thing, and she led me down to my cousin; and��Captain Woolcomb, I think, is your
name, sir?"
As Philip curls his moustache and smiles blandly, Captain Woolcomb pulls his and
scowls fiercely. "Yes, sir," he mutters, "my name is Woolcomb." Another bow and
a touch of the hat from Mr. Firmin. A touch? ��a gracious wave of the hat;
acknowledged by no means so gracefully by Captain Woolcomb.
To these remarks, Mrs. Penfold says, "Oh!" In fact, "Oh!" is about the best
thing that could be said under the circumstances.
"My cousin, Miss Twysden, looks so pale because she was out very late dancing
last night. I hear it was a very pretty ball. But ought she to keep such late
hours, Mrs. Penfold, with her delicate health? Indeed, you ought not, Agnes!
Ought she to keep late hours, Brownie? There��don't, you little foolish thing! I
gave my cousin the dog: and she's very fond of me�� the dog is��still. You were
saying, Captain Woolcomb, when I came up, that you would give Miss Twysden a dog
on whose nose you could hang your��I beg pardon?"
Mr. Woolcomb, as Philip made this second allusion to the peculiar nasal
formation of the pug, ground his little white teeth together, and let slip a
most improper monosyllable. More acute bronchial suffering was manifested on the
part of Miss Twysden. Mrs. Penfold said, "The day is clouding over. I think,
Agnes, I will have my chair, and go home."
"May I be allowed to walk with you as far as your house?" says Philip, twiddling
a little locket which he wore at his watch-chain. It was a little gold locket,
with a little pale hair inside. Whose hair could it have been that was so pale
and fine? As for the pretty hieroglyphical A. T. at the back, those letters
might indicate Alfred Tennyson, or Anthony Trollope, who might have given a lock
of their golden hair to Philip, for I know he is an admirer of their works.
Agnes looked guiltily at the little locket. Captain Woolcomb pulled his
moustache so, that you would have thought he would have pulled it off; and his
opal eyes glared with fearful confusion and wrath.
"Will you please to fall back and let me speak to you, Agnes? Pardon me, Captain
Woolcomb, I have a private message for my cousin; and I came from London
expressly to deliver it."
"If Miss Twysden desires me to withdraw, I fall back in one moment," says the
captain, clenching the little lemon-coloured gloves.
"My cousin and I have lived together all our lives, and I bring her a family
message. Have you any particular claim to hear it, Captain Woolcomb?"
"Not if Miss Twysden don't want me hear it. ... D��the little brute."
"Don't kick poor little harmless Brownie! He shan't kick you, shall he,
Brownie?"
"If the brute comes between my shins, I'll kick her!" shrieks the captain. "Hang
her, I'll throw her into the sea!"
"Whatever you do to my dog, I swear I will do to you!" whispers Philip to the
captain.
"Where are you staying?" shrieks the captain. "Hang you, you shall hear from
me."
"Quiet��Bedford Hotel. Easy, or I shall think you want the ladies to overhear."
"Your conduct is horrible, sir," says Agnes, rapidly, in the French language.
"Mr. does not comprehend it."
"��it! If you have any secrets to talk, I'll withdraw fast enough, Miss Agnes,"
says Othello.
"Oh, Grenville! can I have any secrets from you? Mr. Firmin is my first-cousin.
We have lived together all our lives. Philip, I��I don't know whether mamma
announced to you my��my engagement with Captain Grenville Woolcomb." The
agitation has brought on another severe bronchial attack. Poor, poor little
Agnes! What it is to have a delicate throat!
The pier tosses up to the skies, as though it had left its moorings��the houses
on the cliff dance and reel, as though an earthquake was driving them��the sea
walks up into the lodging-houses��and Philip's legs are failing from under him:
it is only for a moment. When you have a large, tough double tooth out, doesn't
the chair go up to the ceiling, and your head come off too? But, in the next
instant, there is a grave gentleman before you, making you a bow, and concealing
something in his right sleeve. The crash is over. You are a man again. Philip
clutches hold of the chain pier for a minute: it does not sink under him. The
their bow windows towards the main. He can see the people looking from the
windows, the carriages passing, Professor Spurrier riding on the cliff with
eighteen young ladies, his pupils. In long after days he remembers those absurd
little incidents with a curious tenacity.
