all night: but above all, above all, of the chances of education for my
darlings. Nothing should give way to that�� nothing!" On this a long and
delightful conversation and calculation took place. Bunch produced his bills at
the Baroness de Smolensk's. The two gentlemen jotted up accounts, and made
calculations all through the evening. It was hard even for Mrs. Baynes to force
the figures into such a shape as to make them accord with the general's income;
but, driven away by one calculation after another, she returned again and again
to the charge, until she overcame the stubborn arithmetical difficulties, and
the pounds, shillings, and pence lay prostrate before her. They could save upon
this point; they could screw upon that; they must make a sacrifice to educate
the children. "Sarah Bunch and her girls go to Court, indeed! Why shouldn't mine
go?" she asked. On which her general said, "By George, Eliza, that's the point
you are thinking of." On which Eliza said, "No," and repeated "No" a score of
times, growing more angry as she uttered each denial. And she declared before
heaven she did not want to go to any Court. Had she not refused to be presented
at home, though Mrs. Colonel Flack went, because she did not choose to go to the
wicked expense of a train? And it was base of the general, base and mean of him
to say so. And there was a fine scene, as I am given to understand; not that I
was present at this family fight: but my informant was Mr. Firmin; and Mr.
Firmin had his information from a little person who, about this time, had got to
prattle out all the secrets of her young heart to him; who would have jumped off
the pier-head with her hand in his if he had said "Come;" without his hand if he
had said "Go:" a little person whose whole life had been changed��changed for a
month past ��changed in one minute, that minute when she saw Philip's fiery
whiskers and heard his great big voice saluting her father amongst the
commissioners on the quai before the custom-house.
Tours was, at any rate, a hundred and fifty miles farther off than Paris
from��from a city where a young gentleman lived in whom Miss Charlotte Baynes
felt an interest; hence, I suppose, arose her delight that her parents had
determined upon taking up their residence in the larger and nearer city.
Besides, she owned, in the course of her artless confidences to my wife, that,
when together, mamma and aunt MacWhirter quarrelled unceasingly; and had once
caused he old boys, the major and the general, to call each other out. She
preferred, then, to live away from aunt Mac. She had never had such a friend as
Laura, never. She had never been so happy as at Boulogne, never. She should
always love everybody in our house, that she should, for ever and ever��and so
forth, and so forth. The ladies meet; cling together; osculations are carried
round the whole family circle, from our wondering eldest boy, who cries, "I say,
hullo! what are you kissing me so about?" to darling baby, crowing and
sputtering unconscious in the rapturous young girl's embraces. I tell you, these
two women were making fools of themselves, and they were burning with enthusiasm
for the "preserver" of the Baynes family, as they called that big fellow yonder,
whose biographer I have aspired to be. The lazy rogue lay basking in the
glorious warmth and sunshine of early love. He would stretch his big limbs out
in our garden; pour out his feelings with endless volubility; call upon hominum
divumque voluptas, alma Venus; vow that he had never lived or been happy until
now; declare that he laughed poverty to scorn and all her ills; and fume against
his masters of the Pall Mall Gazette, because they declined to insert certain
love verses which Mr. Philip now composed almost every day. Poor little
Charlotte! And didst thou receive those treasures of song; and wonder over them,
not perhaps comprehending them altogether; and lock them up in they heart's
inmost casket as well as in thy little desk; and take them out in quiet hours,
and kiss them, and bless heaven for giving thee such jewels? I daresay. I can
fancy all this without seeing it. I can read the little letters in the little
desk, without picking lock or breaking seal. Poor little letters! Sometimes they
are not spelt right, quite; but I don't know that the style is worse for that.
Poor little letters! You are flung to the winds sometimes and forgotten with all
your sweet secrets and loving artless confessions; but not always�� no, not
always. As for Philip, who was the most careless creature alive, and left all
his clothes and haberdashery sprawling on his bed-room floor, he had at this
time a breast-pocket stuffed out with papers which crackled in the most
one of his great hands over it as though he would guard it. The pocket did not
contain bank-notes, you may be sure of that. It contained documents stating that
mamma's cold is better; the Joneses came to tea, and Julia sang, Ah, friend,
however old you are now, however cold you are now, however tough, I hope you,
too, remember how Julia sang, and the Joneses came to tea.
Mr. Philip stayed on week after week, declaring to my wife that she was a
perfect angel for keeping him so long. Bunch wrote from his boarding-house more
and more enthusiastic reports about the comforts of the establishment. For his
sake, Madame la Baronne de Smolensk would make unheard-of sacrifices, in order
to accommodate the general and his distinguished party. The balls were going to
be perfectly splendid that winter. There were several old Indians living near;
in fact, they could form a regular little club. It was agreed that Baynes should
go and reconnoitre the ground. He did go. Madame de Smolensk, a most elegant
woman, had a magnificent dinner for him��quite splendid, I give you my word, but
only what they have every day. Soup, of course, my love; fish, capital wine,
and, I should say, some five or six and thirty made dishes. The general was
quite enraptured. Bunch had put his boys to a famous school, where they might
"whop" the French boys, and learn all the modern languages. The little ones
would dine early; the baroness would take the whole family at an astonishingly
cheap rate. In a word, the Baynes' column got the route for Paris shortly before
our family-party was crossing the seas to return to London fogs and duty.
