XLIII. Alsatia
Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of the Inns of Court, Shepherd’s Inn is always to be found in the close neighbourhood of Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and the Temple. Some where behind the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street, Holywell Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the outer world; and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous smoky alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers, brandy-ball and hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for youth, dealers in dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark casements with their wares. The doors are many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless groups about the steps: or around the shell-fish dealers’ trays in these courts; whereof the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are drabbled with a never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here, in deadly guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig administration, against the bishops and dignified clergy, against the German relatives of an august royal family: Punch sets up his theatre, sure of an audience, and occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming occupants of the houses: women scream after their children for loitering in the gutter, or, worse still, against the husband who comes reeling from the gin-shop;—there is a ceaseless din and life in these courts out of which you pass into the tranquil, old-fashioned quadrangle of Shepherd’s Inn. In a mangy little grass-plat in the centre rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by iron railings from the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which the founder’s arms are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall and ancient chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the central archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and so into the great London thoroughfare.
The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of Genius and Capital Company, another;—the only gentleman whose name figures here, and in the “Law List,” is Mr. Campion, who wears mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and whose West End offices are in Curzon Street, Mayfair, where Mrs. Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends money. There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion; here he is Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin, sprouts from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers: The horse flings froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the shining bit. The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering white,—the lustre of that equipage makes a sunshine in that shady place.
Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion’s cab and horse many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet slippers and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He suns himself there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and goes and pays a visit to the porter’s lodge, where he pats the heads of the children, and talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me daughther Leedy Mirabel. Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession once, and danced at the Wells in early days as the thirteenth of Mr. Serle’s forty pupils.
Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were Mr. Podmore’s, and whose name is still on the door—(somebody else’s name, by the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd’s Inn). When Charley Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the Back Kitchen Concert Rooms) married, and went to live at Lambeth, he ceded his chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them in common now, and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows’s piano of fine days when the windows are open, and when he is practising for amusement, or for the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he has one or two. Fanny Bolton is one, the porteress’s daughter, who has heard tell of her mother’s theatrical glories, which she longs to emulate. She has a good voice and a pretty face and figure for the stage; and she prepares the rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts for Messrs. Costigan and Bows, in return for which the latter instructs her in music and singing. But for his unfortunate propensity to liquor (and in that excess she supposes that all men of fashion indulge), she thinks the Captain the finest gentleman in the world, and believes in all the versions of all his stories, and she is very fond of Mr. Bows too, and very grateful to him, and this shy queer old gentleman has a fatherly fondness for her too, for in truth his heart is full of kindness, and he is never easy unless he loves somebody.
Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his humble door in Shepherd’s Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for his evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of calling at his chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to visit the “old man, the honest old half-pay Captain, poor old Jack Costigan,” as Cos calls himself.
The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband’s card (which has been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece of the sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person, disposed to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir Charles she settled a little pension upon her father, who occasionally was admitted to the table of his daughter and son-in-law. At first poor Cos’s behaviour “in the hoight of poloit societee,” as he denominated Lady Mirabel’s drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was absurd. As he clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected the longest and richest words in his vocabulary to deck his conversation, and adopted a solemnity of demeanour which struck with astonishment all those persons in whose company he happened to be.—“Was your Leedyship in the Pork to dee?” he would demand of his daughter. “I looked for your equipage in veen:—the poor old man was not gratified by the soight of his daughther’s choriot. Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee; many’s the Levee at the Castle at Dublin that poor old Jack Costigan has attended in his time. Did the Juke look pretty well? Bedad, I’ll call at Apsley House and lave me cyard upon ’um. I thank ye, James, a little dthrop more champeane.” Indeed, he was magnificent in his courtesy to all, and addressed his observations not only to the master and the guests, but to the domestics who waited at the table, and who had some difficulty in maintaining their professional gravity while they waited on Captain Costigan.
On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan maintained a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time when he got to the Back Kitchen, where he bragged about his son-in-law’s dart and burgundee, until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth tumbler of whisky-punch. But with familiarity his caution vanished, and poor Cos lamentably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel’s table, by premature inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable door was shut upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at the Kitchen of his resemblance to King Lear in the plee—of his having a thankless choild, bedad—of his being a pore worn-out lonely old man, dthriven to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows in punch.
It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but it must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was exhausted and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from his daughter, and made statements to her not altogether consistent with strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he wrote, “unless the—to you insignificant—sum of three pound five can be forthcoming to liberate a poor man’s grey hairs from gaol.” And the good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money necessary for her father’s liberation, with a caution to him to be more economical for the future. On a second occasion the Captain met with a frightful accident, and broke a plate-glass window in the Strand, for which the proprietor of the shop held him liable. The money was forthcoming on this time too, to repair her papa’s disaster, and was carried down by Lady Mirabel’s servant to the slipshod messenger and aide-de-camp of the Captain, who brought the letter announcing his mishap. If the servant had followed the Captain’s aide-de-camp who carried the remittance, he would have seen that gentleman, a person of Costigan’s country too (for have we not said, that however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?), call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius Head, Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, where the Captain was indeed in pawn, and for several glasses containing rum-and-water, or other spirituous refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and wanted money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call in; and this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father’s safety, and perhaps reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight of her father, called for her carriage and drove to Shepherd’s Inn, at the gate of which she alighted, whence she found the way to her father’s chambers, “No. 4, third floor, name of Podmore over the door,” the porteress said, with many curtsies, pointing towards the door of the house, into which the affectionate daughter entered and mounted the dingy stair. Alas! the door, surmounted by the name of Podmore, was opened to her by poor Cos in his shirt-sleeves, and prepared with the gridiron to receive the mutton-chops which Mrs. Bolton had gone to purchase.
Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters constantly addressed to him at Brookes’s, with the information that Captain Costigan was in the hall, waiting for an answer; or when he went to play his rubber at the Travellers’, to be obliged to shoot out of his brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law should seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or played his whist, the Captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall Mall, with that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go abroad,—he must go and live in the country—he should die or have another fit if he saw that man again—he knew he should. And it was only by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to him, that if he plagued Sir Charles by letters or addressed him in the street, or made any further applications for loans, his allowance would be withdrawn altogether, that Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep her papa in order, and to restore tranquillity to her husband. And on occasion of this visit, she sternly rebuked Bows for not keeping a better watch over the Captain; desired that he should not be allowed to drink in that shameful way; and that the people at the horrid taverns which he frequented should be told, upon no account to give him credit. “Papa’s conduct is bringing me to the grave,” she said (though she looked perfectly healthy), “and you, as an old man, Mr. Bows, and one that pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be ashamed of abetting him in it.” Those were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship and his life’s devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to grumble.
On the second floor of the next house to Bows’s, in Shepherd’s Inn, at No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours: Colonel Altamont, agent to the Nawaub of Lucknow, and Captain Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is over their door. The Captain does not choose to let all the world know where he lives and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn Street hotel; and as for the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James’s or Leadenhall Street but is here on a confidential mission quite independent of the East India Company or the Board of Control. “In fact,” Strong says, “Colonel Altamont’s object being financial, and to effectuate a sale of some of the principal diamonds and rubies of the Lucknow crown, his wish is not to report himself at the India House or in Cannon Row, but rather to negotiate with private capitalists—with whom he has had important transactions both in this country and on the Continent.”
We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong’s had been very comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in London, and the Chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who visited him, that few retired Captains were more snugly quartered than he, in his crib in Shepherd’s Inn. There were three rooms below: the office where Strong transacted his business—whatever that might be—and where still remained the desk and railings of the departed officials who had preceded him, and the Chevalier’s own bedroom and sitting-room; and a private stair led out of the office to two upper apartments, the one occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other serving as the kitchen of the establishment, and the bedroom of Mr. Grady, the attendant. These rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette-box which bloomed in Bows’s window.
From Grady’s kitchen casement often came odours still more fragrant. The three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 3 were all skilled in the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the Colonel was famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong he could cook anything. He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews, fricassees, and omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in England more hospitable than he when his purse was full or his credit was good. At those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said, a good dinner, a good glass of wine, and a good song afterwards; and poor Cos often heard with envy the roar of Strong’s choruses, and the musical clinking of the glasses, as he sate in his own room, so far removed and yet so near to those festivities. It was not expedient to invite Mr. Costigan always: his practice of inebriation was lamentable; and he bored Strong’s guests with his stories when sober, and with his maudlin tears when drunk.
A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the Chevalier; and though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company, Arthur and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it as amusing as the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses which he had the honour to frequent. There was a history about every man of the set: they seemed all to have had their tides of luck and bad fortune. Most of them had wonderful schemes and speculations in their pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary fortunes. Jack Holt had been in Don Carlos’s army, when Ned Strong had fought on the other side; and was now organising a little scheme for smuggling tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any man who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer of the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who had been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been sunk in the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds in bars and doubloons. “Give me eighteen hundred pounds,” Tom said, “and I’m off tomorrow. I take out four men, and a diving-bell with me; and I return in ten months to take my seat in Parliament, by Jove! and to buy back my family estate.” Keightley, the manager of the Tredyddlum and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet under water), besides singing as good a second as any professional man, and besides the Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a little quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with the world yet. Filby had been everything: a corporal of dragoons, a field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an actor at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father’s attorney found him when the old gentleman died and left him that famous property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody exactly knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., who liked their society, though he did not much add to its amusements by his convivial powers. But he was made much of by the company now, on account of his wealth and position in the world. He told his little story and sang his little song or two with great affability; and he had had his own history, too, before his accession to good fortune; and had seen the inside of more prisons than one, and written his name on many a stamped paper.
When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state, considering the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest man was entrusted), Strong was sent to his patron by the Baronet; paid his little bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for a night or two at the chambers, where he subsequently took up his residence. To negotiate with this man was very well, but to have such a person settled in his rooms, and to be constantly burthened with such society, did not suit the Chevalier’s taste much; and he grumbled not a little to his principal.
“I wish you would put this bear into somebody else’s cage,” he said to Clavering. “The fellow’s no gentleman. I don’t like walking with him. He dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the play the other night; and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was doing the part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the people in the boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the ‘Brigand,’ where Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he died, Altamont began to cry like a child, and said it was a d——d shame, and cried and swore so, that there was another row, and everybody laughing. Then I had to take him away, because he wanted to take his coat off to one fellow who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to stand up like a man.—Who is he? Where the deuce does he come from? You had best tell me the whole story. Frank; you must one day. You and he have robbed a church together, that’s my belief. You had better get it off your mind at once, Clavering, and tell me what this Altamont is, and what hold he has over you.”
“Hang him! I wish he was dead!” was the Baronet’s only reply; and his countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did not think fit to question his patron any further at that time; but resolved, if need were, to try and discover for himself what was the secret tie between Altamont and Clavering.
XLIV. In which the Colonel narrates some of his Adventures
Early in the forenoon of the day after the dinner in Grosvenor Place, at which Colonel Altamont had chosen to appear, the Colonel emerged from his chamber in the upper story at Shepherd’s Inn, and entered into Strong’s sitting-room, where the Chevalier sate in his easy-chair with the newspaper and his cigar. He was a man who made his tent comfortable wherever he pitched it, and long before Altamont’s arrival, had done justice to a copious breakfast of fried eggs and broiled rashers, which Mr. Grady had prepared secundum artem. Good-humoured and talkative, he preferred any company rather than none; and though he had not the least liking for his fellow-lodger, and would not have grieved to hear that the accident had befallen him which Sir Francis Clavering desired so fervently, yet kept on fair terms with him. He had seen Altamont to bed with great friendliness on the night previous, and taken away his candle for fear of accidents; and finding a spirit-bottle empty, upon which he had counted for his nocturnal refreshment, had drunk a glass of water with perfect contentment over his pipe, before he turned into his own crib and to sleep. That enjoyment never failed him: he had always an easy temper, a faultless digestion, and a rosy cheek; and whether he was going into action the next morning or to prison (and both had been his lot), in the camp or the Fleet, the worthy Captain snored healthfully through the night, and woke with a good heart and appetite, for the struggles or difficulties or pleasures of the day.
The first act of Colonel Altamont was to bellow to Grady for a pint of pale ale, the which he first poured into a pewter flagon, whence he transferred it to his own lips. He put down the tankard empty, drew a great breath, wiped his mouth in his dressing-gown (the difference of the colour of his beard from his dyed whiskers had long struck Captain Strong, who had seen too that his hair was fair under his black wig, but made no remarks upon these circumstances)—the Colonel drew a great breath, and professed himself immensely refreshed by his draught. “Nothing like that beer,” he remarked, “when the coppers are hot. Many a day I’ve drunk a dozen of Bass at Calcutta, and—and——”
“And at Lucknow, I suppose,” Strong said with a laugh. “I got the beer for you on purpose: knew you’d want it after last night.” And the Colonel began to talk about his adventures of the preceding evening.
“I cannot help myself,” the Colonel said, beating his head with his big hand. “I’m a madman when I get the liquor on board me; and ain’t fit to be trusted with a spirit-bottle. When I once begin I can’t stop till I’ve emptied it; and when I’ve swallowed it, Lord knows what I say or what I don’t say. I dined at home here quite quiet. Grady gave me just my two tumblers, and I intended to pass the evening at the Black and Red as sober as a parson. Why did you leave that confounded sample-bottle of Hollands out of the cupboard, Strong? Grady must go out too, and leave me the kettle a-boiling for tea. It was of no use, I couldn’t keep away from it. Washed it all down, sir, by Jove. And it’s my belief I had some more, too, afterwards at that infernal little thieves’ den.”
“What, were you there too?” Strong asked, “and before you came to Grosvenor Place? That was beginning betimes.”
“Early hours to be drunk and cleared out before nine o’clock, eh? But so it was. Yes, like a great big fool, I must go there; and found the fellows dining, Blackland and young Moss, and two or three more of the thieves. If we’d gone to Rouge et Noir, I must have won. But we didn’t try the black and red. No, hang ’em, they know’d I’d have beat ’em at that—I must have beat ’em—I can’t help beating ’em, I tell you. But they was too cunnin for me. That rascal Blackland got the bones out, and we played hazard on the dining-table. And I dropped all the money I had from you in the morning, be hanged to my luck. It was that that set me wild, and I suppose I must have been very hot about the head, for I went off thinking to get some more money from Clavering, I recollect; and then—and then I don’t much remember what happened till I woke this morning, and heard old Bows at No. 4 playing on his pianner.”
Strong mused for a while as he lighted his cigar with a coal, “I should like to know how you always draw money from Clavering, Colonel,” he said.
The Colonel burst out with a laugh—“Ha, ha! he owes it me,” he said.
“I don’t know that that’s a reason with Frank for paying,” Strong answered. “He owes plenty besides you.”
“Well, he gives it me because he is so fond of me,” the other said with the same grinning sneer. “He loves me like a brother; you know he does, Captain.—No?—He don’t?—Well, perhaps he don’t; and if you ask me no questions, perhaps I’ll tell you no lies, Captain Strong—put that in your pipe and smoke it, my boy.”
“But I’ll give up that confounded brandy-bottle,” the Colonel continued, after a pause. “I must give it up, or it’ll be the ruin of me.”
“It makes you say queer things,” said the Captain, looking Altamont hard in the face. “Remember what you said last night, at Clavering’s table.”
“Say? What did I say?” asked the other hastily. “Did I split anything? Dammy, Strong, did I split anything?”
“Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies,” the Chevalier replied on his part. Strong thought of the words Mr. Altamont had used, and his abrupt departure from the Baronet’s dining-table and house as soon as he recognised Major Pendennis, or Captain Beak, as he called the Major. But Strong resolved to seek an explanation of these words otherwise than from Colonel Altamont, and did not choose to recall them to the other’s memory. “No,” he said then, “you didn’t split as you call it, Colonel; it was only a trap of mine to see if I could make you speak; but you didn’t say a word that anybody could comprehend—you were too far gone for that.”
So much the better, Altamont thought; and heaved a great sigh, as if relieved. Strong remarked the emotion, but took no notice, and the other being in a communicative mood, went on speaking.
“Yes, I own to my faults,” continued the Colonel. “There is some things I can’t, do what I will, resist: a bottle of brandy, a box of dice, and a beautiful woman. No man of pluck and spirit, no man as was worth his salt ever could, as I know of. There’s hardly p’raps a country in the world in which them three ain’t got me into trouble.”
“Indeed?” said Strong.