"This news, "Philip says, "was not��not altogether unexpected. I congratulate my
cousin, I am sure. Captain Woolcomb, had I known this for certain, I am sure I
should not have interrupted you. You were going, perhaps, to ask me to your
hospitable house, Mrs. Penfold?"
"Was she though?" cries the captain.
"I have asked a friend to dine with me at the Bedford, and shall go to town, I
hope, in the morning. Can I take anything for you, Agnes? Good-by:" and he
kisses his hand in quite a d�gag� manner, as Mrs. Penfold's chair turns eastward
and he goes to the west. Silently the tall Agnes sweeps along, a fair hand laid
upon her friend's chair.
It's over! it's over! She has done it. He was bound, and kept his honour, but
she did not: it was she who forsook him. And I fear very much Mr. Philip's heart
leaps with pleasure and an immense sensation of relief at thinking he is free.
He meets half a dozen acquaintances on the cliff. He laughs, jokes, shakes
hands, invites two or three to dinner in the gayest manner. He sits down on that
green, not very far from his inn, and is laughing to himself, when he suddenly
feels something nestling at his knee,��rubbing, and nestling, and whining
plaintively. "What, is that you?" It is little Brownie, who has followed him.
Poor little rogue!
Then Philip bent down his head over the dog, and as it jumped on him, with
little bleats, and whines, and innocent caresses, he broke out into a sob, and a
great refreshing rain of tears fell from his eyes. Such a little illness! Such a
mild fever! Such a speedy cure! Some people have the complaint so mildly that
they are scarcely ever kept to their beds. Some bear its scars for ever.
Philip sat resolutely at the hotel all night, having given special orders to the
porter to say that he was at home, in case any gentleman should call. He had a
faint hope, he afterwards owned, that some friend of Captain Woolcomb might wait
on him on that officer's part. He had a faint hope that a letter might come
explaining that treason,��as people will have a sick, gnawing, yearning, foolish
desire for letters��letters which contain nothing, which never did contain
anything ��letters which, nevertheless, you�� You know, in fact, about those
letters, and there is no earthly use in asking to read Philip's. Have we not all
read those love-letters which, after love-quarrels, come into court sometimes?
We have all re
ad them; and how many have written them? Nine o'clock. Ten
o'clock. Eleven o'clock. No challenge from the captain; no explanation from
Agnes. Philip declares he slept perfectly well. But poor little Brownie the dog
made a piteous howling all night in the stables. She was not a well-bred dog.
You could not have hung the least hat on her nose.
We compared anon our dear Agnes to a Brahmin lady, meekly offering herself up to
sacrifice according to the practice used in her highly respectable caste. Did we
speak in anger or in sorrow?��surely in terms of respectful grief and sympathy.
And if we pity her, ought we not likewise to pity her highly respectable
parents? When the notorious Brutus ordered his sons to execution, you can't
suppose he was such a brute as to be pleased? All three parties suffered by the
transaction: the sons, probably, even more than their austere father; but it
stands to reason that the whole trio were very melancholy. At least, were I a
poet or musical composer depicting that business, I certainly should make them
so:��the sons, piping in a very minor key indeed; the father's manly basso,
accompanied by deep wind instruments, and interrupted by appropriate sobs.
Though pretty fair Agnes is being led to execution, I don't suppose she likes
it, or that her parents are happy, who are compelled to order the tragedy.
That the rich young proprietor of Mangrove Hall should be fond of her, was
merely a coincidence, Mrs. Twysden afterwards always averred. Not for mere
wealth��ah, no! not for mines of gold��would they sacrifice their darling child.
