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Arthur Pendennis
by
Amidst his friends, and a host of them there were, Pen passed more than two brilliant and happy years. He had his fill of pleasure and popularity. No dinner or supper party was complete without him. He became the favourite and leader of young men who were his superiors in wealth and station, but also did not neglect the humblest man of his acquaintance in order to curry favour with the richest young grandee in the University. He became famous and popular: not that he did much, but there was a general idea that he could do a great deal if he chose. “Ah, if Pendennis would only try ” the men said, “he might do anything.” One by one the University honours were lost by him, until he ceased to compete. But he got a declamation prize and brought home to his mother and Laura a set of prize books begilt with the college arms, and so magnificent that the ladies thought that Pen had won the largest honour which Oxbridge was capable of awarding.
Vacation after vacation passed without the desired news that Pen had sat for any scholarship or won any honour, and Pen grew rebellious and unhappy, and there was a tacit feud between Dr. Portman, who was disappointed in Arthur, and the lad himself. Mrs. Pendennis, hearing Dr. Portman prophesy that Pen would come to ruin, trembled in her heart, and little Laura also–Laura who had grown to be a fine young stripling, graceful and fair, clinging to her adopted mother and worshipping her with a passionate affection. Both of these women felt that their boy was changed. He was no longer the artless Pen of old days, so brave, so impetuous, so tender. He spent little of his vacations at home, but went on visits, and scared the quiet pair at Fair-Oaks by stories of great houses to which he had been invited, and by talking of lords without their titles.
But even with all his weaknesses there was a kindness and frankness about Arthur Pendennis which won most people who came in contact with him, and made it impossible to resist his good-nature, or in his worst moments not to hope for his rescue from utter ruin. At the time of his career of university pleasure he would leave the gayest party to sit with a sick friend and was only too ready to share any money which he had with a poorer one.
In his third year at college the duns began to gather awfully round about him, and descended upon him in such a number that the tutors were scandalised, and even brave-hearted Pen was scared. Hearing of his nephew’s extravagances, Major Pendennis interviewed that young man, and was thunderstruck at the extent of his liabilities after receiving Pen’s dismal confession of the trouble in which he was involved.
Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that Pen was terrified lest his mother should know of his sins. “I can’t bear to break it to her,” he said to the tutor, in an agony of grief. “Oh! sir, I’ve been a villain to her!”
–and he repented, and asked himself, Why, why, did his uncle insist upon the necessity of living with great people, and in how much did all his grand acquaintance profit him?
They were not shy of him, but Pen thought they were, and slunk from them during his last terms at college. He was as gloomy as a death’s-head at parties, which he avoided of his own part, or to which his young friends soon ceased to invite him. Everybody knew that Pendennis was “hard up.”
At last came the Degree Examinations. Many a young man of his year, whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he had caricatured, many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating club, many of his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and constancy of occupation, took high places in the honours or passed within decent credit. And where in the list was Pen, the superb; Pen, the wit and dandy; Pen, the poet and orator? Ah, where was Pen, the widow’s darling and sole pride? Let us hide our heads and shut up the page. The lists came out; and a dreadful rumour rushed through the University, that Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.