“Yes, from the age of fifteen, when I ran away from home, and went cabin-boy on board an Indiaman, till now, when I’m fifty year old, pretty nigh, them women have always been my ruin. Why, it was one of ’em, and with such black eyes and jewels on her neck, and Battens and ermine like a duchess, I tell you—it was one of ’em at Paris that swept off the best part of the thousand pound as I went off with. Didn’t I ever tell you of it? Well, I don’t mind. At first I was very cautious and having such a lot of money kept it close and lived like a gentleman—Colonel Altamont, Meurice’s hotel, and that sort of thing—never played, except at the public tables, and won more than I lost. Well, sir, there was a chap that I saw at the hotel and the Palace Royal too, a regular swell fellow, with white kid gloves and a tuft to his chin, Bloundell-Bloundell his name was, as I made acquaintance with somehow, and he asked me to dinner, and took me to Madame the Countess de Foljambe’s soirees—such a woman, Strong!—such an eye! such a hand at the pianner. Lor bless you, she’d sit down and sing to you, and gaze at you, until she warbled your soul out of your body a’most. She asked me to go to her evening parties every Toosday; and didn’t I take opera-boxes and give her dinners at the restauranteur’s, that’s all? But I had a run of luck at the tables, and it was not in the dinners and opera-boxes that poor Clavering’s money went. No, be hanged to it, it was swept off in another way. One night, at the Countess’s, there was several of us at supper—Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell, the Honourable Deuceace, the Marky de la Tour de Force—all tip-top nobs, sir, and the height of fashion, when we had supper, and champagne you may be sure in plenty, and then some of that confounded brandy. I would have it—I would go on at it—the Countess mixed the tumblers of punch for me, and we had cards as well as grog after supper, and I played and drank until I don’t know what I did. I was like I was last night. I was taken away and put to bed somehow, and never woke until the next day, to a roaring headache, and to see my servant, who said the Honourable Deuceace wanted to see me, and was waiting in the sitting-room. ‘How are you, Colonel?’ says he, a coming into my bedroom. ‘How long did you stay last night after I went away? The play was getting too high for me, and I’d lost enough to you for one night.’”
“‘To me,’ says I, ‘how’s that, my dear feller? (for though he was an Earl’s son, we was as familiar as you and me). How’s that, my dear feller?’ says I, and he tells me, that he had borrowed thirty louis of me at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an I.O.U. for it the night before, which I put into my pocket-book before he left the room. I takes out my card-case—it was the Countess as worked it for me—and there was the I.O.U. sure enough, and he paid me thirty louis in gold down upon the table at my bedside. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him if he would like to take anything, when my servant should get it for him; but the Honourable Deuceace don’t drink of a morning, and he went away to some business which he said he had.
“Presently there’s another ring at my outer door; and this time it’s Bloundell-Bloundell and the Marky that comes in. ‘Bong jour, Marky,’ says I. ‘Good morning—no headache?’ says he. So I said I had one; and how I must have been uncommon queer the night afore; but they both declared I didn’t show no signs of having had too much, but took my liquor as grave as a judge.
“‘So,’ says the Marky, ‘Deuceace has been with you; we met him in the Palais Royal as we were coming from breakfast. Has he settled with you? Get it while you can: he’s a slippery card; and as he won three ponies of Bloundell, I recommend you to get your money while he has some.’
“‘He has paid me,’ says I; ‘but I knew no more than the dead that he owed me anything, and don’t remember a bit about lending him thirty louis.’
“The Marky and Bloundell looks and smiles at each other at this; and Bloundell says, ‘Colonel, you are a queer feller. No man could have supposed, from your manners, that you had tasted anything stronger than tea all night, and yet you forget things in the morning. Come, come,—tell that to the marines, my friend,—we won’t have it at any price.’
“‘En efet,’ says the Marky, twiddling his little black mustachios in the chimney-glass, and making a lunge or two as he used to do at the fencing-school. (He was a wonder at the fencing-school, and I’ve seen him knock down the image fourteen times running, at Lepage’s.) ‘Let us speak of affairs. Colonel, you understand that affairs of honour are best settled at once: perhaps it won’t be inconvenient to you to arrange our little matters of last night.’
“‘What little matters?’ says I. ‘Do you owe me any money, Marky?’
“‘Bah!’ says he; ‘do not let us have any more jesting. I have your note of hand for three hundred and forty louis. La voia!’ says he, taking out a paper from his pocket-book.
“‘And mine for two hundred and ten,’ says Bloundell-Bloundell, and he pulls out his bit of paper.
“I was in such a rage of wonder at this, that I sprang out of bed, and wrapped my dressing-gown round me. ‘Are you come here to make a fool of me?’ says I. ‘I don’t owe you two hundred, or two thousand, or two louis; and I won’t pay you a farthing. Do you suppose you can catch me with your notes of hand? I laugh at ’em and at you; and I believe you to be a couple——.’
“‘A couple of what?’ says Mr. Bloundell. ‘You, of course, are aware that we are a couple of men of honour, Colonel Altamont, and not come here to trifle or to listen to abuse from you. You will either pay us or we will expose you as a cheat, and chastise you as a cheat, too,’ says Bloundell.
“‘Oui, parbleu,’ says the Marky,—but I didn’t mind him, for I could have thrown the little fellow out of the window; but it was different with Bloundell,—he was a large man, that weighs three stone more than me, and stands six inches higher, and I think he could have done for me.
“‘Monsieur will pay, or Monsieur will give me the reason why. I believe you’re little better than a polisson, Colonel Altamont,’—that was the phrase he used—Altamont said with a grin—and I got plenty more of this language from the two fellows, and was in the thick of the row with them, when another of our party came in. This was a friend of mine—a gent I had met at Boulogne, and had taken to the Countess’s myself. And as he hadn’t played at all on the previous night, and had actually warned me against Bloundell and the others, I told the story to him, and so did the other two.
“‘I am very sorry,’ says he. ‘You would go on playing: the Countess entreated you to discontinue. These gentlemen offered repeatedly to stop. It was you that insisted on the large stakes, not they.’ In fact he charged dead against me: and when the two others went away, he told me how the Marky would shoot me as sure as my name was—was what it is. ‘I left the Countess crying, too,’ said he. ‘She hates these two men; she has warned you repeatedly against them’ (which she actually had done, and often told me never to play with them), ‘and now, Colonel, I have left her in hysterics almost, lest there should be any quarrel between you, and that confounded Marky should put a bullet through your head. It’s my belief,’ says my friend, ‘that that woman is distractedly in love with you.’
“‘Do you think so?’ says I; upon which my friend told me how she had actually gone down on her knees to him and ‘Save Colonel Altamont!’
“As soon as I was dressed, I went and called upon that lovely woman. She gave a shriek and pretty near fainted when she saw me. She called me Ferdinand,—I’m blest if she didn’t.”
“I thought your name was Jack,” said Strong, with a laugh; at which the Colonel blushed very much behind his dyed whiskers.
“A man may have more names than one, mayn’t he, Strong?” Altamont asked. “When I’m with a lady, I like to take a good one. She called me by my Christian name. She cried fit to break your heart. I can’t stand seeing a woman cry—never could—not whilst I’m fond of her. She said she could bear not to think of my losing so much money in her house. Wouldn’t I take her diamonds and necklaces, and pay part?
“I swore I wouldn’t touch a farthing’s worth of her jewellery, which perhaps I did not think was worth a great deal,—but what can a woman do more than give you her all? That’s the sort I like, and I know there’s plenty of ’em. And I told her to be easy about the money, for I would not pay one single farthing.
“‘Then they’ll shoot you,’ says she; ‘they’ll kill my Ferdinand.’”
“They’ll kill my Jack wouldn’t have sounded well in French,” Strong said, laughing.
“Never mind about names,” said the other, sulkily; “a man of honour may take any name he chooses, I suppose.”
“Well, go on with your story,” said Strong. “She said they would kill you.”
“‘No,’ says I, ‘they won’t: for I will not let that scamp of a Marquis send me out of the world; and if he lays a hand on me, I’ll brain him, Marquis as he is.’
“At this the Countess shrank back from me as if I had said something very shocking. ‘Do I understand Colonel Altamont aright?’ says she: ‘and that a British officer refuses to meet any person who provokes him to the field of honour?’
“‘Field of honour be hanged, Countess,’ says I. ‘You would not have me be a target for that little scoundrel’s pistol practice.’
“‘Colonel Altamont,’ says the Countess, ‘I thought you were a man of honour—I thought, I—but no matter. Good-bye, sir.’—And she was sweeping out of the room, her voice regular choking in her pocket-handkerchief.
“‘Countess!’ says I, rushing after her and seizing her hand.
“‘Leave me, Monsieur le Colonel,’ says she, shaking me off, ‘my father was a General of the Grand Army. A soldier should know how to pay all his debts of honour.’
“What could I do? Everybody was against me. Caroline said I had lost the money: though I didn’t remember a syllable about the business. I had taken Deuceace’s money too; but then it was because he offered it to me you know, and that’s a different thing. Every one of these chaps was a man of fashion and honour; and the Marky and the Countess of the first families in France. And, by Jove, sir, rather than offend her, I paid the money up five hundred and sixty gold Napoleons, by Jove: besides three hundred which I lost when I had my revenge.
“And I can’t tell you at this minute whether I was done or not,” concluded the Colonel, musing. “Sometimes I think I was: but then Caroline was so fond of me. That woman would never have seen me done: never, I’m sure she wouldn’t: at least, if she would, I’m deceived in woman.”
Any further revelations of his past life which Altamont might have been disposed to confide to his honest comrade the Chevalier, were interrupted by a knocking at the outer door of their chambers; which, when opened by Grady the servant, admitted no less a person than Sir Francis Clavering into the presence of the two worthies.
“The Governor, by Jove,” cried Strong, regarding the arrival of his patron with surprise. “What’s brought you here?” growled Altamont, looking sternly from under his heavy eyebrows at the Baronet. “It’s no good, I warrant.” And indeed, good very seldom brought Sir Francis Clavering into that or any other place.
Whenever he came into Shepherd’s Inn it was money that brought the unlucky baronet into those precincts; and there was commonly a gentleman of the money-dealing world in waiting for him at Strong’s chambers, or at Campion’s below; and a question of bills to negotiate or to renew. Clavering was a man who had never looked his debts fairly in the face, familiar as he had been with them all his life; as long as he could renew a bill, his mind was easy regarding it; and he would sign almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of fortune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter sharpers: to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly because he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have sufficed to make a fortune for a braver rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height of his prosperity. Had he been a Crown Prince—he could not have been more weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful. He could not move through life except leaning on the arm of somebody: and yet he never had an agent but he mistrusted him; and marred any plans which might be arranged for his benefit, and secretly acting against the people whom he employed. Strong knew Clavering and judged him quite correctly. It was not as friends that this pair met: but the Chevalier worked for his principal, as he would when in the army have pursued a harassing march, or undergone his part in the danger and privations of a siege; because it was his duty, and because he had agreed to it. “What is it he wants?” thought the officers of the Shepherd’s Inn garrison when the Baronet came among them.
His pale face expressed extreme anger and irritation. “So sir,” he said, addressing Altamont, “you’ve been at your old tricks.”
“Which of ’um?” asked Altamont, with a sneer.
“You have been at the Rouge et Noir: you were there last night,” cried the Baronet.
“How do you know,—were you there?” the other said. “I was at the Club but it wasn’t on the colours I played,—ask the Captain,—I’ve been telling him of it. It was with the bones. It was at hazard, Sir Francis, upon my word and honour it was;” and he looked at the Baronet with a knowing humorous mock humility, which only seemed to make the other more angry.
“What the deuce do I care, sir, how a man like you loses his money, and whether it is at hazard or roulette?” screamed the Baronet, with a multiplicity of oaths, and at the top of his voice. “What I will not have, sir, is that you should use my name, or couple it with yours.—Damn him, Strong, why don’t you keep him in better order? I tell you he has gone and used my name again, sir,—drawn a bill upon me, and lost the money on the table—I can’t stand it—I won’t stand it. Flesh and blood won’t bear it—Do you know how much I have paid for you, sir?”
“This was only a very little ’un, Sir Francis—only fifteen pound, Captain Strong, they wouldn’t stand another: and it oughtn’t to anger you, Governor. Why, it’s so trifling I did not even mention it to Strong,—did I now, Captain? I protest it had quite slipped my memory, and all on account of that confounded liquor I took.”
“Liquor or no liquor, sir, it is no business of mine. I don’t care what you drink, or where you drink it—only it shan’t be in my house. And I will not have you breaking into my house of a night, and a fellow like you intruding himself on my company: how dared you show yourself in Grosvenor Place last night, sir,—and—and what do you suppose my friends must think of me when they see a man of your sort walking into my dining-room uninvited, and drunk, and calling for liquor as if you were the master of the house?”
“They’ll think you know some very queer sort of people, I dare say,” Altamont said with impenetrable good-humour. “Look here, Baronet, I apologise; on my honour I do, and ain’t an apology enough between two gentlemen? It was a strong measure I own, walking into your cuddy, and calling for drink as if I was the Captain: but I had had too much before, you see, that’s why I wanted some more; nothing can be more simple—and it was because they wouldn’t give me no more money upon your name at the Black and Red, that I thought I would come down and speak to you about it. To refuse me was nothing: but to refuse a bill drawn on you that have been such a friend to the shop, and are a baronet and a member of parliament, and a gentleman and no mistake—Damme, its ungrateful.”
“By heavens, if ever you do it again—if ever you dare to show yourself in my house; or give my name at a gambling-house or at any other house, by Jove—at any other house—or give any reference at all to me, or speak to me in the street, by God, or anywhere else until I speak to you—I disclaim you altogether—I won’t give you another shilling.”
“Governor, don’t be provoking,” Altamont said surlily. “Don’t talk to me about daring to do this thing or t’other, or when my dander is up it’s the very thing to urge me on. I oughtn’t to have come last night, I know I oughtn’t: but I told you I was drunk, and that ought to be sufficient between gentleman and gentleman.”
“You a gentleman! dammy, sir,” said the Baronet, “how dares a fellow like you to call himself a gentleman?”
“I ain’t a baronet, I know,” growled the other; “and I’ve forgotten how to be a gentleman almost now, but—but I was one, once, and my father was one, and I’ll not have this sort of talk from you, Sir F. Clavering, that’s flat. I want to go abroad again. Why don’t you come down with the money, and let me go? Why the devil are you to be rolling in riches, and me to have none? Why should you have a house and a table covered with plate, and me be in a garret here in this beggarly Shepherd’s Inn? We’re partners, ain’t we? I’d as good a right to be rich as you have, haven’t I? Tell the story to Strong here, if you like; and ask him to be umpire between us. I don’t mind letting my secret out to a man that won’t split. Look here, Strong—perhaps you guess the story already—the fact is, me and the Governor——”
“D——, hold your tongue,” shrieked out the Baronet in a fury. “You shall have the money as soon as I can get it. I ain’t made of money. I’m so pressed and badgered, I don’t know where to turn. I shall go mad; by Jove, I shall. I wish I was dead, for I’m the most miserable brute alive. I say, Mr. Altamont, don’t mind me. When I’m out of health—and I’m devilish bilious this morning—hang me, I abuse everybody, and don’t know what I say. Excuse me if I’ve offended you. I—I’ll try and get that little business done. Strong shall try. Upon my word he shall. And I say, Strong, my boy, I want to speak to you. Come into the office for a minute.”
Almost all Clavering’s assaults ended in this ignominious way, and in a shameful retreat. Altamont sneered after the Baronet as he left the room, and entered into the office, to talk privately with his factotum.
“What is the matter now?” the latter asked of him. “It’s the old story, I suppose.”
“D—— it, yes,” the Baronet said. “I dropped two hundred in ready money at the Little Coventry last night, and gave a cheque for three hundred more. On her ladyship’s bankers, too, for to-morrow; and I must meet it, for there’ll be the deuce to pay else. The last time she paid my play-debts, I swore I would not touch a dice-box again, and she’ll keep her word, Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on. I wish I had three hundred a year, and was away. At a German watering-place you can do devilish well with three hundred a year. But my habits are so d——-reckless: I wish I was in the Serpentine. I wish I was dead, by Gad I wish I was. I wish I had never touched those confounded bones. I had such a run of luck last night, with five for the main, and seven to five all night, until those ruffians wanted to pay me with Altamont’s bill upon me. The luck turned from that minute. Never held the box again for three mains, and came away cleared out, leaving that infernal cheque behind me. How shall I pay it? Blackland won’t hold it over. Hulker and Bullock will write about it directly to her ladyship. By Jove, Ned, I’m the most miserable brute in all England.”
It was necessary for Ned to devise some plan to console the Baronet under this pressure of grief; and no doubt he found the means of procuring a loan for his patron, for he was closeted at Mr. Campion’s offices that day for some time. Altamont had once more a guinea or two in his pocket, with a promise of a further settlement; and the Baronet had no need to wish himself dead for the next two or three months at least. And Strong, putting together what he had learned from the Colonel and Sir Francis, began to form in his own mind a pretty accurate opinion as to the nature of the tie which bound the two men together.
