Madame Fribsby had, of course, taken the strongest interest in the progress of Mr. Pen's love affair with Miss Fotheringay. She had been over to Chatteries, and having seen that actress perform, had pronounced that she was old and overrated: and had talked over Master Pen's passion in her shop many and many a time to the half-dozen old maids, and old women in male clothes, who are to be found in little country towns, and who formed the genteel population of Clavering. Captain Glanders, H.P., had pronounced that Pen was going to be a devil of a fellow, and had begun early; Mrs. Glanders had told him to check his horrid observations, and to respect his own wife, if he pleased. She said it would be a lesson to Helen for her pride and absurd infatuation about that boy. Mrs. Pybus said many people were proud of very small things, and for her part, she didn't know why an apothecary's wife should give herself such airs. Mrs. Wapshot called her daughters away from that side of the street, one day when Pen, on Rebecca, was stopping at the saddler's, to get a new lash to his whip—one and all of these people had made visits of curiosity to Fairoaks, and had tried to condole with the widow, or bring the subject of the Fotheringay affair on the tapis, and had been severally checked by the haughty reserve of Mrs. Pendennis, supported by the frigid politeness of the major her brother.
These rebuffs, however, did not put an end to the gossip, and slander went on increasing about the unlucky Fairoaks family. Glanders (H.P.), a retired cavalry officer, whose half-pay and large family compelled him to fuddle himself with brandy-and-water instead of claret, after he quitted the dragoons, had the occasional entrée at Fairoaks, and kept his friend the major there informed of all the stories which were current at Clavering. Mrs. Pybus had taken an inside place by the coach to Chatteries, and gone to the George on purpose to get the particulars. Mrs. Speers's man had treated Mr. Foker's servant to drink at Baymouth for a similar purpose. It was said that Pen had hanged himself for despair in the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on the contrary, it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young Arthur; and that the affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a large sum of money, the exact amount of which there were several people in Clavering could testify—the sum of course varying according to the calculation of the individual narrator of the story.
Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals, affecting Miss Costigan's honor and his own, came to his ears. Why was not Pybus a man (she had whiskers enough), that he might call her out and shoot her? Seeing Simcoe pass by, Pen glared at him so from his saddle on Rebecca, and clutched his whip in a manner so menacing, that that clergyman went home and wrote a sermon, or thought over a sermon (for he delivered oral testimony at great length), in which he spoke of Jezebel, theatrical entertainments (a double cut this—for Doctor Portman, the rector of the old church, was known to frequent such), and of youth going to perdition, in a manner which made it clear to every capacity that Pen was the individual meant, and on the road alluded to. What stories more were there not against young Pendennis, while he sate sulking, Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished Briseis?
After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword in Clavering. But this was not all; he was not the only one of the family about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother was the next to become a victim to their gossip.
"It is all settled," said Mrs. Pybus to Mrs. Speers, "the boy is to go to college, and then the widow is to console herself."
"He's been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear," continued Mrs. Speers.
"Enough to make poor Mr. Pendennis turn in his grave," said Mrs. Wapshot.
"She never liked him, that we know," says No. 1.
"Married him for his money. Every body knows that; was a penniless hanger-on of Lady Pontypool's," says No. 2.
"It's rather too open, though, to encourage a lover under pretense of having a tutor for your son," cried No. 3.