The History of Pendennis | Page 5

some years older than myself, that
circumstance does not operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am
sure will not influence its duration. A love like mine, Sir, I feel, is
contracted once and for ever. As I never had dreamed of love until I
saw her--I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another
passion. It is the fate of my life. It was Miss C.'s own delicacy which
suggested that the difference of age, which I never felt, might operate

as a bar to our union. But having loved once, I should despise myself,
and be unworthy of my name as a gentleman, if I hesitated to abide by
my passion: if I did not give all where I felt all, and endow the woman
who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole fortune.
"I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily--for why, in truth, should
it be delayed? A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me as
unworthy. It is impossible that my sentiments can change towards
Emily--that at any age she can be anything but the sole object of my
love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear Uncle, to come down and
reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man of
the world, qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes, who will not
feel any of the weak scruples and fears which agitate a lady who has
scarcely ever left her village.
"Pray, come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that--apart
from considerations of fortune--you will admire and approve of my
Emily.--Your affectionate Nephew, Arthur Pendennis, Jr."
When the Major had concluded the perusal of this letter, his
countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror that
Glowry, the surgeon-official, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he
always carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend was
going into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to agitate
Pendennis. The head of the Pendennises going to marry an actress ten
years his senior,-- a headstrong boy going to plunge into matrimony.
"The mother has spoiled the young rascal," groaned the Major inwardly,
"with her cursed sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew
marry a tragedy queen! Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so that
I shall not dare show my head!" And he thought with an inexpressible
pang that he must give up Lord Steyne's dinner at Richmond, and must
lose his rest and pass the night in an abominable tight mail-coach,
instead of taking pleasure, as he had promised himself, in some of the
most agreeable and select society in England.
And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some
time to come. Who knows how long the business might detain him. He
quitted his breakfast table for the adjoining writing-room, and there

ruefully wrote off refusals to the Marquis, the Earl, the Bishop, and all
his entertainers; and he ordered his servant to take places in the
mail-coach for that evening, of course charging the sum which he
disbursed for the seats to the account of the widow and the young
scapegrace of whom he was guardian.

CHAPTER II
A Pedigree and other Family Matters
Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there lived in a small
town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose
name was Pendennis. There were those alive who remembered having
seen his name painted on a board, which was surmounted by a gilt
pestle and mortar over the door of a very humble little shop in the city
of Bath, where Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary
and surgeon; and where he not only attended gentlemen in their
sick-rooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, but
would condescend to sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife
across the counter,--or to vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London
perfumery. For these facts a few folks at Clavering could vouch, where
people's memories were more tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a
great bustling metropolis.
And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a pennyworth
of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, was a gentleman of
good education, and of as old a family as any in the whole county of
Somerset. He had a Cornish pedigree which carried the Pendennises up
to the time of the Druids, and who knows how much farther back?
They had intermarried with the Normans at a very late period of their
family existence, and they were related to all the great families of
Wales and Brittany. Pendennis had had a piece of University education
too, and might have pursued that career with great