XLV. A Chapter of Conversations
Every day, after the entertainment at Grosvenor Place and Greenwich, of which we have seen Major Pendennis partake, the worthy gentleman’s friendship and cordiality for the Clavering family seemed to increase. His calls were frequent; his attentions to the lady of the house unremitting. An old man about town, he had the good fortune to be received in many houses, at which a lady of Lady Clavering’s distinction ought to be seen. Would her ladyship not like to be present at the grand entertainment at Gaunt House? There was to be a very pretty breakfast ball at Viscount Marrowfat’s, at Fulham. Everybody was to be there (including august personages of the highest rank), and there was to be a Watteau quadrille, in which Miss Amory would surely look charming. To these and other amusements the obsequious old gentleman kindly offered to conduct Lady Clavering, and was also ready to make himself useful to the Baronet in any way agreeable to the latter.
In spite of his present station and fortune, the world persisted in looking rather coldly upon Clavering, and strange suspicious rumours followed him about. He was blackballed at two clubs in succession. In the House of Commons, he only conversed with a few of the most disreputable members of that famous body, having a happy knack of choosing bad society, and adapting himself naturally to it, as other people do to the company of their betters. To name all the senators with whom Clavering consorted, would be invidious. We may mention only a few. There was Captain Raff, the honourable member for Epsom, who retired after the last Goodwood races, having accepted, as Mr. Hotspur, the whip of the party, said, a mission to the Levant; there was Hustingson, the patriotic member for Islington, whose voice is never heard now denunciating corruption, since his appointment to the Governorship of Coventry Island; there was Bob Freeny, of the Booterstown Freenys, who is a dead shot, and of whom we therefore wish to speak with every respect; and of all these gentlemen, with whom in the course of his professional duty Mr. Hotspur had to confer, there was none for whom he had a more thorough contempt and dislike than for Sir Francis Clavering, the representative of an ancient race, who had sat for their own borough of Clavering time out of mind in the House. “If that man is wanted for a division,” Hotspur said, “ten to one he is to be found in a hell. He was educated in the Fleet, and he has not heard the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He’ll muddle away the Begum’s fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking pockets, and finish on board the hulks.” And if the high-born Hotspur, with such an opinion of Clavering, could yet from professional reasons be civil to him, why should not Major Pendennis also have reasons of his own for being attentive to this unlucky gentleman?
“He has a very good cellar and a very good cook,” the Major said; “as long as he is silent he is not offensive, and he very seldom speaks. If he chooses to frequent gambling-tables, and lose his money to blacklegs, what matters to me? Don’t look too curiously into any man’s affairs, Pen, my boy; every fellow has some cupboard in his house, begad, which he would not like you and me to peep into. Why should we try, when the rest of the house is open to us? And a devilish good house, too, as you and I know. And if the man of the family is not all one could wish, the women are excellent. The Begum is not over-refined, but as kind a woman as ever lived, and devilish clever too; and as for the little Blanche, you know my opinion about her, you rogue; you know my belief is that she is sweet on you, and would have you for the asking. But you are growing such a great man, that I suppose you won’t be content under a Duke’s daughter—Hey, sir? I recommend you to ask one of them, and try.”
Perhaps Pen was somewhat intoxicated by his success in the world; and it may also have entered into the young man’s mind (his uncle’s perpetual hints serving not a little to encourage the notion) that Miss Amory was tolerably well disposed to renew the little flirtation which had been carried on in the early days of both of them, by the banks of the rural Brawl. But he was little disposed to marriage, he said, at that moment, and, adopting some of his uncle’s worldly tone, spoke rather contemptuously of the institution, and in favour of a bachelor life.
“You are very happy, sir,” said he, “and you get on very well alone, and so do I. With a wife at my side, I should lose my place in society; and I don’t, for my part, much fancy retiring into the country with a Mrs. Pendennis; or taking my wife into lodgings to be waited upon by the servant-of-all-work. The period of my little illusions is over. You cured me of my first love who, certainly was a fool, and would have had a fool for her husband, and a very sulky discontented husband too if she had taken me. We young fellows live fast, sir; and I feel as old at five-and-twenty as many of the old fo—the old bachelors—whom I see in the bow-window at Bays’s. Don’t look offended, I only mean that I am blase about love matters, and that I could no more fan myself into a flame for Miss Amory now, than I could adore Lady Mirabel over again. I wish I could; I rather like old Mirabel for his infatuation about her, and think his passion is the most respectable part of his life.”
“Sir Charles Mirabel was always a theatrical man, sir,” the Major said, annoyed that his nephew should speak flippantly of any person of Sir Charles’s rank and station. “He has been occupied with theatricals since his early days. He acted at Carlton House when he was Page to the Prince; he has been mixed up with that sort of thing: he could afford to marry whom he chooses; and Lady Mirabel is a most respectable woman, received everywhere—everywhere, mind. The Duchess of Connaught receives her, Lady Rockminster receives her—it doesn’t become young fellows to speak lightly of people in that station. There’s not a more respectable woman in England than Lady Mirabel:—and the old fogies, as you call them, at Bays’s, are some of the first gentlemen in England, of whom you youngsters had best learn a little manners, and a little breeding, and a little modesty.” And the Major began to think that Pen was growing exceedingly pert and conceited, and that the world made a great deal too much of him.
The Major’s anger amused Pen. He studied his uncle’s peculiarities with a constant relish, and was always in a good humour with his worldly old Mentor. “I am a youngster of fifteen years’ standing, sir,” he said, adroitly, “and if you think that we are disrespectful, you should see those of the present generation. A protege of yours came to breakfast with me the other day. You told me to ask him, and I did it to please you. We had a day’s sights together, and dined at the club, and went to the play. He said the wine at the Polyanthus was not so good as Ellis’s wine at Richmond, smoked Warrington’s cavendish after breakfast, and when I gave him a sovereign as a farewell token, said he had plenty of them, but would take it to show he wasn’t proud.”
“Did he?—did you ask young Clavering?” cried the Major, appeased at once—“fine boy, rather wild, but a fine boy—parents like that sort of attention, and you can’t do better than pay it to our worthy friends of Grosvenor Place. And so you took him to the play and tipped him? That was right, sir, that was right:” with which Mentor quitted Telemachus, thinking that the young men were not so very bad, and that he should make something of that fellow yet.
As Master Clavering grew into years and stature, he became too strong for the authority of his fond parents and governess; and rather governed them than permitted himself to be led by their orders. With his papa he was silent and sulky, seldom making his appearance, however, in the neighbourhood of that gentleman; with his mamma he roared and fought when any contest between them arose as to the gratification of his appetite, or other wish of his heart; and in his disputes with his governess over his book, he kicked that quiet creature’s shins so fiercely, that she was entirely overmastered and subdued by him. And he would have so treated his sister Blanche, too, and did on one or two occasions attempt to prevail over her; but she showed an immense resolution and spirit on her part, and boxed his ears so soundly, that he forbore from molesting Miss Amory, as he did the governess and his mamma, and his mamma’s maid.
At length, when the family came to London, Sir Francis gave forth his opinion, that “the little beggar had best be sent to school.” Accordingly the young son and heir of the house of Clavering was despatched to the Rev. Otto Rose’s establishment at Twickenham, where young noblemen and gentlemen were received preparatory to their introduction to the great English public schools.
It is not our intention to follow Master Clavering in his scholastic career; the paths to the Temple of Learning were made more easy to him than they were to some of us of earlier generations. He advanced towards that fane in a carriage-and-four, so to speak, and might halt and take refreshment almost whenever he pleased. He wore varnished boots from the earliest period of youth, and had cambric handkerchiefs and lemon-coloured kid gloves, of the smallest size ever manufactured by Privat. They dressed regularly at Mr. Rose’s to come down to dinner; the young gentlemen had shawl dressing-gowns, fires in their bedrooms, horse and carriage exercise occasionally, and oil for their hair. Corporal punishment was altogether dispensed with by the Principal, who thought that moral discipline was entirely sufficient to lead youth; and the boys were so rapidly advanced in many branches of learning, that they acquired the art of drinking spirits and smoking cigars, even before they were old enough to enter a public school. Young Frank Clavering stole his father’s Havannahs, and conveyed them to school, or smoked them in the stables, at a surprisingly early period of life, and at ten years old drank his champagne almost as stoutly as any whiskered cornet of dragoons could do.
When this interesting youth came home for his vacations Major Pendennis was as laboriously civil and gracious to him as he was to the rest of the family; although the boy had rather a contempt for old Wigsby, as the Major was denominated, mimicked him behind his back, as the polite Major bowed and smirked with Lady Clavering or Miss Amory; and drew rude caricatures, such as are designed by ingenious youths, in which the Major’s wig, his nose, his tie, etc., were represented with artless exaggeration. Untiring in his efforts to be agreeable, the Major wished that Pen, too, should take particular notice of this child; incited Arthur to invite him to his chambers, to give him a dinner at the club, to take him to Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower, the play, and so forth, and to tip him, as the phrase is, at the end of the day’s pleasures. Arthur, who was good-natured and fond of children, went through all these ceremonies one day; had the boy to breakfast at the Temple, where he made the most contemptuous remarks regarding the furniture, the crockery, and the tattered state of Warrington’s dressing-gown; and smoked a short pipe, and recounted the history of a fight between Tuffy and Long Biggings, at Rose’s, greatly to the edification of the two gentlemen his hosts.
As the Major rightly predicted, Lady Clavering was very grateful for Arthur’s attention to the boy; more grateful than the lad himself, who took attentions as a matter of course, and very likely had more sovereigns in his pocket than poor Pen, who generously gave him one of his own slender stock of those coins.
The Major, with the sharp eyes with which Nature endowed him, and with the glasses of age and experience, watched this boy, and surveyed his position in the family without seeming to be rudely curious about their affairs. But, as a country neighbour, one who had many family obligations to the Claverings, an old man of the world, he took occasion to find out what Lady Clavering’s means were, how her capital was disposed, and what the boy was to inherit. And setting himself to work,—for what purposes will appear, no doubt, ulteriorly,—he soon had got a pretty accurate knowledge of Lady Clavering’s affairs and fortune, and of the prospects of her daughter and son. The daughter was to have but a slender provision; the bulk of the property was, as before has been said, to go to the son,—his father did not care for him or anybody else,—his mother was dotingly fond of him as the child of her latter days,—his sister disliked him. Such may be stated in round numbers, to be the result of the information which Major Pendennis got. “Ah! my dear madam,” he would say, patting the head of the boy, “this boy may wear a baron’s coronet on his head on some future coronation, if matters are but managed rightly, and if Sir Francis Clavering would but play his cards well.”
At this the widow Amory heaved a deep sigh. “He plays only too much of his cards, Major, I’m afraid,” she said. The Major owned that he knew as much; did not disguise that he had heard of Sir Francis Clavering’s unfortunate propensity to play; pitied Lady Clavering sincerely; but spoke with such genuine sentiment and sense, that her ladyship, glad to find a person of experience to whom she could confide her grief and her condition, talked about them pretty unreservedly to Major Pendennis, and was eager to have his advice and consolation. Major Pendennis became the Begum’s confidante and house-friend, and as a mother, a wife, and a capitalist, she consulted him.
He gave her to understand (showing at the same time a great deal of respectful sympathy) that he was acquainted with some of the circumstances of her first unfortunate marriage, and with even the person of her late husband, whom he remembered in Calcutta—when she was living in seclusion with her father. The poor lady, with tears of shame more than of grief in her eyes, told her version of her story. Going back a child to India after two years at a European school, she had met Amory, and foolishly married him. “Oh, you don’t know how miserable that man made me,” she said, “or what a life I passed betwixt him and my father. Before I saw him I had never seen a man except my father’s clerks and native servants. You know we didn’t go into society in India on account of——” (“I know,” said Major Pendennis, with a bow) “I was a wild romantic child, my head was full of novels which I’d read at school—I listened to his wild stories and adventures, for he was a daring fellow, and I thought he talked beautifully of those calm nights on the passage out, when he used to——. Well, I married him, and I was wretched from that day—wretched with my father, whose character you know, Major Pendennis, and I won’t speak of: but he wasn’t a good man, sir,—neither to my poor mother, nor to me, except that he left me his money,—nor to no one else that I ever heard of: and he didn’t do many kind actions in his lifetime, I’m afraid. And as for Amory, he was almost worse; he was a spendthrift when my father was close: he drank dreadfully, and was furious when in that way. He wasn’t in any way a good or a faithful husband to me, Major Pendennis, and if he’d died in the gaol before this trial, instead of afterwards he would have saved me a deal of shame and of unhappiness since, sir.” Lady Clavering added: “For perhaps I should not have married at all if I had not been so anxious to change his horrid name, and I have not been happy in my second husband, as I suppose you know, sir. Ah, Major Pendennis, I’ve got money to be sure, and I’m a lady, and people fancy I’m very happy, but I ain’t. We all have our cares, and griefs, and troubles: and many’s the day that I sit down to one of my grand dinners with an aching heart, and many a night do I lay awake on my fine bed a great deal more unhappy than the maid that makes for it. I’m not a happy woman, Major, for all the world says; and envies the Begum her diamonds, and carriages, and the great company that comes to my house. I’m not happy in my husband; I’m not in my daughter. She ain’t a good girl like that dear Laura Bell at Fairoaks. She’s cost me many a tear though you don’t see ’em; and she sneers at her mother because I haven’t had learning and that. How should I? I was brought up amongst natives till I was twelve, and went back to India when I was fourteen. Ah, Major, I should have been a good woman if I had had a good husband. And now I must go upstairs and wipe my eyes, for they’re red with cryin. And Lady Rockminster’s a comin, and we’re goin to ave a drive in the Park.” And when Lady Rockminster made her appearance, there was not a trace of tears or vexation on Lady Clavering’s face, but she was full of spirits, and bounced out with her blunders and talk, and murdered the king’s English with the utmost liveliness and good-humour.
“Begad, she is not such a bad woman!” the Major thought within himself. “She is not refined, certainly, and calls ‘Apollo’ ‘Apoller;’ but she has some heart, and I like that sort of thing, and a devilish deal of money, too. Three stars in India Stock to her name, begad! which that young cub is to have—is he?” And he thought how he should like to see a little of the money transferred to Miss Blanche, and, better still, one of those stars shining in the name of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
Still bent upon pursuing his schemes, whatsoever they might be, the old negotiator took the privilege of his intimacy and age, to talk in a kindly and fatherly manner to Miss Blanche, when he found occasion to see her alone. He came in so frequently at luncheon-time, and became so familiar with the ladies, that they did not even hesitate to quarrel before him; and Lady Clavering, whose tongue was loud, and temper brusque, had many a battle with the Sylphide in the family friend’s presence. Blanche’s wit seldom failed to have the mastery in these encounters, and the keen barbs of her arrows drove her adversary discomfited away. “I am an old fellow,” the Major said; “I have nothing to do in life. I have my eyes open. I keep good counsel. I am the friend of both of you; and if you choose to quarrel before me, why, I shan’t tell any one. But you are two good people, and I intend to make it up between you. I have between lots of people—husbands and wives, fathers and sons, daughters and mammas, before this. I like it; I’ve nothing else to do.”
One day, then, the old diplomatist entered Lady Clavering’s drawing-room, just as the latter quitted it, evidently in a high state of indignation, and ran past him up the stairs to her own apartments. “She couldn’t speak to him now,” she said; “she was a great deal too angry with that—that—that little, wicked”—anger choked the rest of the words, or prevented their utterance until Lady Clavering had passed out of hearing.
“My dear, good Miss Amory,” the Major said, entering the drawing-room, “I see what is happening. You and mamma have been disagreeing. Mothers and daughters disagree in the best families. It was but last week that I healed up a quarrel between Lady Clapperton and her daughter Lady Claudia. Lady Lear and her eldest daughter have not spoken for fourteen years. Kinder and more worthy people than these I never knew in the whole course of my life; for everybody but each other admirable. But they can’t live together: they oughtn’t to live together: and I wish, my dear creature, with all my soul, that I could see you with an establishment of your own—for there is no woman in London who could conduct one better—with your own establishment, making your own home happy.”
“I am not very happy in this one,” said the Sylphide; “and the stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint.”
“Precisely so; you are not suited to one another. Your mother committed one fault in early life—or was it Nature, my dear, in your case?—she ought not to have educated you. You ought not to have been bred up to become the refined and intellectual being you are, surrounded, as I own you are, by those who have not your genius or your refinement. Your place would be to lead in the most brilliant circles, not to follow, and take a second place in any society. I have watched you, Miss Amory: you are ambitious; and your proper sphere is command. You ought to shine; and you never can in this house, I know it. I hope I shall see you in another and a happier one, some day, and the mistress of it.”
The Sylphide shrugged her lily shoulders with a look of scorn. “Where is the Prince, and where is the palace, Major Pendennis?” she said. “I am ready. But there is no romance in the world now, no real affection.”
“No, indeed,” said the Major, with the most sentimental and simple air which he could muster.
“Not that I know anything about it,” said Blanche, casting her eyes down “except what I have read in novels.”
“Of course not,” Major Pendennis cried; “how should you, my dear young lady? and novels ain’t true, as you remark admirably, and there is no romance left in the world. Begad, I wish I was a young fellow like my nephew.”
