William Thackeray - A History of Pendennis. Volume 1. His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy

Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was a general titter behind him in the school-room. The orator had his back to the door of this ancient apartment, which was open, and a gentleman who was quite familiar with the place, for both Major Arthur and Mr. John Pendennis had been at the school, was asking the fifth form boy who sate by the door for Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit against whom the doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just wrath – Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He remembered having stood under that very pillar where Pen the younger now stood, and having been assaulted by the doctor's predecessor, years and years ago. The intelligence was "passed round" that it was Pendennis's uncle in an instant, and a hundred young faces wondering and giggling, between terror and laughter, turned now to the new comer and then to the awful doctor.

The major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to the doctor, which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pendennis had written on the card, "I must take A. P. home; his father is very ill."

As the doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue with rather a scared look, the laughter of the boys, half constrained until then, burst out in a general shout. "Silence!" roared out the doctor, stamping with his foot. Pen looked up and saw who was his deliverer; the major beckoned to him gravely with one of his white gloves, and tumbling down his books, Pen went across.

The doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to one. "We will take the Juvenal at afternoon school," he said, nodding to the major, and all the boys, understanding the signal, gathered up their books and poured out of the hall.

Young Pen saw by his uncle's face that something had happened at home. "Is there any thing the matter with – my mother?" he said. He could hardly speak, though, for emotion, and the tears which were ready to start.

"No," said the major, "but your father's very ill. Go and pack your trunk directly; I have got a post-chaise at the gate."

Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his uncle bade him; and the doctor, now left alone in the school-room, came out to shake hands with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the same man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and magnificent princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a gray petticoat, so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath of the schoolmaster disappeared.

"There is nothing serious, I hope," said the doctor. "It is a pity to take the boy away unless there is. He is a very good boy, rather idle and unenergetic, but he is a very honest, gentlemanlike little fellow, though I can't get him to construe as I wish. Won't you come in and have some luncheon? My wife will be very happy to see you."

But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his brother was very ill, had had a fit the day before, and it was a great question if they should see him alive.

"There's no other son, is there?" said the doctor. The major answered "No."

"And there's a good eh – a good eh – property I believe?" asked the other, in an offhand way.

"H'm – so so," said the major. Whereupon this colloquy came to an end. And Arthur Pendennis got into the post-chaise with his uncle never to come back to school any more.

As the chaise drove through Clavering, the hostler standing whistling under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the postillion ominously, as much as to say all was over. The gardener's wife came and opened the lodge-gates, and let the travelers through, with a silent shake of the head. All the blinds were down at Fairoaks – the face of the old footman was as blank when he let them in. Arthur's face was white too, with terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and love the deceased man might have had, and he adored his wife and loved and admired his son with all his heart, he had shut them up within himself; nor had the boy been ever able to penetrate that frigid outward harrier. But Arthur had been his father's pride and glory through life, and his name the last which John Pendennis had tried to articulate while he lay with his wife's hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, as the flickering spirit went out into the darkness of death, and life and the world passed away from him.

The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under the blinds as the chaise came up, opened the door from the stairs into the hall, and taking Arthur's hand silently as he stooped down to kiss her, led him up-stairs to his mother. Old John opened the drawing-room door for the major. The room was darkened, with the blinds down, and surrounded by all the gloomy pictures of the Pendennises. He drank a glass of wine. The bottle had been opened for the squire four days before. His hat was brushed, and laid on the hall table: his newspapers, and his letter bag, with John Pendennis, Esquire, Fairoaks, engraved upon the brass plate, were there in waiting. The doctor and the lawyer from Clavering, who had seen the chaise pass through, came up in a gig half an hour after the major's arrival, and entered by the back door. The former gave a detailed account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pendennis, enlarged on his virtues and the estimation in which the neighborhood held him; on what a loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the county hospital, &c. Mrs. Pendennis bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master Arthur's arrival. The lawyer staid and dined with Major Pendennis, and they talked business all the evening. The major was his brother's executor, and joint guardian to the boy with Mrs. Pendennis. Every thing was left unreservedly to her, except in case of a second marriage – an occasion which might offer itself in the case of so young and handsome a woman, Mr. Tatham gallantly said, when different provisions were enacted by the deceased. The major would of course take entire superintendence of every thing under this most impressive and melancholy occasion. Aware of this authority, Old John the footman, when he brought Major Pendennis the candle to go to bed, followed afterward with the plate-basket; and the next morning brought him the key of the hall clock – the squire always used to wind it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis's maid brought him messages from her mistress. She confirmed the doctor's report, of the comfort which Master Arthur's arrival had caused to his mother.

What passed between that lady and the boy is not of import. A vail should be thrown over those sacred emotions of love and grief. The maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolized in the Roman churches in the image of the Virgin Mother with a bosom bleeding with love, I think one may witness (and admire the Almighty bounty for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady, only yesterday, with a child at her knee, and from whose face toward the child there shone a sweetness so angelical, that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in her the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the maternal storgé , which began with our race and sanctifies the history of mankind.

So it was with this, in a word, that Mrs. Pendennis comforted herself on the death of her husband, whom, however, she always reverenced as the best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful of men. If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see each other, would life be bearable, or could society go on? Let a man pray that none of his womankind should form a just estimation of him. If your wife knew you as you are, neighbor, she would not grieve much about being your widow, and would let your grave-lamp go out very soon, or perhaps not even take the trouble to light it. Whereas Helen Pendennis put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and constantly renewed it with the most precious oil.