You have, no doubt, remarked how, under certain tender circumstances, women will
help one another. They help where they ought not to help. When Mr. Darby ought
to be separated from Miss Joan, and the best thing that could happen for both
would be a lettre de cachet to whip off Mons. Darby to the Bastille for five
years, and an order from her parents to lock up Mademoiselle Jeanne in a
convent, some aunt, some relative, some pitying female friend is sure to be
found, who will give the pair a chance of meeting, and turn her head away whilst
those unhappy lovers are warbling endless good-byes close up to each other's
ears. My wife, I have said, chose to feel this absurd sympathy for the young
people about whom we have been
just talking. As the days for Charlotte's
departure drew near, this wretched, misguiding matron would take the girl out
walking into I know not what unfrequented bye-lanes, quiet streets,
rampart-nooks, and the like; and la! by the most singular coincidence, Mr.
Philip's hulking boots would assuredly come tramping after the women's little
feet. What will you say, when I tell you, that I myself, the father of the
family, the renter of the oldfashioned house, Rue Roucoule, Haute Ville,
Boulognesur-Mer��as I am going into my own study��am met at the threshold by
Helen, my eldest daughter, who puts her little arms before the glass-door at
which I was about to enter, and says, "You must not go in there, papa! Mamma
says we none of us are to go in there."
"And why, pray?" I ask.
"Because uncle Philip and Charlotte are talking secrets there; and nobody is to
disturb them��nobody!"
Upon my word, wasn't this too monstrous? Am I Sir Pandarus of Troy become? Am I
going to allow a penniless young man to steal away the heart of a young girl who
has not twopence half-penny to her fortune? Shall I, I say, lend myself to this
most unjustifiable intrigue?
"Sir," says my wife (we happened to have been bred up from childhood together,
and I own to have had one or two foolish initiatory flirtations before I settled
down to matrimonial fidelity)��"Sir," says she, "when you were so wild��so
spoony, I think is your elegant word��about Blanche, and used to put letters
into a hollow tree for her at home, I used to see the letters, and I never
disturbed them. These two people have much warmer hearts, and are a great deal
fonder of each other, than you and Blanche used to be. I should not like to
separate Charlotte from Philip now. It is too late, sir. She can never like
anybody else as she likes him. If she lives to be a hundred, she will never
forget him. Why should not the poor thing be happy a little, while she may?"
An old house, with a green old courtyard and an ancient mossy wall, through
below, the shining sea, and the white English cliffs beyond; a green old
courtyard, and a tall old stone house rising up in it, grown over with many a
creeper on which the sun casts flickering shadows; and under the shadows, and
through the glass of a tall grey window, I can just peep into a brown twilight
parlour, and there I see two hazy figures by a table. One slim figure has brown
hair, and one has flame-coloured whiskers. Look! a ray of sunshine has just
peered into the room, and is lighting the whiskers up!
"Poor little thing," whispers my wife, very gently. "They are going away
to-morrow. Let them have their talk out. She is crying her little eyes out, I am
sure. Poor little Charlotte!"
Whilst my wife was pitying Miss Charlotte in this pathetic way, and was going, I
daresay, to have recourse to her own pocket-handkerchief, as I live, there came
a burst of laughter from the darkling chamber where the two lovers were billing
and cooing. First came Mr. Philip's great boom (such a roar��such a haw-haw, or
hee-haw, I never heard any other two-legged animal perform). Then follows Miss
Charlotte's tinkling peal; and presently that young person comes out into the
garden, with her round face not bedewed with tears at all, but perfectly rosy,
fresh, dimpled, and good-humoured. Charlotte gives me a little curtsey, and my
wife a hand and a kind glance. They retreat through the open casement, twining
round each other, as the vine does round the window; though which is the vine
and which is the window in this simile, I pretend not to say��I can't see
through either of them, that is the truth. They pass through the parlour, and
into the street beyond, doubtless: and as for Mr. Philip, I presently see his
head popped out of his window in the upper floor with his great pipe in his
mouth. He can't "work" without his pipe, he says; and my wife believes him.
Work, indeed!
Miss Charlotte paid us another little visit that evening, when we happened to be
alone. The children were gone to bed. The darlings! Charlotte must go up and
kiss them. Mr. Philip Firmin was out. She did not seem to miss him in the least,
nor did she make a single inquiry for him. We had been so good to her��so kind.
How should she ever forget our great kindness? She had been so happy��oh! so
happy! She had never been so happy before. She would write often and often, and
Laura would write constantly��wouldn't she? "Yes, dear child!" says my wife. And
now a little more kissing, and it is time to go home to the Tintelleries. What a
lovely night! Indeed, the moon was blazing in full round in the purple heavens,
and the stars were twinkling by myriads.
"Good-by, dear Charlotte; happiness go with you!" I seize her hand. I feel a
paternal desire to kiss her fair, round face. Her sweetness, her happiness, her
artless good-humour, and gentleness have endeared her to us all. As for me, I
love her with a fatherly affection. "Stay, my dear!" I cry, with a happy
gallantry. "I'll go home with you to the Tintelleries."