“And what,” continued Miss Amory, musing, “what are the men whom we see about at the balls every night—dancing guardsmen, penniless treasury clerks—boobies! If I had my brother’s fortune, I might have such an establishment as you promise me—but with my name, and with my little means, what am I to look to! A country parson, or a barrister in a street near Russell Square, or a captain in a dragoon regiment, who will take lodgings for me, and come home from the mess tipsy and smelling of smoke like Sir Francis Clavering. That is how we girls are destined to end life. O Major Pendennis, I am sick of London, and of balls, and of young dandies with their chin-tips, and of the insolent great ladies who know us one day and cut us the next—and of the world altogether. I should like to leave it and to go into a convent, that I should. I shall never find anybody to understand me. And I live here as much alone in my family and in the world, as if I were in a cell locked up for ever. I wish there were Sisters of Charity here, and that I could be one and catch the plague, and die of it—I wish to quit the world. I am not very old: but I am tired, I have suffered so much—I’ve been so disillusionated—I’m weary, I’m weary—O that the Angel of Death would come and beckon me away!”
This speech may be interpreted as follows. A few nights since a great lady, Lady Flamingo, had cut Miss Amory and Lady Clavering. She was quite mad because she could not get an invitation to Lady Drum’s ball: it was the end of the season and nobody had proposed to her: she had made no sensation at all, she who was so much cleverer than any girl of the year, and of the young ladies forming her special circle. Dora who had but five thousand pounds, Flora who had nothing, and Leonora who had red hair, were going to be married, and nobody had come for Blanche Amory!
“You judge wisely about the world, and about your position, my dear Miss Blanche,” the Major said. “The Prince don’t marry nowadays, as you say: unless the Princess has a doosid deal of money in the funds, or is a lady of his own rank.—The young folks of the great families marry into the great families: if they haven’t fortune they have each other’s shoulders, to push on in the world, which is pretty nearly as good.—A girl with your fortune can scarcely hope for a great match: but a girl with your genius and your admirable tact and fine manners, with a clever husband by her side, may make any place for herself in the world.—We are grown doosid republican. Talent ranks with birth and wealth now, begad: and a clever man with a clever wife, may take any place they please.”
Miss Amory did not of course in the least understand what Major Pendennis meant.—Perhaps she thought over circumstances in her mind and asked herself, could he be a negotiator for a former suitor of hers, and could he mean Pen? No, it was impossible—He had been civil, but nothing more.—So she said laughing, “Who is the clever man, and when will you bring him to me, Major Pendennis? I am dying to see him.”
At this moment a servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Henry Foker: at which name, and at the appearance of our friend, both the lady and the gentleman burst out laughing.
“That is not the man,” Major Pendennis said. “He is engaged to his cousin, Lord Gravesend’s daughter.—Good-bye, my dear Miss Amory.”
Was Pen growing worldly, and should a man not get the experience of the world and lay it to his account? “He felt, for his part,” as he said, “that he was growing very old very soon.” “How this town forms and changes us,” he said once to Warrington. Each had come in from his night’s amusement; and Pen was smoking his pipe, and recounting, as his habit was, to his friend the observations and adventures of the evening just past. “How I am changed,” he said, “from the simpleton boy at Fairoaks, who was fit to break his heart about his first love! Lady Mirabel had a reception to-night, and was as grave and collected as if she had been born a Duchess, and had never seen a trap-door in her life. She gave me the honour of a conversation, and patronised me about ‘Walter Lorraine,’ quite kindly.”
“What condescension!” broke in Warrington.
“Wasn’t it?” Pen said, simply—at which the other burst out laughing according to his wont. “Is it possible,” he said, “that anybody should think of patronising the eminent author of ‘Walter Lorraine?’”
“You laugh at both of us,” Pen said, blushing a little—“I was coming to that myself. She told me that she had not read the book (as indeed I believe she never read a book in her life), but that Lady Rockminster had, and that the Duchess of Connaught pronounced it to be very clever. In that case, I said, I should die happy, for that to please those two ladies was in fact the great aim of my existence, and having their approbation, of course I need look for no other. Lady Mirabel looked at me solemnly out of her fine eyes, and said, ‘Oh, indeed,’ as if she understood me, and then she asked me whether I went to the Duchess’s Thursdays, and when I said No, hoped she should see me there, and that I must try and get there, everybody went there—everybody who was in society: and then we talked of the new ambassador from Timbuctoo, and how he was better than the old one; and how Lady Mary Billington was going to marry a clergyman quite below her in rank; and how Lord and Lady Ringdove had fallen out three months after their marriage about Tom Pouter of the Blues, Lady Ringdove’s cousin—and so forth. From the gravity of that woman you would have fancied she had been born in a palace, and lived all the seasons of her life in Belgrave Square.”
“And you, I suppose you took your part in the conversation pretty well, as the descendant of the Earl your father, and the heir of Fairoaks Castle?” Warrington said. “Yes, I remember reading of the festivities which occurred when you came of age. The Countess gave a brilliant tea soiree to the neighbouring nobility; and the tenantry were regaled in the kitchen with a leg of mutton and a quart of ale. The remains of the banquet were distributed amongst the poor of the village, and the entrance to the park was illuminated until old John put the candle out on retiring to rest at his usual hour.”
“My mother is not a countess,” said Pen, “though she has very good blood in her veins too—but commoner as she is, I have never met a peeress who was more than her peer, Mr. George; and if you will come to Fairoaks Castle you shall judge for yourself of her and of my cousin too. They are not so witty as the London women, but they certainly are as well bred. The thoughts of women in the country are turned to other objects than those which occupy your London ladies. In the country a woman has her household and her poor, her long calm days and long calm evenings.”
“Devilish long,” Warrington said, “and a great deal too calm; I’ve tried ’em.”
“The monotony of that existence must be to a certain degree melancholy—like the tune of a long ballad; and its harmony grave and gentle, sad and tender: it would be unendurable else. The loneliness of women in the country makes them of necessity soft and sentimental. Leading a life of calm duty, constant routine, mystic reverie,—a sort of nuns at large—too much gaiety or laughter would jar upon their almost sacred quiet, and would be as out of place there as in a church.”
“Where you go to sleep over the sermon,” Warrington said.
“You are a professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect, you know very little about them,” Mr. Pen continued, with an air of considerable self-complacency. “If you dislike the women in the country for being too slow, surely the London woman ought to be fast enough for you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I wonder,—male and female? Take a woman of the world: follow her course through the season; one asks how she can survive it? or if she tumbles into a sleep at the end of August, and lies torpid until the spring? She goes into the world every night, and sits watching her marriageable daughters dancing till long after dawn. She has a nursery of little ones, very likely, at home, to whom she administers example and affection; having an eye likewise to bread-and-milk, catechism, music and French, and roast leg of mutton at one o’clock; she has to call upon ladies of her own station, either domestically or in her public character, in which she sits upon Charity Committees, or Ball Committees, or Emigration Committees, or Queen’s College Committees, and discharges I don’t know what more duties of British stateswomanship. She very likely keeps a poor-visiting list; has conversations with the clergyman about soup or flannel, or proper religious teaching for the parish; and (if she lives in certain districts) probably attends early church. She has the newspapers to read, and, at least, must know what her husband’s party is about, so as to be able to talk to her neighbour at dinner; and it is a fact that she reads every new book that comes out; for she can talk, and very smartly and well, about them all, and you see them all upon her drawing-room table. She has the cares of her household besides—to make both ends meet; to make the girls’ milliner’s bills appear not too dreadful to the father and paymaster of the family; to snip off, in secret, a little extra article of expenditure here and there, and convey it, in the shape of a bank-note, to the boys at college or at sea; to check the encroachments of tradesmen and housekeepers’ financial fallacies; to keep upper and lower servants from jangling with one another, and the household in order. Add to this, that she has a secret taste for some art or science, models in clay, makes experiments in chemistry, or plays in private on the violoncello,—and I say, without exaggeration, many London ladies are doing this,—and you have a character before you such as our ancestors never heard of, and such as belongs entirely to our era and period of civilisation. Ye gods! how rapidly we live and grow! In nine months, Mr. Paxton grows you a pineapple as large as a portmanteau, whereas a little one, no bigger than a Dutch cheese, took three years to attain his majority in old times; and as the race of pineapples so is the race of man. Hoiaper—what’s the Greek for a pineapple, Warrington?”
“Stop, for mercy’s sake, stop with the English and before you come to the Greek,” Warrington cried out, laughing. “I never heard you make such a long speech, or was aware that you had penetrated so deeply into the female mysteries. Who taught you all this, and into whose boudoirs and nurseries have you been peeping, whilst I was smoking my pipe, and reading my book, lying on my straw bed?”
“You are on the bank; old boy, content to watch the waves tossing in the winds, and the struggles of others at sea,” Pen said. “I am in the stream now, and by Jove I like it. How rapidly we go down it, hey? Strong and feeble, old and young—the metal pitchers and the earthen pitchers—the pretty little china boat swims gaily till the big bruised brazen one bumps him and sends him down—eh, vogue la galere!—you see a man sink in the race, and say good-bye to him—look, he has only dived under the other fellow’s legs, and comes up shaking his pole, and striking out ever so far ahead. Eh, vogue la galere, I say. It’s good sport, Warrington—not winning merely, but playing.”
“Well, go in and win, young ’un. I’ll sit and mark the game,” Warrington said, surveying the ardent young fellow with an almost fatherly pleasure. “A generous fellow plays for the play, a sordid one for the stake; an old fogy sits by and smokes the pipe of tranquillity, while Jack and Tom are pummelling each other in the ring.”
“Why don’t you come in, George, and have a turn with the gloves? You are big enough and strong enough,” Pen said. “Dear old boy, you are worth ten of me.”
“You are not quite as tall as Goliath, certainly,” the other answered, with a laugh that was rough and yet tender. “As for me, I am disabled. I had a fatal hit in early life. I will tell you about it some day. You may, too, meet with your master. Don’t be too eager, or too confident, or too worldly, my boy.”
Was Pendennis becoming worldly, or only seeing the worldly, or both? and is a man very wrong for being after all only a man? Which is the most reasonable, and does his duty best: he who stands aloof from the struggle of life, calmly contemplating, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in the contest? “That philosopher,” Pen said, “had held a great place amongst the leaders of the world, and enjoyed to the full what it had to give of rank and riches, renown and pleasure, who came, weary-hearted, out of it, and said that all was vanity and vexation of spirit. Many a teacher of those whom we reverence, and who steps out of his carriage up to his carved cathedral place, shakes his lawn ruffles over the velvet cushions, and cries out, that the whole struggle is an accursed one, and the works of the world are evil. Many a conscience-stricken mystic flies from it altogether, and shuts himself out from it within convent walls (real or spiritual), whence he can only look up to the sky, and contemplate the heaven out of which there is no rest, and no good.
“But the earth, where our feet are, is the work of the same Power as the immeasurable blue yonder, in which the future lies into which we would peer. Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success—to this man a foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd—to that a shameful fall, or paralysed limb, or sudden accident—to each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it.” While they were talking, the dawn came shining through the windows of the room, and Pen threw them open to receive the fresh morning air. “Look, George,” said he; “look and see the sun rise: he sees the labourer on his way a-field; the work-girl plying her poor needle; the lawyer at his desk, perhaps; the beauty smiling asleep upon her pillow of down; or the jaded reveller reeling to bed; or the fevered patient tossing on it; or the doctor watching by it, over the throes of the mother for the child that is to be born into the world;—to be born and to take his part in the suffering and struggling, the tears and laughter, the crime, remorse, love, folly, sorrow, rest.”
XLVI. Miss Amory’s Partners
The noble Henry Foker, of whom we have lost sight for a few pages, has been in the meanwhile occupied, as we might suppose a man of his constancy would be, in the pursuit and indulgence of his all-absorbing passion of love.
I wish that a few of my youthful readers who are inclined to that amusement would take the trouble to calculate the time which is spent in the pursuit, when they would find it to be one of the most costly occupations in which a man can possibly indulge. What don’t you sacrifice to it, indeed, young gentlemen and young ladies of ill-regulated minds? Many hours of your precious sleep in the first place, in which you lie tossing and thinking about the adored object, whence you come down late to breakfast, when noon is advancing and all the family is long since away to its daily occupations. Then when you at length get to these occupations you pay no attention to them, and engage in them with no ardour—all your thoughts and powers of mind being fixed elsewhere. Then the day’s work being slurred over, you neglect your friends and relatives, your natural companions and usual associates in life, that you may go and have a glance at the dear personage, or a look up at her windows, or a peep at her carriage in the Park. Then at night the artless blandishments of home bore you; mamma’s conversation palls upon you; the dishes which that good soul prepares for the dinner of her favourite are sent away untasted,—the whole meal of life, indeed, except one particular plat, has no relish. Life, business, family ties, home, all things useful and dear once, become intolerable, and you are never easy except when you are in pursuit of your flame.
Such I believe to be not unfrequently the state of mind amongst ill-regulated young gentlemen, and such indeed was Mr. H. Foker’s condition, who, having been bred up to indulge in every propensity towards which he was inclined, abandoned himself to this one with his usual selfish enthusiasm. Nor because he had given his friend Arthur Pendennis a great deal of good advice on a former occasion, need men of the world wonder that Mr. Foker became passion’s slave in his turn. Who among us has not given a plenty of the very best advice to his friends? Who has not preached, and who has practised? To be sure, you, madam, are perhaps a perfect being, and never had a wrong thought in the whole course of your frigid and irreproachable existence: or sir, you are a great deal too strong-minded to allow any foolish passion to interfere with your equanimity in chambers or your attendance on ’Change; you are so strong that you don’t want any sympathy. We don’t give you any, then; we keep ours for the humble and weak, that struggle and stumble and get up again, and so march with the rest of mortals. What need have you of a hand who never fall? Your serene virtue is never shaded by passion, or ruffled by temptation, or darkened by remorse; compassion would be impertinence for such an angel: but then with such a one companionship becomes intolerable; you are, from the elevation of your very virtue and high attributes, of necessity lonely; we can’t reach up and talk familiarly with such potentatess good-bye, then; our way lies with humble folks, and not with serene highnesses like you; and we give notice that there are no perfect characters in this history, except, perhaps, one little one, and that one is not perfect either, for she never knows to this day that she is perfect, and with a deplorable misapprehension and perverseness of humility, believes herself to be as great a sinner as need be.
This young person does not happen to be in London at the present period of our story, and it is by no means for the like of her that Mr. Henry Foker’s mind is agitated. But what matters a few failings? Need we be angels, male or female, in order to be worshipped as such? Let us admire the diversity of the tastes of mankind; and the oldest, the ugliest, the stupidest and most pompous, the silliest and most vapid, the greatest criminal, tyrant booby, Bluebeard, Catherine Hayes, George Barnwell, amongst us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them advanced in age, being repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, and given to drink), that was as magnificent as the loves of Cleopatra and Antony, or Lancelot and Guinever. The passion which Count Borulawski, the Polish dwarf, inspired in the bosom of the most beautiful Baroness at the Court of Dresden, is a matter with which we are all of us acquainted: the flame which burned in the heart of young Cornet Tozer but the other day, and caused him to run off and espouse Mrs. Battersby, who was old enough to be his mamma,—all these instances are told in the page of history or the newspaper column. Are we to be ashamed or pleased to think that our hearts are formed so that the biggest and highest-placed Ajax among us may some day find himself prostrate before the pattens of his kitchen-maid; as that there is no poverty or shame or crime, which will not be supported, hugged even with delight, and cherished more closely than virtue would be, by the perverse fidelity and admirable constant folly of a woman?
So then Henry Foker, Esquire, longed after his love, and cursed the fate which separated him from her. When Lord Gravesend’s family retired to the country (his lordship leaving his proxy with the venerable Lord Bagwig), Harry still remained lingering on in London, certainly not much to the sorrow of Lady Ann, to whom he was affianced, and who did not in the least miss him. Wherever Miss Clavering went, this infatuated young fellow continued to follow her; and being aware that his engagement to his cousin was known in the world, he was forced to make a mystery of his passion, and confine it to his own breast, so that it was so pent in there and pressed down, that it is a wonder he did not explode some day with the stormy secret, and perish collapsed after the outburst.
There had been a grand entertainment at Gaunt House on one beautiful evening in June, and the next day’s journals contained almost two columns of the names of the most closely printed nobility and gentry who had been honoured with invitations to the ball. Among the guests were Sir Francis and Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, for whom the indefatigable Major Pendennis had procured an invitation, and our two young friends Arthur and Harry. Each exerted himself, and danced a great deal with Miss Blanche. As for the worthy Major, he assumed the charge of Lady Clavering, and took care to introduce her to that department of the mansion where her ladyship specially distinguished herself, namely, the refreshment-room, where, amongst pictures of Titian and Giorgione, and regal portraits of Vandyke and Reynolds, and enormous salvers of gold and silver, and pyramids of large flowers, and constellations of wax candles—in a manner perfectly regardless of expense, in a word—a supper was going on all night. Of how many creams, jellies, salads, peaches, white soups, grapes, pates, galantines, cups of tea, champagne, and so forth, Lady Clavering partook, it does not become us to say. How much the Major suffered as he followed the honest woman about, calling to the solemn male attendants and lovely servant-maids, and administering to Lady Clavering’s various wants with admirable patience, nobody knows;—he never confessed. He never allowed his agony to appear on his countenance in the least; but with a constant kindness brought plate after plate to the Begum.