But when that sad Firmin affair happened, you see it also happened that Captain
Woolcomb was much struck by dear Agnes, whom he met everywhere. Her scapegrace
of a cousin would go nowhere. He preferred his bachelor associates, and horrible
society. He neglected Agnes. There is not the slightest doubt he neglected and
mortified her, and his wilful and frequent absence showed how little he cared
for her. Would you blame the dear girl for coldness to a man who himself showed
such indifference to her? "No, my good Mrs. Candour. Had Mr. Firmin been ten
times as rich as Mr. Woolcomb, I should have counselled my child to refuse him.
I take the responsibility of the measure entirely on myself��I, and her father,
and her brother." So Mrs. Twysden afterwards spoke, in circles where an absurd
and odious rumour ran, that the Twysdens had forced their daughter to jilt young
Mr. Firmin in order to marry a young quadroon. People will talk, you know, de
me, de te. If Woolcomb's dinners had not gone off so after his marriage, I have
little doubt the scandal would have died away, and he and his wife might have
been pretty generally respected and visited.
Nor must you suppose, as we have said, that dear Agnes gave up her first love
without a pang. That bronchitis showed how acutely the poor thing felt her
position. It broke out very soon after Mr. Woolcomb's attentions became a little
particular; and she actually left London in consequence. It is true that he
could follow her without difficulty, but so, for the matter of that, could
Philip, as we have seen, when he came down and behaved so rudely to Captain
Woolcomb. And before Philip came, poor Agnes could plead, "My father pressed me
sair," as in the case of the notorious Mrs. Robin Gray.
Father and mother both pressed her sair. Mrs. Twysden, I think I have mentioned,
wrote an admirable letter, and was aware of her accomplishment. She used to
write reams of gossip regularly every week to dear uncle Ringwood when he was in
the country: and when her daughter Blanche married, she is said to have written
several of her new son's sermons. As a Christian mother, was she not to give her
daughter her advice at this momentous period of her life? That advice went
against poor Philip's chances with his cousin, who was kept acquainted with all
the circumstances of the controversy of which we have just seen the issue. I do
not mean to say that Mrs. Twysden gave an impartial statement of case. What
parties in a lawsuit do speak impartily on their own side or their adversaries'?
Mrs. Twysden's view, as I have learned subsequently, and as imparted to her
daughter, was this:�� That most unprincipled man, Dr. Firmin, who had already
attempted, and unjustly, to deprive the Twysdens of a part of their property,
had commenced in quite early life his career of outrage and wickedness against
the Ringwood family. He had led dear Lord Ringwood's son, poor dear Lord
Cinqbars, into a career of vice and extravagance which caused the premature
death of that unfortunate young nobleman. Mr. Firmin had then made a marriage,
in spite of the tears and entreaties of Mrs. Twysden, with her late unhappy
sister, whose whole life had been made wretched by the doctor's conduct. But the
climax of outrage and wickedness was, that when he��he, a low, penniless
adventurer��married Colonel Ringwood's daughter, he was married already, as
could be sworn by the repentant clergyman who had been forced, by threats of
punishment which Dr. Firmin held over him, to perform the rite! "The mind"��Mrs.
Talbot Twysden's fine mind��"shuddered at the thought of such wickedness." But
most of all (for to think ill of any one whom she had once loved gave her pain)
there was reason to believe that the unhappy Philip Firmin was his father's
accomplice, and that he knew of his own illegitimacy, which he was determined to
set aside by any fraud or artifice��(she trembled, she wept to have to say this:
O heaven! that there should be such perversity in thy creatures!) And so little
store did Philip set by his mother's honour, that he actually visited the
abandoned woman who acquiesced in her own infamy, and had brought such
unspeakable disgrace on the Ringwood family! The thought of this crime had
caused Mrs. Twysden and her dear husband nights of sleepless anguish��had made
them years and years older ��had stricken their hearts with a grief which must
endure to the end of their days. With people so unscrupulous, so grasping, so
artful as Dr. Firmin and (must she say?) his son, they were bound to be on their
guard; and though they had avoided Philip, she had deemed it right, on the rare
occasions when she and the young man whom she must now call her illegitimate
nephew met, to behave as though she knew nothing of this most dreadful
controversy.