You should have seen the fair round face then! Such a piteous expression came
over it! She looked at my wife; and as for that Mrs. Laura she pulled the tail
of my coat.
"What do you mean, my dear?" I ask.
"Don't go out on such a dreadful night. You'll catch cold!" says Laura.
"Cold, my love!" I say. "Why, it's as fine a night as ever��"
"Oh! you��you stoopid!" says Laura, and begins to laugh. And there goes Miss
Charlotte tripping away from us without a word more!
Philip came in about half an hour afterwards. And do you know, I very strongly
suspect that he had been waiting round the corner. Few things escape me, you
see, when I have a mind to be observant. And, certainly, if I had thought of
that possibility and that I might be spoiling sport, I should not have proposed
to Miss Charlotte to walk home with her.
At a very early hour on the next morning my wife arose, and spent, in my
opinion, a great deal of unprofitable time, bread, butter, cold beef, mustard
and salt, in compiling a heap of sandwiches, which were tied up in a copy of the
Pall Mall Gazette. That persistence in making sandwiches, in provding cakes and
other refreshments for a journey, is a strange infatuation in women; as if there
was not always enough to eat to be had at road inns and railway stations! What a
good dinner we used to have at Montreuil in the old days, before railways were,
and when the diligence spent four or six and twenty cheerful hours on its way to
Paris! I think the finest dishes are not to be compared to that well-remembered
fricandeau of youth, nor do wines of the most dainty vintage surpass the rough,
honest, blue ordinaire which was served at the plenteous inn-table. I took our
bale of sandwiches down to the office of the Messageries, whence our friends
were to start. We saw six of the Baynes family packed into the interior of the
diligence; and the boys climb cheerily into the rotonde. Charlotte's pretty lips
and han
ds wafted kisses to us from her corner. Mrs. General Baynes commanded the
column, pushed the little ones into their places in the ark, ordered the general
and young ones hither and thither with her parasol, declined to give the
grumbling porters any but the smallest gratuity, and talked a shrieking jargon
of French and Hindustanee to the people assembled round the carriage. My wife
has that command over me that she actually made me demean myself so far as to
deliver the sandwich parcel to one of the Baynes boys. I said, "Take this," and
the poor wretch held out his hand eagerly, evidently expecting that I was about
to tip him with a five-franc piece or some such coin. Fouette, cocher! The
horses squeal. The huge machine jingles over the road, and rattles down the
street. Farewell, pretty Charlotte, with your sweet face, and sweet voice, and
kind eyes! But why, pray, is Mr. Philip Firmin not here to say farewell too?
Before the diligence got under way, the Baynes boys had fought, and quarrelled,
and wanted to mount on the imperial or cabriolet of the carriage, where there
was only one passenger as yet. But the conductor called the lads off, saying
that the remaining place was engaged by a gentleman, whom they were to take up
on the road. And who should this turn out to be? Just outside the town a man
springs up to the imperial; his light luggage, it appears, was on the coach
already, and that luggage belonged to Philip Firmin. Ah, monsieur! and that was
the reason, was it, why they were so merry yesterday��the parting day? Because,
when they were not going to part just then. Because, when the time of execution
drew near, they had managed to smuggle a little reprieve! Upon my conscience, I
never heard of such imprudence in the whole course of my life! Why, it is
starvation��certain misery to one and the other. "I don't like to meddle in
other people's affairs," I say to my wife; "but I have no patience with such
folly, or with myself for not speaking to General Baynes on the subject. I shall
write to the general."
"My dear, the general knows all about it," says Charlotte's, Philip's (in my
opinion) most injudicious friend. "We have talked about it, and, like a man of
sense, the general makes light of it. 'Young folks will be young folks,' he
says; 'and, by George! ma'am, when I married��I should say, when Mrs. B. ordered
me to marry her��she had nothing, and I but my captain's pay. People get on,
somehow. Better for a young man to marry, and keep out of idleness and mischief;
and, I promise you, the chap who marries my girl gets a treasure. I like the boy
for the sake of my old friend Phil Ringwood. I don't see that the fellows with
the rich wives are much the happier, or that men should wait to marry until they
are gouty old rakes.' And, it appears, the general instanced several officers of
his own acquaintance; some of whom had married when they were young and poor;
some who had married when they were old and sulky; some who had never married at
all. And he mentioned his comrade, my own uncle, the late Major Pendennis, whom
he called a selfish old creature, and hinted that the major had jilted some lady
in early life, whom he would have done much better to marry."
And so Philip is actually gone after his charmer, and is pursuing her summ�
diligenti�? The Baynes family has allowed this penniless young law student to
make love to their daughter, to accompany them to Paris, to appear as the almost
recognized son of the house. "Other people, when they were young, wanted to make
imprudent marriages," says my wife (as if that wretched tu quoque were any
answer to my remark!) "This penniless law student might have a good sum of money
if he choose to press the Baynes family to pay him what, after all, they owe
him." And so poor little Charlotte was to be her father's ransom! To be sure,