Mr. Wagg counted up all the dishes of which Lady Clavering partook as long as he could count (but as he partook very freely himself of champagne during the evening, his powers of calculation were not to be trusted at the close of the entertainment), and he recommended Mr. Honeyman, Lady Steyne’s medical man, to look carefully after the Begum, and to call and get news of her ladyship the next day.
Sir Francis Clavering made his appearance, and skulked for a while about the magnificent rooms; but the company and the splendour which he met there were not to the Baronet’s taste, and after tossing off a tumbler of wine or two at the buffet, he quitted Gaunt House for the neighbourhood of Jermyn Street, where his friends Loder, Punter, little Moss Abramns, and Captain Skewball were assembled at the familiar green table. In the rattle of the box, and of their agreeable conversation, Sir Francis’s spirits rose to their accustomed point of feeble hilarity.
Mr. Pynsent, who had asked Miss Amory to dance, came up on one occasion to claim her hand, but scowls of recognition having already passed between him and Mr. Arthur Pendennis in the dancing-room, Arthur suddenly rose up and claimed Miss Amory as his partner for the present dance, on which Mr. Pynsent, biting his lips and scowling yet more savagely, withdrew with a profound bow, saying that he gave up his claim. There are some men who are always falling in one’s way in life. Pynsent and Pen had this view of each other; and each regarded other accordingly.
“What a confounded conceited provincial fool that is!” thought the one. “Because he has written a twopenny novel, his absurd head is turned, and a kicking would take his conceit out of him.”
“What an impertinent idiot that man is!” remarked the other to his partner. “His soul is in Downing Street; his neckcloth is foolscap; his hair is sand; his legs are rulers; his vitals are tape and sealing-wax; he was a prig in his cradle; and never laughed since he was born, except three times at the same joke of his chief. I have the same liking for that man, Miss Amory, I have for that cold boiled veal.” Upon which Blanche of course remarked, that Mr. Pendennis was wicked, mechant, perfectly abominable, and wondered what he would say when her back was turned.
“Say!—Say that you have the most beautiful figure, and the slimmest waist in the world, Blanche—Miss Amory, I mean. I beg your pardon. Another turn; this music would make an alderman dance.”
“And you have left off tumbling when you waltz now?” Blanche asked, archly looking up at her partner’s face.
“One falls and one gets up again in life, Blanche; you know I used to call you so in old times, and it is the prettiest name in the world. Besides, I have practised since then.”
“And with a great number of partners, I’m afraid,” Blanche said, with a little sham sigh, and a shrug of the shoulders. And so in truth Mr. Pen had practised a good deal in this life; and had undoubtedly arrived at being able to dance better.
If Pendennis was impertinent in his talk, Foker, on the other hand, so bland and communicative on most occasions, was entirely mum and melancholy when he danced with Miss Amory. To clasp her slender waist was a rapture, to whirl round the room with her was a delirium; but to speak to her, what could he say that was worthy of her? What pearl of conversation could he bring that was fit for the acceptance of such a Queen of love and wit as Blanche? It was she who made the talk when she was in the company of this love-stricken partner. It was she who asked him how that dear little pony was, and looked at him and thanked him with such a tender kindness and regret, and refused the dear little pony with such a delicate sigh when he offered it. “I have nobody to ride with in London,” she said. “Mamma is timid, and her figure is not pretty on horseback. Sir Francis never goes out with me. He loves me like—like a stepdaughter. Oh, how delightful it must be to have a father—a father, Mr. Foker!”
“Oh, uncommon,” said Mr. Harry, who enjoyed that blessing very calmly, upon which, and forgetting the sentimental air which she had just before assumed, Blanche’s grey eyes gazed at Foker with such an arch twinkle that both of them burst out laughing, and Harry enraptured and at his ease began to entertain her with a variety of innocent prattle—good kind simple Foker talk, flavoured with many expressions by no means to be discovered in dictionaries, and relating to the personal history of himself or horses, or other things dear and important to him, or to persons in the ballroom then passing before them, and about whose appearance or character Mr. Harry spoke with artless freedom, and a considerable dash of humour.
And it was Blanche who, when the conversation flagged, and the youth’s modesty came rushing back and overpowering him, knew how to reanimate her companion: asked him questions about Logwood, and whether it was a pretty place? Whether he was a hunting man, and whether he liked women to hunt? (in which case she was prepared to say that she adored hunting)—but Mr. Foker expressing his opinion against sporting females, and pointing out Lady Bullfinch, who happened to pass by, as a horse-godmother, whom he had seen at cover with a cigar in her face, Blanche too expressed her detestation of the sports of the field, and said it would make her shudder to think of a dear sweet little fox being killed, on which Foker laughed and waltzed with renewed vigour and grace.
And at the end of the waltz,—the last waltz they had on that night,—Blanche asked him about Drummington, and whether it was a fine house. His cousins, she had heard, were very accomplished: Lord Erith she had met, and which of his cousins was his favourite? Was it not Lady Ann? Yes, she was sure it was she; sure by his looks and his blushes. She was tired of dancing; it was getting very late; she must go to mamma;—and, without another word, she sprang away from Harry Foker’s arm, and seized upon Pen’s, who was swaggering about the dancing-room, and again said, “Mamma, mamma!—take me to mamma, dear, Mr. Pendennis!” transfixing Harry with a Parthian shot, as she fled from him.
My Lord Steyne, with garter and ribbon, with a bald head and shining eyes, and a collar of red whiskers round his face, always looked grand upon an occasion of state; and made a great effect upon Lady Clavering, when he introduced himself to her at the request of the obsequious Major Pendennis. With his own white and royal hand, he handed to her ladyship a glass of wine, said he had heard of her charming daughter, and begged to be presented to her; and, at this very juncture, Mr. Arthur Pendennis came up with the young lady on his arm.
The peer made a profound bow, and Blanche the deepest curtesy that ever was seen. His lordship gave Mr. Arthur Pendennis his hand to shake; said he had read his book, which was very wicked and clever; asked Miss Blanche if she had read it,—at which Pen blushed and winced. Why, Blanche was one of the heroines of the novel. Blanche, in black ringlets and a little altered, was the Neaera of ‘Walter Lorraine.’
Blanche had read it: the language of the eyes expressed her admiration and rapture at the performance. This little play being achieved, the Marquis of Steyne made other two profound bows to Lady Clavering and her daughter, and passed on to some other of his guests at the splendid entertainment.
Mamma and daughter were loud in their expressions of admiration of the noble Marquis so soon as his broad back was turned upon them. “He said they make a very nice couple,” whispered major Pendennis to Lady Clavering. Did he now, really? Mamma thought they would; Mamma was so flustered with the honour which had just been shown to her, and with other intoxicating events of the evening, that her good-humour knew no bounds. She laughed, she winked, and nodded knowingly at Pen; she tapped him on the arm with her fan; she tapped Blanche; she tapped the Major;—her contentment was boundless, and her method of showing her joy equally expansive.
As the party went down the great staircase of Gaunt House, the morning had risen stark and clear over the black trees of the square; the skies were tinged with pink; and the cheeks of some of the people at the ball,—ah, how ghastly they looked! That admirable and devoted Major above all,—who had been for hours by Lady Clavering’s side, ministering to her and feeding her body with everything that was nice, and her ear with everything that was sweet and flattering,—oh! what an object he was! The rings round his eyes were of the colour of bistre; those orbs themselves were like the plovers’ eggs whereof Lady Clavering and Blanche had each tasted; the wrinkles in his old face were furrowed in deep gashes; and a silver stubble, like an elderly morning dew was glittering on his chin, and alongside the dyed whiskers now limp and out of curl.
There he stood, with admirable patience, enduring, uncomplainingly, a silent agony; knowing that people could see the state of his face (for could he not himself perceive the condition of others, males and females, of his own age?)—longing to go to rest for hours past; aware that suppers disagreed with him, and yet having eaten a little so as to keep his friend, Lady Clavering, in good-humour; with twinges of rheumatism in the back and knees; with weary feet burning in his varnished boots,—so tired, oh, so tired and longing for bed! If a man, struggling with hardship and bravely overcoming it, is an object of admiration for the gods, that Power in whose chapels the old Major was a faithful worshipper must have looked upwards approvingly upon the constancy of Pendennis’s martyrdom. There are sufferers in that cause as in the other: the negroes in the service of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and drill themselves with burning skewers with great fortitude; and we read that the priests in the service of Baal gashed themselves and bled freely. You who can smash the idols, do so with a good courage; but do not be too fierce with the idolaters,—they worship the best thing they know.
The Pendennises, the elder and the younger, waited with Lady Clavering and her daughter until her ladyship’s carriage was announced, when the elder’s martyrdom may be said to have come to an end, for the good-natured Begum insisted upon leaving him at his door in Bury Street; so he took the back seat of the carriage after a feeble bow or two, and speech of thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing his duty. The Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to Arthur and Foker, and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-coloured hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes, which made her fancy herself so pale.
Arthur, perhaps, saw quite well how yellow Blanche looked, but did not attribute that peculiarity of her complexion to the effect of the looking-glasses, or to any error in his sight or her own. Our young man of the world could use his eyes very keenly, and could see Blanche’s face pretty much as nature had made it. But for poor Foker it had a radiance which dazzled and blinded him: he could see no more faults in it than in the sun, which was now flaring over the house-tops.
Amongst other wicked London habits which Pen had acquired, the moralist will remark that he had got to keep very bad hours; and often was going to bed at the time when sober country-people were thinking of leaving it. Men get used to one hour as to another. Editors of newspapers, Covent Garden market-people, night cabmen and coffee-sellers, chimney-sweeps, and gentlemen and ladies of fashion who frequent balls, are often quite lively at three or four o’clock of a morning, when ordinary mortals are snoring. We have shown in the last chapter how Pen was in a brisk condition of mind at this period, inclined to smoke his cigar at ease, and to speak freely.
Foker and Pen walked away from Gaunt House, then, indulging in both the above amusements: or rather Pen talked, and Foker looked as if he wanted to say something. Pen was sarcastic and dandified when he had been in the company of great folks; he could not help imitating some of their airs and tones, and having a most lively imagination, mistook himself for a person of importance very easily. He rattled away, and attacked this person and that; sneered at Lady John Turnbull’s bad French, which her ladyship will introduce into all conversations in spite of the sneers of everybody; at Mrs. Slack Roper’s extraordinary costume and sham jewels; at the old dandies and the young ones;—at whom didn’t he sneer and laugh?
“You fire at everybody, Pen—you’re grown awful, that you are,” Foker said. “Now you’ve pulled about Blondel’s yellow wig, and Colchicum’s black one, why don’t you have a shy at a brown one, hay? you know whose I mean. It got into Lady Clavering’s carriage.”
“Under my uncle’s hat? My uncle is a martyr, Foker, my boy. My uncle has been doing excruciating duties all night. He likes to go to bed rather early. He has a dreadful headache if he sits up and touches supper. He always has the gout if he walks or stands much at a ball. He has been sitting up, and standing up, and supping. He has gone home to the gout and the headache, and for my sake. Shall I make fun of the old boy? no, not for Venice!”
“How do you mean that he has been doing it for your sake?” Foker asked, looking rather alarmed.
“Boy! canst thou keep a secret if I impart it to thee?” Pen cried out, in high spirits. “Art thou of good counsel? Wilt thou swear? Wilt thou be mum, or wilt thou preach? Wilt thou be silent and hear, or wilt thou speak and die?” And as he spoke, flinging himself into an absurd theatrical attitude, the men in the cabstand in Piccadilly wondered and grinned at the antics of the two young swells.
“What the doose are you driving at?” Foker asked, looking very much agitated.
Pen, however, did not remark this agitation much, but continued in the same bantering and excited vein. “Henry, friend of my youth,” he said, “and witness of my early follies, though dull at thy books, yet thou art not altogether deprived of sense,—nay, blush not, Henrico, thou hast a good portion of that, and of courage and kindness too, at the service of thy friends. Were I in a strait of poverty, I would come to my Foker’s purse. Were I in grief, I would discharge my grief upon his sympathising bosom——”
“Gammon, Pen—go on,” Foker said.
“I would, Henrico, upon thy studs, and upon thy cambric worked by the hands of beauty, to adorn the breast of valour! Know then, friend of my boyhood’s days, that Arthur Pendennis of the Upper Temple, student-at-law, feels that he is growing lonely and old Care is furrowing his temples, and Baldness is busy with his crown. Shall we stop and have a drop of coffee at this stall, it looks very hot and nice? Look how that cabman is blowing at his saucer. No, you won’t? Aristocrat! I resume my tale. I am getting on in life. I have got devilish little money. I want some. I am thinking of getting some, and settling in life. I’m thinking of settling. I’m thinking of marrying, old boy. I’m thinking of becoming a moral man; a steady port and sherry character: with a good reputation in my quartier, and a moderate establishment of two maids and a man—with an occasional brougham to drive out Mrs. Pendennis, and a house near the Parks for the accommodation of the children. Ha! what sayest thou? Answer thy friend, thou worthy child of beer. Speak, I adjure thee by all thy vats.
“But you ain’t got any money, Pen,” said the other, still looking alarmed.
“I ain’t? No, but she ave. I tell thee there is gold in store for me—not what you call money, nursed in the lap of luxury, and cradled on grains, and drinking in wealth from a thousand mash-tubs. What do you know about money? What is poverty to you, is splendour to the hardy son of the humble apothecary. You can’t live without an establishment, and your houses in town and country. A snug little house somewhere off Belgravia, a brougham for my wife, a decent cook, and a fair bottle of wine for my friends at home sometimes; these simple necessaries suffice for me, my Foker.” And here Pendennis began to look more serious. Without bantering further, Pen continued, “I’ve rather serious thoughts of settling and marrying. No man can get on in the world without some money at his back. You must have a certain stake to begin with, before you can go in and play the great game. Who knows that I’m not going to try, old fellow? Worse men than I have won at it. And as I have not got enough capital from my fathers, I must get some by my wife—that’s all.”
They were walking down Grosvenor Street, as they talked, or rather as Pen talked, in the selfish fulness of his heart; and Mr. Pen must have been too much occupied with his own affairs to remark the concern and agitation of his neighbour, for he continued: “We are no longer children, you know, you and I, Harry. Bah! the time of our romance has passed away. We don’t marry for passion, but for prudence and for establishment. What do you take your cousin for? Because she is a nice girl, and an Earl’s daughter, and the old folks wish it, and that sort of thing.”
“And you, Pendennis,” asked Foker, “you ain’t very fond of the girl—you’re going to marry?”
Pen shrugged his shoulders. “Comme ca,” said he; “I like her well enough. She’s pretty enough; she’s clever enough. I think she’ll do very well. And she has got money enough—that’s the great point. Psha! you know who she is, don’t you? I thought you were sweet on her yourself one night when we dined with her mamma. It’s little Amory.”
“I—I thought so,” Foker said; “and has she accepted you!”
“Not quite,” Arthur replied, with a confident smile, which seemed to say, I have but to ask, and she comes to me that instant.
“Oh, not quite,” said Foker; and he broke out with such a dreadful laugh, that Pen, for the first time, turned his thoughts from himself towards his companion, and was struck by the other’s ghastly pale face.
“My dear fellow, Fo! what’s the matter? You’re ill,” Pen said, in a tone of real concern.
“You think it was the champagne at Gaunt House, don’t you? It ain’t that. Come in; let me talk to you for a minute. I’ll tell you what it is. D——it, let me tell somebody,” Foker said.
They were at Mr. Foker’s door by this time, and, opening it, Harry walked with his friend into his apartments, which were situated in the back part of the house, and behind the family dining-room where the elder Foker received his guests, surrounded by pictures of himself, his wife, his infant son on a donkey, and the late Earl of Gravesend in his robes as a Peer. Foker and Pen passed by this chamber, now closed with death-like shutters, and entered into the young man’s own quarters. Dusky streams of sunbeams were playing into that room, and lighting up poor Harry’s gallery of dancing-girls and opera nymphs with flickering illuminations.
“Look here! I can’t help telling you, Pen,” he said. “Ever since the night we dined there, I’m so fond of that girl, that I think I shall die if I don’t get her. I feel as if I should go mad sometimes. I can’t stand it, Pen. I couldn’t bear to hear you talking about her, just now, about marrying her only because she’s money. Ah, Pen! that ain’t the question in marrying. I’d bet anything it ain’t. Talking about money and such a girl as that, it’s—it’s—what-d’ye-call-’em—you know what I mean—I ain’t good at talking—sacrilege, then. If she’d have me, I’d take and sweep a crossing, that I would!”
