There was only one letter," broke out Helen - "only a very little one-only a few words. can you, how can you speak so?" Here it isoh - how When the good soul said only "a very little one," the Major could not speak at all, so inclined was he to laugh, in spite of the agonies of the poor soul before him, and for whom he had a hearty pity and liking too. But each was looking at the matter with his or her peculiar eyes and view of morals, and the Major's morals, as the reader knows, were not those of an ascetic. "I recommend you," he gravely continued, "if you can, to seal it up those letters ain't unfrequently sealed with wafers and to put it amongst Pen's other letters, and let him have them when he calls for them. Or if we can't seal it, we mistook it for a bill." "I can't tell my son a lie," said the widow. It had been put silently into the letter-box two days previous to their departure from the Temple, and had been brought to Mrs. Pendennis by Martha. She had never seen Fanny's handwriting, of course; but when the letter was put into her hands, she knew the author at once. She had been on the watch for that letter every day since Pen had been ill. She had opened some of his other letters because she wanted to get at that one. She had the horrid paper poisoning her bag at that moment. took it out and offered it to her brother-in-law. ah that She "Arthur Pendennis, Esq.," he read, in a timid little sprawling handwriting, and with a sneer on his face. "No, my dear, I won't read any more. But you, who have read it, may tell me what the letter contains-only prayers for his health in bad spelling you say - and a desire to see him? Well there's no harm in that. And as you ask me here the Major began to look a little queer for his own part, and put on his demure look "as you ask me, my dear, for information, why, I don't mind telling you that Morgan, my man, has made some inquiries regarding this affair, and that my friend Doctor Goodenough also looked into it and it appears that this person was greatly smitten with Arthur; that he paid for her and took her to Vauxhall Gardens, as Morgan heard from an old acquaintance of Pen's and ours, an Irish gentleman, who was very nearly once having the honor of being the - from an Irishman, in fact; that the girl's father, a violent man of intoxicated habits, has beaten her mother, who persists in declaring her daughter's entire innocence to her husband on the one hand, while on the other she told Goodenough that Arthur had acted like a brute to her child. And so you see |