"And now, dearest child" ... Surely the moral is obvious? The dearest child
"must see at once that any foolish plans which were formed in childish days and
under former delusions must be cast aside for ever as impossible, as unworthy of
a Twysden��of a Ringwood. Be not concerned for the young man himself," wrote
Mrs. Twysden��"I blush that he should bear that dear father's name who was slain
in honour on Busaco's glorious field. P. F. has associates amongst whom he has
ever been much more at home than in our refined circle, and habits which will
cause him to forget you only too easily. And if near you is one whose ardour
shows itself in his every word and action, whose
wealth and property may raise
you to a place worthy of my child, need I say, a mother's, a father's blessing
go with you." This letter was brought to Miss Twysden, at Brighton, by a special
messenger; and the superscription announced that it was "honoured by Captain
Grenville Woolcomb."
Now when Miss Agnes has had a letter to this effect, from a mother in whose
prudence and affection a child could surely confide; when she remembers all the
abuse her brother lavishes against Philip, as, heaven bless some of them! dear
relatives can best do; when she thinks how cold he has of late been��how he will
come smelling of cigars��how he won't conform to the usages du monde, and has
neglected all the decencies of society��how she often can't understand his
strange rhapsodies about poetry, painting, and the like, nor how he can live
with such associates as those who seem to delight him��and now how he is showing
himself actually unprincipled and abetting his horrid father; when we consider
mither pressing sair, and all these points in mither's favour, I don't think we
can order Agnes to instant execution for the resolution to which she is coming.
She will give him up��she will give him up. Good-by, Philip. Good-by the past.
Be forgotten, be forgotten, fond words spoken in not unwilling ears! Be still
and breathe not, eager lips, that have trembled so near to one another! Unlock,
hands, and part for ever, that seemed to be formed for life's long journey! Ah,
to part for ever is hard; but harder and more humiliating still to part without
regret!
That papa and mamma had influenced Miss Twysden in her behaviour my wife and I
could easily imagine, when Philip, in his wrath and grief, came to us and poured
out the feelings of his heart. My wife is a repository of men's secrets, and
untiring consoler and comforter; and she knows many a sad story which we are not
at liberty to tell, like this one of which this person, Mr. Firmin, has given us
possession.
"Father and mother's orders," shouts Philip, "I daresay, Mrs. Pendennis; but the
wish was father to the thought of parting, and it was for the blackamoor's parks
and acres that the girl jilted me. Look here. I told you just now that I slept
perfectly well on that infernal night after I had said farewell to her. Well, I
didn't. It was a lie. I walked ever so many times the whole length of the cliff,
from Hove to Rottingdean almost, and then went to bed afterwards, and slept a
little out of sheer fatigue. And as I was passing by Horizontal Place (��I
happened to pass by there two or three times in the moonlight, like a great
jackass��) you know those verses of mine which I have hummed here sometimes?"
(hummed! he used to roar them!) "'When the locks of burnished gold, lady, shall
to silver turn!' Never mind the rest. You know the verses about fidelity and old
age? She was singing them on that night, to that negro. And I heard the beggar's
voice say, 'Bravo!' through the open windows."
"Ah, Philip! it was cruel," says my wife, heartily pitying our friend's anguish
and misfortune. "It was cruel indeed. I am sure we can feel for you. But think
what certain misery a marriage with such a person would have been! Think of your
warm heart given away for ever to that heartless creature."
"Laura, Laura, have you not often warned me not to speak ill of people?" says
Laura's husband.
"I can't help it sometimes," cries Laura in a transport. "I try and do my best
not to speak ill of my neighbours; but the worldliness of those people shocks me
so that I can't bear to be near them. They are so utterly tied and bound by
conventionalities, so perfectly convinced of their own excessive high-breeding,
that they seem to me more odious and more vulgar than quite low people; and I am
sure Mr. Philip's friend, the Little Sister, is infinitely more ladylike than