“Poor Fo! I don’t think that would tempt her,” Pen said, eyeing his friend with a great deal of real good-nature and pity. “She is not a girl for love and a cottage.”
“She ought to be a duchess, I know that very well, and I know she wouldn’t take me unless I could make her a great place in the world—for I ain’t good for anything myself much—I ain’t clever and that sort of thing,” Foker said sadly. “If I had all the diamonds that all the duchesses and marchionesses had on to-night, wouldn’t I put ’em in her lap? But what’s the use of talking? I’m booked for another race. It’s that kills me, Pen. I can’t get out of it; though I die, I can’t get out of it. And though my cousin’s a nice girl, and I like her very well, and that, yet I hadn’t seen this one when our Governors settled that matter between us. And when you talked, just now, about her doing very well, and about her having money enough for both of you, I thought to myself it isn’t money or mere liking a girl, that ought to be enough to make a fellow marry. He may marry, and find he likes somebody else better. All the money in the world won’t make you happy then. Look at me; I’ve plenty of money, or shall have out of the mash-tubs, as you call ’em. My Governor thought he’d made it all right for me in settling my marriage with my cousin. I tell you it won’t do; and when Lady Ann has got her husband, it won’t be happy for either of us, and she’ll have the most miserable beggar in town.”
“Poor old fellow!” Pen said, with rather a cheap magnanimity, “I wish I could help you. I had no idea of this, and that you were so wild about the girl. Do you think she would have you without your money? No. Do you think your father would agree to break off your engagement with your cousin? You know him very well, and that he would cast you off rather than do so.”
The unhappy Foker only groaned a reply, flinging himself prostrate on a sofa, face forwards, his head in his hands.
“As for my affair,” Pen went on, “my dear fellow, if I had thought matters were so critical with you, at least I would not have pained you by choosing you as my confidant. And my business is not serious, at least not as yet. I have not spoken a word about it to Miss Amory. Very likely she would not have me if I asked her. Only I have had a great deal of talk about it with my uncle, who says that the match might be an eligible one for me. I’m ambitious and I’m poor. And it appears Lady Clavering will give her a good deal of money, and Sir Francis might be got to never mind the rest. Nothing is settled, Harry. They are going out of town directly. I promise you I won’t ask her before she goes. There’s no hurry: there’s time for everybody. But, suppose you got her, Foker. Remember what you said about marriages just now, and the misery of a man who doesn’t care for his wife; and what sort of a wife would you have who didn’t care for her husband?”
“But she would care for me,” said Foker, from his sofa—“that is, I think she would. Last night only, as we were dancing, she said——”
“What did she say?” Pen cried, starting up in great wrath. But he saw his own meaning more clearly than Foker, and broke off with a laugh—“Well, never mind what she said, Harry. Miss Amory is a clever girl, and says numbers of civil things—to you—to me, perhaps—and who the deuce knows to whom besides? Nothing’s settled, old boy. At least, my heart won’t break if I don’t get her. Win her if you can, and I wish you joy of her. Good-bye! Don’t think about what I said to you. I was excited, and confoundedly thirsty in those hot rooms, and didn’t, I suppose, put enough Seltzer-water into the champagne. Good night! I’ll keep your counsel too. ‘Mum’ is the word between us; and ‘let there be a fair fight, and let the best man win,’ as Peter Crawley says.”
So saying, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, giving a very queer and rather dangerous look at his companion, shook him by the hand, with something of that sort of cordiality which befitted his just repeated simile of the boxing-match, and which Mr. Bendigo displays when he shakes hands with Mr. Gaunt before they fight each other for the champion’s belt and two hundred pounds a side. Foker returned his friend’s salute with an imploring look, and a piteous squeeze of the hand, sank back on his cushions again, and Pen, putting on his hat, strode forth into the air, and almost over the body of the matutinal housemaid, who was rubbing the steps at the door.
“And so he wants her too, does be?” thought Pen as he marched along—and noted within himself with a fatal keenness of perception and almost an infernal mischief, that the very pains and tortures which that honest heart of Foker’s was suffering gave a zest and an impetus to his own pursuit of Blanche: if pursuit might be called which had been no pursuit as yet, but mere sport and idle dallying. “She said something to him, did she? perhaps she gave him the fellow flower to this;” and he took out of his coat and twiddled in his thumb and finger a poor little shrivelled crumpled bud that had faded and blackened with the heat and flare of the night—“I wonder to how many more she has given her artless tokens of affection—the little flirt”—and he flung his into the gutter, where the water may have refreshed it, and where any amateur of rosebuds may have picked it up. And then bethinking him that the day was quite bright, and that the passers-by by might be staring at his beard and white neckcloth, our modest young gentleman took a cab and drove to the Temple.
Ah! is this the boy that prayed at his mother’s knee but a few years since, and for whom very likely at this hour of morning she is praying? Is this jaded and selfish worldling the lad who, a short while back, was ready to fling away his worldly all, his hope, his ambition, his chance of life, for his love? This is the man you are proud of, old Pendennis. You boast of having formed him: and of having reasoned him out of his absurd romance and folly—and groaning in your bed over your pains and rheumatisms, satisfy yourself still by thinking, that, at last, that lad will do something to better himself in life, and that the Pendennises will take a good place in the world. And is he the only one, who in his progress through this dark life goes wilfully or fatally astray, whilst the natural truth and love which should illumine him grow dim in the poisoned air, and suffice to light him no more?
When Pen was gone away, poor Harry Foker got up from the sofa, and taking out from his waistcoat—the splendidly buttoned, but the gorgeously embroidered, the work of his mamma—a little white rosebud, he drew from his dressing-case, also the maternal present, a pair of scissors, with which he nipped carefully the stalk of the flower, and placing it in a glass of water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there from care and bitter remembrances.
It is to be presumed that Miss Blanche Amory had more than one rose in her bouquet, and why should not the kind young creature give out of her superfluity, and make as many partners as possible happy?
XLVII. Monseigneur s’amuse
The exertions of that last night at Gaunt House had proved almost too much for Major Pendennis; and as soon as he could move his weary old body with safety, he transported himself groaning to Buxton, and sought relief in the healing waters of that place. Parliament broke up. Sir Francis Clavering and family left town, and the affairs which we have just mentioned to the reader were not advanced, in the brief interval of a few days or weeks which have occurred between this and the last chapter. The town was, however, emptied since then.
The season was now come to a conclusion: Pen’s neighbours, the lawyers, were gone upon circuit: and his more fashionable friends had taken their passports for the Continent, or had fled for health or excitement to the Scotch moors. Scarce a man was to be seen in the bow-windows of the Clubs, or on the solitary Pall Mall pavement. The red jackets had disappeared from before the Palace-gate: the tradesmen of St. James’s were abroad taking their pleasure: the tailors had grown mustachios and were gone up the Rhine: the bootmakers were at Ems or Baden, blushing when they met their customers at those places of recreation, or punting beside their creditors at the gambling-tables: the clergymen of St. James’s only preached to half a congregation, in which there was not a single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensington Gardens had shut up their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three old flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine; and Clarence Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a Treasury clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared its loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert and himself to a Bedouin wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed away a quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet-bag, and betook himself, as his custom was in the vacation, to his brother’s house in Norfolk. Pen was left alone in chambers for a while, for this man of fashion could not quit the metropolis when he chose always: and was at present detained by the affairs of his newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, of, which he acted as the editor and charge d’affaires during the temporary absence of the chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his family at the salutary watering-place of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Although, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself for years past to be a man perfectly blase and wearied of life, yet the truth is that he was an exceedingly healthy young fellow still: with a fine appetite, which he satisfied with the greatest relish and satisfaction at least once a day; and a constant desire for society, which showed him to be anything but misanthropical. If he could not get a good dinner he sate down to a bad one with perfect contentment; if he could not procure the company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he put up with any society that came to hand; and was perfectly satisfied in a tavern-parlour or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette; or in a visit to the summer theatres across the river; or to the Royal Gardens of Vauxhall, where he was on terms of friendship with the great Simpson, and where he shook the principal comic singer of the lovely equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humour that was not deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the lookers-on too; at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here taking it: at the honest parents, with their delighted children laughing and clapping their hands at the show: at the poor outcasts, whose laughter was less innocent though perhaps louder, and who brought their shame and their youth here, to dance and be merry till the dawn at least; and to get bread and drown care. Of this sympathy with all conditions of men Arthur often boasted: said he was pleased to possess it: and that he hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another man has an ardour for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said that anthropology was his favourite pursuit; and had his eyes always eagerly open to its infinite varieties and beauties: contemplating with an unfailing delight all specimens of it in all places to which he resorted, whether it was the coquetting of a wrinkled dowager in a ballroom, or a high-bred young beauty blushing in her prime there; whether it was a hulking guardsman coaxing a servant-girl in the Park—or innocent little Tommy that was feeding the ducks whilst the nurse listened. And indeed a man whose heart is pretty clean, can indulge in this pursuit with an enjoyment that never ceases, and is only perhaps the more keen because it is secret and has a touch of sadness in it: because he is of his mood and humour lonely, and apart although not alone.
Yes, Pen used to brag and talk in his impetuous way to Warrington. “I was in love so fiercely in my youth, that I have burned out that flame for ever, I think, and if ever I marry, it will be a marriage of reason that I will make, with a well-bred, good-tempered, good-looking person who has a little money, and so forth, that will cushion our carriage in its course through life. As for romance, it is all done; I have spent that out, and am old before my time—I’m proud of it.”
“Stuff!” growled the other, “you fancied you were getting bald the other day, and bragged about it as you do about everything. But you began to use the bear’s-grease pot directly the hairdresser told you; and are scented like a barber ever since.”
“You are Diogenes,” the other answered, “and you want every man to live in a tub like yourself. Violets smell better than stale tobacco, you grizzly old cynic.” But Mr. Pen was blushing whilst he made this reply to his unromantical friend, and indeed cared a great deal more about himself still than such a philosopher perhaps should have done. Indeed, considering that he was careless about the world, Mr. Pen ornamented his person with no small pains in order to make himself agreeable to it, and for a weary pilgrim as he was, wore very tight boots and bright varnish.
It was in this dull season of the year, then, of a shining Friday night in autumn, that Mr. Pendennis, having completed at his newspaper office a brilliant leading article—such as Captain Shandon himself might have written, had the Captain been in good-humour, and inclined to work, which he never would do except under compulsion—that Mr. Arthur Pendennis having written his article, and reviewed it approvingly as it lay before him in its wet proof-sheet at the office of the paper, bethought him that he would cross the water, and regale himself with the fireworks and other amusements of Vauxhall. So he affably put in his pocket the order which admitted “Editor of Pall Mall Gazette and friend” to that place of recreation, and paid with the coin of the realm a sufficient sum to enable him to cross Waterloo Bridge. The walk thence to the Gardens was pleasant, the stars were shining in the skies above, looking down upon the royal property, whence the rockets and Roman candles had not yet ascended to outshine the stars.
Before you enter the enchanted ground, where twenty thousand additional lamps are burned every night as usual, most of us have passed through the black and dreary passage and wickets which hide the splendours of Vauxhall from uninitiated men. In the walls of this passage are two holes strongly illuminated, in the midst of which you see two gentlemen at desks, where they will take either your money as a private individual, or your order of admission if you are provided with that passport to the Gardens. Pen went to exhibit his ticket at the last-named orifice, where, however, a gentleman and two ladies were already in parley before him.
The gentleman, whose hat was very much on one side, and who wore a short and shabby cloak in an excessively smart manner, was crying out in a voice which Pen at once recognised.
“Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honour, will ye obleege me by stipping out of that box, and——”
“Lor, Capting!” cried the elder lady.
“Don’t bother me,” said the man in the box.
“And ask Mr. Hodgen himself, who’s in the gyardens, to let these leedies pass. Don’t be froightened, me dear madam, I’m not going to quarl with this gintleman, at anyreet before leedies. Will ye go, sir, and desoire Mr. Hodgen (whose orther I keem in with, and he’s me most intemate friend, and I know he’s goan to sing the ‘Body Snatcher’ here to-noight), with Captain Costigan’s compliments, to stip out and let in the leedies—for meself, sir, I’ve seen Vauxhall, and I scawrun any interfayrance on moi account: but for these leedies, one of them has never been there, and of should think ye’d harly take advantage of me misfartune in losing the ticket, to deproive her of her pleasure.”
“It ain’t no use, Captain. I can’t go about your business,” the check-taker said; on which the Captain swore an oath, and the elder lady said, “Lor, ow provokin!”
As for the young one, she looked up at the Captain and said, “Never mind, Captain Costigan, I’m sure I don’t want to go at all. Come away, mamma.” And with this, although she did not want to go at all, her feelings overcame her, and she began to cry.
“Me poor child!” the Captain said. “Can ye see that, sir, and will ye not let this innocent creature in?”
“It ain’t my business,” cried the doorkeeper, peevishly, out of the illuminated box. And at this minute Arthur came up, and recognising Costigan, said, “Don’t you know me, Captain? Pendennis!” And he took off his hat and made a bow to the two ladies. “Me dear boy! Me dear friend!” cried the Captain, extending towards Pendennis the grasp of friendship; and he rapidly explained to the other what he called “a most unluckee conthratong.” He had an order for Vauxhall, admitting two, from Mr. Hodgen, then within the Gardens, and singing (as he did at the Back Kitchen and the nobility’s concerts, the ‘Body Snatcher,’ the ‘Death of General Wolfe,’ the ‘Banner of Blood,’ and other favourite melodies); and, having this order for the admission of two persons, he thought that it would admit three, and had come accordingly to the Gardens with his friends. But, on his way, Captain Costigan had lost the paper of admission—it was not forthcoming at all; and the leedies must go back again, to the great disappointment of one of them, as Pendennis saw.
Arthur had a great deal of good-nature for everybody, and sympathised with the misfortunes of all sorts of people: how could he refuse his sympathy in such a case as this? He had seen the innocent face as it looked up to the Captain, the appealing look of the girl, the piteous quiver of the mouth, and the final outburst of tears. If it had been his last guinea in the world, he must have paid it to have given the poor little thing pleasure. She turned the sad imploring eyes away directly they lighted upon a stranger, and began to wipe them with her handkerchief. Arthur looked very handsome and kind as he stood before the women, with his hat off, blushing, bowing, generous, a gentleman. “Who are they?” he asked of himself. He thought he had seen the elder lady before.
“If I can be of any service to you, Captain Costigan,” the young man said, “I hope you will command me; is there any difficulty about taking these ladies into the garden? Will you kindly make use of my purse? And—and I have a ticket myself which will admit two—I hope, ma’am, you will permit me?”
The first impulse of the Prince of Fairoaks was to pay for the whole party, and to make away with his newspaper order as poor Costigan had done with his own ticket. But his instinct, and the appearance of the two women, told him that they would be better pleased if he did not give himself the airs of a grand seigneur, and he handed his purse to Costigan, and laughingly pulled out his ticket with one hand, as he offered the other to the elder of the ladies—ladies was not the word—they had bonnets and shawls, and collars and ribbons, and the youngest showed a pretty little foot and boot under her modest grey gown, but his Highness of Fairoaks was courteous to every person who wore a petticoat whatever its texture was, and the humbler the wearer, only the more stately and polite in his demeanour.
“Fanny, take the gentleman’s arm,” the elder said; “Since you will be so very kind—I’ve seen you often come in at our gate, sir, and go in to Captain Strong’s at No. 3.”
Fanny made a little curtsey, and put her hand under Arthur’s arm. It had on a shabby little glove, but it was pretty and small. She was not a child, but she was scarcely a woman as yet; her tears had dried up, and her cheek mantled with youthful blushes, and her eyes glistened with pleasure and gratitude, as she looked up into Arthur’s kind face.
Arthur, in a protecting way, put his other hand upon the little one resting on his arm. “Fanny’s a very pretty little name,” he said, “and so you know me, do you?”
“We keep the lodge, sir, at Shepherd’s Inn,” Fanny said with a curtsey; “and I’ve never been at Vauxhall, sir, and Papa didn’t like me to go—and—and—O—O—law, how beautiful!” She shrank back as she spoke, starting with wonder and delight as she saw the Royal Gardens blaze before her with a hundred million of lamps, with a splendour such as the finest fairy tale, the finest pantomime she had ever witnessed at the theatre, had never realised. Pen was pleased with her pleasure, and pressed to his side the little hand which clung so kindly to him. “What would I not give for a little of this pleasure?” said the blase young man.
“Your purse, Pendennis, me dear boy,” said the Captain’s voice behind him. “Will ye count it? it’s all roight—no—ye thrust in old Jack Costigan (he thrusts me, ye see, madam). Ye’ve been me preserver, Pen (I’ve known um since choildhood, Mrs. Bolton; he’s the proproietor of Fairoaks Castle, and many’s the cooper of clart I’ve dthrunk there with the first nobilitee of his neetive countee),—Mr. Pendennis, ye’ve been me preserver, and of thank ye; me daughtther will thank ye;—Mr. Simpson, your humble servant sir.”
If Pen was magnificent in his courtesy to the ladies, what was his splendour in comparison to Captain Costigan’s bowing here and there, and crying bravo to the singers?
A man, descended like Costigan, from a long line of Hibernian kings, chieftains, and other magnates and sheriffs of the county, had of course too much dignity and self-respect to walk arrum-in-arrum (as the Captain phrased it) with a lady who occasionally swept his room out, and cooked his mutton-chops. In the course of their journey from Shepherd’s Inn to Vauxhall Gardens, Captain Costigan had walked by the side of the two ladies, in a patronising and affable manner pointing out to them the edifices worthy of note, and discoorsing, according to his wont, about other cities and countries which he had visited, and the people of rank and fashion with whom he had the honour of an acquaintance. Nor could it be expected, nor, indeed, did Mrs. Bolton expect, that, arrived in the Royal property, and strongly illuminated by the flare of the twenty thousand additional lamps, the Captain could relax from his dignity, and give an arm to a lady who was, in fact, little better than a housekeeper or charwoman.
But Pen, on his part, had no such scruples. Miss Fanny Bolton did not make his bed nor sweep his chambers; and he did not choose to let go his pretty little partner. As for Fanny, her colour heightened, and her bright eyes shone the brighter with pleasure, as she leaned for protection on the arm of such a fine gentleman as Mr. Pen. And she looked at numbers of other ladies in the place, and at scores of other gentlemen under whose protection they were walking here and there; and she thought that her gentleman was handsomer and grander-looking than any other gent in the place. Of course there were votaries of pleasure of all ranks there—rakish young surgeons, fast young clerks and commercialists, occasional dandies of the Guard regiments, and the rest. Old Lord Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle Caracoline, who had been riding in the ring; and who talked her native French very loud, and used idiomatic expressions of exceeding strength as she walked about, leaning on the arm of his lordship.
Colchicum was in attendance upon Mademoiselle Carandine, little Tom Tufthunt was in attendance upon Lord Colchicum; and rather pleased, too, with his position. When Don Juan scalles the wall, there’s never a want of a Leporello to hold the ladder. Tom Tufthunt was quite happy to act as friend to the elderly viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the Viscount’s party, that noble poor only gave Arthur a passing leer of recognition as his lordship’s eyes passed from Pen’s face under the bonnet of Pen’s companion. But Tom Tufthunt wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, “How are you, old boy?” and looked extremely knowing at the godfather of this history.
“That is the great rider at Astley’s; I have seen her there,” Miss Bolton said, looking after Mademoiselle Caracoline; “and who is that old man? is it not the gentleman in the ring!”
“That is Lord Viscount Colchicum, Miss Fanny,” said Pen with an air of protection. He meant no harm; he was pleased to patronise the young girl, and he was not displeased that she should be so pretty, and that she should be hanging upon his arm, and that yonder elderly Don Juan should have seen her there.
Fanny was very pretty; her eyes were dark and brilliant, her teeth were like little pearls; her mouth was almost as red as Mademoiselle Caracoline’s when the latter had put on her vermilion. And what a difference there was between the one’s voice and the other’s, between the girl’s laugh and the woman’s! It was only very lately, indeed, that Fanny, when looking in the little glass over the Bows-Costigan mantelpiece as she was dusting it had begun to suspect that she was a beauty. But a year ago, she was a clumsy, gawky girl, at whom her father sneered, and of whom the girls at the day-school (Miss Minifer’s, Newcastle Street, Strand; Miss M., the younger sister, took the leading business at the Norwich circuit in 182—; and she herself had played for two seasons with some credit T. R. E. O., T. R. S. W., until she fell down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at Fanny’s school, we say, took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature as long as she remained under Miss Minifer’s instruction. And it was unremarked and almost unseen in the porter’s dark lodge of Shepherd’s Inn, that this little flower bloomed into beauty.
So this young person hung upon Mr. Pen’s arm, and they paced the gardens together. Empty as London was, there were still some two millions of people left lingering about it, and amongst them, one or two of the acquaintances of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
Amongst them, silent and alone, pale, with his hands in his pockets, and a rueful nod of the head to Arthur as they met, passed Henry Foker, Esq. Young Henry was trying to ease his mind by moving from place to place, and from excitement to excitement. But he thought about Blanche as he sauntered in the dark walks; he thought about Blanche as he looked at the devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller about her, and was disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in love with a dark lady who would make him happy; and at the concert, though Mr. Momus sang his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most astonishing riddles, never did a kind smile come to visit Foker’s lips. In fact, he never heard Mr. Momus at all.
Pen and Miss Bolton were hard by listening to the same concert, and the latter remarked, and Pen laughed at Mr. Foker’s woebegone face.
Fanny asked what it was that made that odd-looking little man so dismal? “I think he is crossed in love!” Pen, said. “Isn’t that enough to make any man dismal, Fanny?” And he looked down at her, splendidly protecting her, like Egmont at Clara in Goethe’s play, or Leicester at Amy in Scott’s novel.
“Crossed in love is he? poor gentleman,” said Fanny with a sigh, and her eyes turned round towards him with no little kindness and pity—but Harry did not see the beautiful dark eyes.
“How dy do, Mr. Pendennis!”—a voice broke in here—it was that of a young man in a large white coat with a red neckcloth, over which a dingy shirt-collar was turned so as to exhibit a dubious neck—with a large pin of bullion or other metal, and an imaginative waistcoat with exceedingly fanciful glass buttons, and trousers that cried with a loud voice, “Come look at me and see how cheap and tawdry I am; my master, what a dirty buck!” and a little stick in one pocket of his coat, and a lady in pink satin on the other arm—“How dy do—Forget me, I dare say? Huxter,—Clavering.”
“How do you do, Mr. Huxter,” the Prince of Fairoaks said in his most princely manner—“I hope you are very well.”
“Pretty bobbish, thanky.”—And Mr. Huxter wagged his head. “I say, Pendennis, you’ve been coming it uncommon strong since we had the row at Wapshot’s, don’t you remember. Great author, hay? Go about with the swells. Saw your name in the Morning Post. I suppose you’re too much of a swell to come and have a bit of supper with an old friend?—Charterhouse Lane to-morrow night,—some devilish good fellows from Bartholomew’s, and some stunning gin-punch. Here’s my card.” And with this Mr. Huxter released his hand from the pocket where his cane was, and pulling off the top of his card-case with his teeth produced thence a visiting ticket, which he handed to Pen.
“You are exceedingly kind, I am sure,” said Pen: “but I regret that I have an engagement which will take me out of town to-morrow night.” And the Marquis of Fairoaks, wondering that such a creature as this could have the audacity to give him a card, put Mr. Huxter’s card into his waistcoat pocket with a lofty courtesy. Possibly Mr. Samuel Huxter was not aware that there was any great social difference between Mr. Arthur Pendennis and himself. Mr. Huxter’s father was a surgeon and apothecary at Clavering just as Mr. Pendennis’s papa had been a surgeon and apothecary at Bath. But the impudence of some men is beyond all calculation.
“Well, old fellow, never mind,” said Mr. Huxter, who, always frank and familiar, was from vinous excitement even more affable than usual. “If ever you are passing, look up our place, I’m mostly at home Saturdays; and there’s generally a cheese cupboard. Ta, ta.—There’s the bell for the fireworks ringing. Come along, Mary.” And he set off running with the rest of the crowd in the direction of the fireworks.
So did Pen presently, when this agreeable youth was out of sight, begin to run with his little companion; Mrs. Bolton following after them, with Captain Costigan at her side. But the Captain was too majestic and dignified in his movements to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued his course with the usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps, so that he and his companion were speedily distanced by Pen and Miss Fanny.
Perhaps Arthur forgot, or perhaps he did not choose to remember, that the elder couple had no money in their pockets, as had been proved by their adventure at the entrance of the Gardens; howbeit, Pen paid a couple of shillings for himself and his partner, and with her hanging close on his arm, scaled the staircase which leads to the firework gallery. The Captain and mamma might have followed them if they liked, but Arthur and Fanny were too busy to look back. People were pushing and squeezing there beside and behind them. One eager individual rushed by Fanny, and elbowed her so, that she fell back with a little cry, upon which, of course, Arthur caught her adroitly in his arms, and, just for protection, kept her so defended, until they mounted the stair, and took their places.
Poor Foker sate alone on one of the highest benches, his face illuminated by the fireworks, or in their absence by the moon. Arthur saw him, and laughed, but did not occupy himself about his friend much. He was engaged with Fanny. How she wondered! how happy she was! how she cried O, O, O, as the rockets soared into the air, and showered down in azure, and emerald, and vermilion! As these wonders blazed and disappeared before her, the little girl thrilled and trembled with delight at Arthur’s side—her hand was under his arm still, he felt it pressing him as she looked up delighted.
“How beautiful they are, sir!” she cried.
“Don’t call me sir, Fanny,” Arthur said.
A quick blush rushed up into the girl’s face. “What shall I call you?” she said, in a low voice, sweet and tremulous. “What would you wish me to say, sir?”
“Again, Fanny! Well, I forgot; it is best so, my dear,” Pendennis said, very kindly and gently. “I may call you Fanny?”
“Oh yes!” she said, and the little hand pressed his arm once more very eagerly, and the girl clung to him so that he could feel her heart beating on his shoulder.
“I may call you Fanny, because you are a young girl, and a good girl, Fanny, and I am an old gentleman. But you mustn’t call me anything but sir, or Mr. Pendennis, if you like; for we live in very different stations, Fanny; and don’t think I speak unkindly; and—and why do you take your hand away, Fanny? Are you afraid of me? Do you think I would hurt you? Not for all the world, my dear little girl. And—and look how beautiful the moon and stars are, and how calmly they shine when the rockets have gone out, and the noisy wheels have done hissing and blazing. When I came here to-night I did not think I should have had such a pretty little companion to sit by my side, and see these fine fireworks. You must know I live by myself, and work very hard. I write in books and newspapers, Fanny; and I quite tired out, and was expected to sit alone all night; and—don’t cry, my dear, dear, little girl.” Here Pen broke out, rapidly putting an end to the calm oration which he had begun to deliver; for the sight of a woman’s tears always put his nerves in a quiver, and he began forthwith to coax her and soothe her, and to utter a hundred and twenty little ejaculations of pity and sympathy, which need not be repeated here, because they would be absurd in print. So would a mother’s talk to a child be absurd in print; so would a lover’s to his bride. That sweet artless poetry bears no translation; and is too subtle for grammarians’ clumsy definitions. You have but the same four letters to describe the salute which you perform on your grandmother’s forehead, and that which you bestow on the sacred cheek of your mistress; but the same four letters, and not one of them a labial. Do we mean to hint that r. Arthur Pendennis made any use of the monosyllable in question? Not so. In the first place, it was dark: the fireworks were over, and nobody could see him; secondly, he was not a man to have this kind of secret, and tell it; thirdly and lastly, let the honest fellow who has kissed a pretty girl, say what would have been his own conduct in such a delicate juncture?
Well, the truth is, that however you may suspect him, and whatever you would have done under the circumstances, or Mr. Pen would have liked to do, he behaved honestly, and like a man. “I will not play with this little girl’s heart,” he said within himself, “and forget my own or her honour. She seems to have a great deal of dangerous and rather contagious sensibility, and I am very glad the fireworks are over, and that I can take her back to her mother. Come along, Fanny; mind the steps, and lean on me. Don’t stumble, you heedless little thing; this is the way, and there is your mamma at the door.”
And there, indeed, Mrs. Bolton was, unquiet in spirit, and grasping her umbrella. She seized Fanny with maternal fierceness and eagerness, and uttered some rapid abuse to the girl in an undertone. The expression in Captain Costigan’s eye—standing behind the matron and winking at Pendennis from under his hat—was, I am bound to say, indefinably humorous.
It was so much so, that Pen could not refrain from bursting into a laugh. “You should have taken my arm, Mrs. Bolton,” he said, offering it. “I am very glad to bring Miss Fanny back quite safe to you. We thought you would have followed us up into the gallery. We enjoyed the fireworks, didn’t we?”
“Oh yes!” said Miss Fanny, with rather a demure look.
“And the bouquet was magnificent,” said Pen. “And it is ten hours since I had anything to eat, ladies; and I wish you would permit me to invite you to supper.”
“Dad,” said Costigan, “I’d loike a snack to; only I forgawt me purse, or I should have invoited these leedies to a collection.”
Mrs. Bolton with considerable asperity said, She ad an eadache, and would much rather go ome.
“A lobster salad is the best thing in the world for a headache,” Pen said gallantly, “and a glass of wine I’m sure will do you good. Come, Mrs. Bolton, be kind to me and oblige me. I shan’t have the heart to sup without you, and upon my word I have had no dinner. Give me your arm: give me the umbrella. Costigan, I’m sure you’ll take care of Miss Fanny; and I shall think Mrs. Bolton angry with me, unless she will favour me with her society. And we will all sup quietly, and go back in a cab together.”
The cab, the lobster salad, the frank and good-humoured look of Pendennis, as he smilingly invited the worthy matron, subdued her suspicions and her anger. Since he would be so obliging, she thought she could take a little bit of lobster, and so they all marched away to a box; and Costigan called for a waither with such a loud and belligerent voice, as caused one of those officials instantly to run to him.
The carte was examined on the wall, and Fanny was asked to choose her favourite dish; upon which the young creature said she was fond of lobster, too, but also owned to a partiality for raspberry tart. This delicacy was provided by Pen, and a bottle of the most frisky champagne was moreover ordered for the delight of the ladies. Little Fanny drank this;—what other sweet intoxication had she not drunk in the course of the night?
When the supper, which was very brisk and gay, was over, and Captain Costigan and Mrs. Bolton had partaken of some of the rack-punch that is so fragrant at Vauxhall, the bill was called and discharged by Pen with great generosity,—“loike a foin young English gentleman of th’ olden toime, be Jove,” Costigan enthusiastically remarked. And as, when they went out of the box, he stepped forward and gave Mrs. Bolton his arm, Fanny fell to Pen’s lot, and the young people walked away in high good-humour together, in the wake of their seniors.
The champagne and the rack-punch, though taken in moderation by all persons, except perhaps poor Cos, who lurched ever so little in his gait, had set them in high spirits and good-humour, so that Fanny began to skip and move her brisk little feet in time to the band, which was playing waltzes and galops for the dancers. As they came up to the dancing, the music and Fanny’s feet seemed to go quicker together—she seemed to spring, as if naturally, from the ground, and as if she required repression to keep her there.
“Shouldn’t you like a turn?” said the Prince of Fairoaks. “What fun it would be! Mrs. Bolton, ma’am, do let me take her once round.” Upon which Mr. Costigan said, “Off wid you!” and Mrs. Bolton not refusing (indeed, she was an old war-horse, and would have liked, at the trumpet’s sound, to have entered the arena herself), Fanny’s shawl was off her back in a minute, and she and Arthur were whirling round in a waltz in the midst of a great deal of queer, but exceedingly joyful company.
Pen had no mishap this time with little Fanny, as he had with Miss Blanche in old days,—at least, there was no mishap of his making. The pair danced away with great agility and contentment,—first a waltz, then a galop, then a waltz again, until, in the second waltz, they were bumped by another couple who had joined the Terpsichorean choir. This was Mr. Huxter and his pink satin young friend, of whom we have already had a glimpse.
Mr. Huxter very probably had been also partaking of supper, for he was even more excited now than at the time when he had previously claimed Pen’s acquaintance; and, having run against Arthur and his partner, and nearly knocked them down, this amiable gentleman of course began to abuse the people whom he had injured, and broke out into a volley of slang against the unoffending couple. “Now then, stoopid! Don’t keep the ground if you can’t dance, old Slow Coach!” the young surgeon roared out (using, at the same time, other expressions far more emphatic), and was joined in his abuse by the shrill language and laughter of his partner; to the interruption of the ball, the terror of poor little Fanny, and the immense indignation of Pen.
Arthur was furious; and not so angry at the quarrel as at the shame attending it. A battle with a fellow like that! A row in a public garden, and with a porter’s daughter on his arm! What a position for Arthur Pendennis! He drew poor little Fanny hastily away from the dancers to her mother, and wished that lady, and Costigan, and poor Fanny underground, rather than there, in his companionship, and under his protection.
When Huxter commenced his attack, that free-spoken young gentleman had not seen who was his opponent; and directly he was aware that it was Arthur whom he had insulted, he began to make apologies. “Hold your stoopid tongue, Mary,” he said to his partner. “It’s an old friend and crony at home. I beg pardon, Pendennis; wasn’t aware it was you, old boy.” Mr. Huxter had been one of the boys of the Clavering School, who had been present at a combat which has been mentioned in the early part of this story, when young Pen knocked down the biggest champion of the academy, and Huxter knew that it was dangerous to quarrel with Arthur.
His apologies were as odious to the other as his abuse had been. Pen stopped his tipsy remonstrance, by telling him to hold his tongue, and desiring him not to use his (Pendennis’s) name in that place or any other; and he walked out of the gardens with a titter behind him from the crowd, every one of whom he would have liked to massacre for having been witness to the degrading broil. He walked out of the gardens, quite forgetting poor little Fanny, who came trembling behind him with her mother and the stately Costigan.
He was brought back to himself by a word from the Captain, who touched him on the shoulder just as they were passing the inner gate.
“There’s no ray-admittance except ye pay again,” the Captain said. “Hadn’t I better go back and take the fellow your message?”
Pen burst out laughing. “Take him a message! Do you think I would fight with such a fellow as that?” he asked.
“No, no! Don’t, don’t?” cried out little Fanny. “How can you be so wicked, Captain Costigan?” The Captain muttered something about honour, and winked knowingly at Pen, but Arthur said gallantly, “No, Fanny, don’t be frightened. It was my fault to have danced in such a place,—I beg your padon to have asked you to dance there.” And he gave her his arm once more, and called a cab, and put his three friends into it.
He was about to pay the driver, and to take another carriage for himself, when little Fanny, still alarmed, put her little hand out, and caught him by the coat, and implored him and besought him to come in.
“Will nothing satisfy you,” said Pen, in great good-humour, “that I am not going back to fight him? Well, I will come home with you. Drive to Shepherd’s Inn, cab.” The cab drove to its destination. Arthur was immensely pleased by the girl’s solicitude about him: her tender terrors quite made him forget his previous annoyance.
Pen put the ladies into their lodge, having shaken hands kindly with both of them; and the Captain again whispered to him that he would see um in the morning if he was inclined, and take his message to that “scounthrel.” But the Captain was in his usual condition when he made the proposal; and Pen was perfectly sure that neither he nor Mr. Huxter, when they awoke, would remember anything about the dispute.
XLVIII. A Visit of Politeness
Costigan never roused Pen from his slumbers; there was no hostile message from Mr. Huxter to disturb him; and when Pen woke, it was with a brisker and more lively feeling than ordinarily attends that moment in the day of the tired and blase London man. A City man wakes up to care and consols, and the thoughts of ’Change and the counting-house take possession of him as soon as sleep flies from under his night-cap; a lawyer rouses himself with the early morning to think of the case that will take him all his day to work upon, and the inevitable attorney to whom he has promised his papers ere night. Which of us has not his anxiety instantly present when his eyes are opened, to it and to the world, after his night’s sleep? Kind strengthener that enables us to face the day’s task with renewed heart! Beautiful ordinance of Providence that creates rest as it awards labour!
Mr. Pendennis’s labour, or rather his disposition, was of that sort that his daily occupations did not much interest him, for the excitement of literary composition pretty soon subsides with the hired labourer, and the delight of seeing one’s-self in print only extends to the first two or three appearances in the magazine or newspaper page. Pegasus put into harness, and obliged to run a stage every day, is as prosaic as any other hack, and won’t work without his whip or his feed of corn. So, indeed, Mr. Arthur performed his work at the Pall Mall Gazette (and since his success as a novelist with an increased salary), but without the least enthusiasm, doing his best or pretty nearly, and sometimes writing ill and sometimes well. He was a literary hack, naturally fast in pace, and brilliant in action.
Neither did society, or that portion which he saw, excite or amuse him over much. In spite of his brag and boast to the contrary, he was too young as yet for women’s society, which probably can only be had in perfection when a man has ceased to think about his own person, and has given up all designs of being a conqueror of ladies; he was too young to be admitted as an equal amongst men who had made their mark in the world, and of whose conversation he could scarcely as yet expect to be more than a listener. And he was too old for the men of pleasure of his own age; too much a man of pleasure for the men of business; destinied in a word to be a good deal alone. Fate awards this lot of solitude to many a man; and many like it from taste, as many without difficulty bear it. Pendennis, in reality, suffered it very equanimously; but in words, and according to his wont, grumbled over it not a little.
“What a nice little artless creature that was,” Mr. Pen thought at the very instant of waking after the Vauxhall affair; “what a pretty natural manner she has; how much pleasanter than the minauderies of the young ladies in the ballrooms” (and here he recalled to himself some instances of what he could not help seeing was the artful simplicity of Miss Blanche, and some of the stupid graces of other young ladies in the polite world); “who could have thought that such a pretty rose could grow in a porter’s lodge, or bloom in that dismal old flower-pot of a Shepherd’s Inn? So she learns to sing from old Bows? If her singing voice is as sweet as her speaking voice, it must be pretty. I like those low voilees voices. ‘What would you like me to call you?’ indeed, poor little Fanny! It went to my heart to adopt the grand air with her and tell her to call me, ‘Sir.’ But we’ll have no nonsense of that sort—no Faust and Margaret business for me. That old Bows! So he teaches her to sing, does he? He’s a dear old fellow, old Bows: a gentleman in those old clothes: a philosopher, and with a kind heart, too. How good he was to me in the Fotheringay business. He, too, has had his griefs and his sorrows. I must cultivate old Bows. A man ought to see people of all sorts. I am getting tired of genteel society. Besides, there’s nobody in town. Yes, I’ll go and see Bows, and Costigan too; what a rich character! begad, I’ll study him, and put him into a book.” In this way our young anthropologist talked with himself, and as Saturday was the holiday of the week, the Pall Mall Gazette making its appearance upon that day, and the contributors to that journal having no further calls upon their brains or ink-bottles, Mr. Pendennis determined he would take advantage of his leisure, and pay a visit to Shepherd’s Inn—of course to see old Bows.
The truth is, that if Arthur had been the most determined roue and artful Lovelace who ever set about deceiving a young girl, he could hardly have adopted better means for fascinating and overcoming poor little Fanny Bolton than those which he had employed on the previous night. His dandified protecting air, his conceit, generosity, and good-humour, the very sense of good and honesty which had enabled him to check the tremulous advances of the young creature, and not to take advantage of that little fluttering sensibility,—his faults and his virtues at once contributed to make her admire him; and if we could peep into Fanny’s bed (which she shared in a cupboard, along with those two little sisters to whom we have seen Mr. Costigan administering gingerbread and apples), we should find the poor little maid tossing upon her mattress, to the great disturbance of its other two occupants, and thinking over all the delights and events of that delightful, eventful night, and all the words, looks, and actions of Arthur, its splendid hero. Many novels had Fanny read, in secret and at home, in three volumes and in numbers. Periodical literature had not reached the height which it has attained subsequently, and the girls of Fanny’s generation were not enabled to purchase sixteen pages of excitement for a penny, rich with histories of crime, murder, oppressed virtue, and the heartless seductions of the aristocracy; but she had had the benefit of the circulating library which, in conjunction with her school and a small brandy-ball and millinery business, Miss Minifer kept,—and Arthur appeared to her at once as the type and realisation of all the heroes of all those darling greasy volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt-studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The Prince had appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image traversed constantly her restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the blue light of his eyes, the generous look, half love, half pity,—the manly protecting smile, the frank, winning laughter,—all these were repeated in the girl’s fond memory. She felt still his arm encircling her, and saw him smiling so grand as he filled up that delicious glass of champagne. And then she thought of the girls, her friends, who used to sneer at her—of Emma Baker, who was so proud, forsooth, because she was engaged to a cheesemonger, in a white apron, near Clare Market; and of Betsy Rodgers, who make such a to-do about her young man—an attorney’s clerk, indeed, that went about with a bag!
So that, at about two o’clock in the afternoon—the Bolton family having concluded their dinner (and Mr. B., who besides his place of porter of the Inn, was in the employ of Messrs. Tressler, the eminent undertakers of the Strand, being absent in the country with the Countess of Estrich’s hearse), when a gentleman in a white hat and white trousers made his appearance under the Inn archway, and stopped at the porter’s wicket, Fanny was not in the least surprised, only delightful, only happy, and blushing beyond all measure. She knew it could be no other than He. She knew He’d come. There he was; there was His Royal Highness beaming upon her from the gate. She called to her mother, who was busy in the upper apartment, “Mamma, mamma,” and ran to the wicket at once, and opened it, pushing aside the other children. How she blushed as she gave her hand to him! How affably he took off his white hat as he came in; the children staring up at him! He asked Mrs. Bolton if she had slept well, after the fatigues of the night, and hoped she had no headache; and he said that as he was going that way, he could not pass the door without asking news of his little partner.
Mrs. Bolton was perhaps rather shy and suspicious about these advances; but Mr. Pen’s good-humour was inexhaustible, he could not see that he was unwelcome. He looked about the premises for a seat, and none being disengaged, for a dish-cover was on one, a workbox on the other, and so forth, he took one of the children’s chairs, and perched himself upon that uncomfortable eminence. At this, the children began laughing, the child Fanny louder than all—at least, she was more amused than any of them, and amazed at His Royal Highness’s condescension. He to sit down in that chair—that little child’s chair!—Many and many a time after, she regarded it: haven’t we almost all, such furniture in our rooms, that our fancy peoples with dear figures, that our memory fills with sweet smiling faces, which may never look on us more?
So Pen sate down and talked away with great volubility to Mrs. Bolton. He asked about the undertaking business, and how many mutes went down with Lady Estrich’s remains; and about the Inn, and who lived there. He seemed very much interested about Mr. Campion’s cab and horse, and had met that gentleman in society. He thought he should like shares in the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum; did Mrs. Bolton do for those chambers? Were there any chambers to let in the Inn? It was better than the Temple: he should like to come to live in Shepherd’s Inn. As for Captain Strong, and—Colonel Altamont—was his name? he was deeply interested in them too. The Captain was an old friend at home. He had dined with him at chambers here, before the Colonel came to live with him. What sort of man was the Colonel? Wasn’t he a stout man, with a large quantity of jewellery, and a wig and large black whiskers—very black (here Pen was immensely waggish, and caused hysteric giggles of delight from the ladies)—very black indeed; in fact, blue black; that is to say, a rich greenish purple? That was the man; he had met him, too, at Sir Fr—— in Society.
“Oh, we know,” said the ladies, “Sir F—— is Sir F. Clavering he’s often here: two or three times a week with the Captain. My little boy has been out for bill-stamps for him. O Lor! I beg pardon, I shouldn’t have mentioned no secrets,” Mrs. Bolton blurted out, being talked perfectly into good-nature by this time. “But we know you to be a gentleman, Mr. Pendennis, for I’m sure you have shown that you can beayve as such. Hasn’t Mr. Pendennis, Fanny?”
Fanny loved her mother for that speech. She cast up her dark eyes to the low ceiling and said, “Oh, that he has, I’m sure, Ma,” with a voice full of feeling.
Pen was rather curious about the bill-stamps, and concerning the transactions in Strong’s chambers. And he asked, when Altamont came and joined the Chevalier, whether he too was out for bill-stamps, who he was, whether he saw many people, and so forth. These questions, put with considerable adroitness by Pen who was interested about Sir Francis Clavering’s doings from private motives of his own, were artlessly answered by Mrs. Bolton, and to the utmost of her knowledge and ability, which, in truth, were not very great.
These questions answered, and Pen being at a loss for more, luckily recollected his privilege as a member of the Press, and asked the ladies whether they would like any orders for the play? The play was their delight, as it is almost always the delight of every theatrical person. When Bolton was away professionally (it appeared that of late the porter of Shepherd’s Inn had taken a serious turn, drank a good deal, and otherwise made himself unpleasant to the ladies of his family), they would like of all things to slip out and go to the theatre—little Barney, their son, keeping the lodge; and Mr. Pendennis’s most generous and most genteel compliment of orders was received with boundless gratitude by both mother and daughter.
Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure: her faced beamed with it. She looked and nodded, and laughed at her mamma, who nodded and laughed in her turn. Mrs. Bolton was not superannuated for pleasure yet, or by any means too old for admiration, she thought. And very likely Mr. Pendennis, in his conversation with her, had insinuated some compliments, or shaped his talk so as to please her. At first against Pen, and suspicious of him, she was his partisan now, and almost as enthusiastic about him as her daughter. When two women get together to like a man, they help each other on—each pushes the other forward—and the second, out of sheer sympathy, becomes as eager as the principal:—at least, so it is said by philosophers who have examined this science.
So the offer of the play-tickets, and other pleasantries; put all parties into perfect good-humour, except for one brief moment, when one of the younger children, hearing the name of ‘Astley’s’ pronounced, came forward and stated that she should like very much to go, too; on which, Fanny said, “Don’t bother!” rather sharply; and Mamma said, “Git-long, Betsy-Jane, do now, and play in the court:” so that the two little ones, namely, Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann, went away in their little innocent pinafores, and disported in the courtyard on the smooth gravel, round about the statue of Shepherd the Great.
And here, as they were playing, they very possibly communicated with an old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn; for while Pen was making himself agreeable to the ladies at the lodge, who were laughing delighted at his sallies, an old gentleman passed under the archway from the Inn-square, and came and looked in at the door of the lodge.
He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated upon a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with Mrs. Bolton and her daughter.
“What! Mr. Bows? How d’you do, Bows?” cried out Pen, in a cheery, loud voice. “I was coming to see you, and was asking your address of these ladies.”
“You were coming to see me, were you, sir?” Bows said, and came in with a sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. “Plague on that old man!” somebody thought in the room: and so, perhaps, some one else besides her.
XLIX. In Shepherd’s Inn
Our friend Pen said “How d’ye do, Mr. Bows,” in a loud cheery voice on perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in a dashing off-hand manner, yet you could have seen a blush upon Arthur’s face (answered by Fanny, whose cheek straightway threw out a similar fluttering red signal); and after Bows and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former had ironically accepted the other’s assertion that he was about to pay Mr. Costigan’s chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather guilty silence in the company, which Pen presently tried to dispel by making a great rattling noise. The silence of course departed at Mr. Arthur’s noise, but the gloom remained and deepened, as the darkness does in a vault if you light up a single taper in it. Pendennis tried to describe, in a jocular manner, the transactions of the previous night, and attempted to give an imitation of Costigan vainly expostulating with the check-taker at Vauxhall. It was not a good imitation. What stranger can imitate that perfection? Nobody laughed. Mrs. Bolton did not in the least understand what part Mr. Pendennis was performing, and whether it was the check-taker or the Captain he was taking off. Fanny wore an alarmed face, and tried a timid giggle; old Mr. Bows looked as glum as when he fiddled in the orchestra, or played a difficult piece upon the old piano at the Back Kitchen. Pen felt that his story was a failure; his voice sank and dwindled away dismally at the end of it—flickered, and went out; and it was all dark again. You could hear the ticket-porter, who lolls about Shepherd’s Inn, as he passed on the flags under the archway: the clink of his boot-heels was noted by everybody.
“You were coming to see me, sir,” Mr. Bows said. “Won’t you have the kindness to walk up to my chambers with me? You do them a great honour, I am sure. They are rather high up; but——”
“Oh! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd’s Inn is twice as cheerful as Lamb Court,” Mr. Pendennis broke in.
“I knew that you had third-floor apartments,” Mr. Bows said; “and was going to say—you will please not take my remark as discourteous—that the air up three pair of stairs is wholesomer for gentlemen, than the air of a porter’s lodge.”
“Sir!” said Pen, whose candle flamed up again in his wrath, and who was disposed to be as quarrelsome as men are when they are in the wrong. “Will you permit me to choose my society without—?”
“You were so polite as to say that you were about to honour my umble domicile with a visit,” Mr. Bows said, with his sad voice. “Shall I show you the way? Mr. Pendennis and I are old friends, Mrs. Bolton—very old acquaintances; and at the earliest dawn of his life we crossed each other.”
The old man pointed towards the door with a trembling finger, and a hat in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly theatrical; so were his words when he spoke somewhat artificial, and chosen from the vocabulary which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of the orators before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or masquerading, as Pen knew very well, though he was disposed to pooh-pooh the old fellow’s melodramatic airs. “Come along, sir,” he said, “as you are so very pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good day. Good-bye, Miss Fanny; I shall always think of our night at Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure I will remember the theatre tickets.” And he took her hand, pressed it, was pressed by it, and was gone.
“What a nice young man, to be sure!” cried Mrs. Bolton.
“D’you think so, ma?” said Fanny.
“I was a-thinkin who he was like. When I was at the Wells with Mrs. Serle,” Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through the window-curtain after Pen, as he went up the court with Bows, “there was a young gentleman from the city, that used to come in a tilbry, in a white at, the very image of him, only his whiskers was black, and Mr. P.’s is red.”
“Law, ma! they are a most beautiful hawburn,” Fanny said.
“He used to come for Emly Budd, who danced Columbine in ‘Arleykin Ornpipe, or the Battle of Navarino,’ when Miss De la Bosky was took ill—a pretty dancer, and a fine stage figure of a woman—and he was a great sugar-baker in the city, with a country ouse at Omerton; and he used to drive her in the tilbry down Goswell Street Road; and one day they drove and was married at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Smithfield, where they had their bands read quite private; and she now keeps her carriage, and I sor her name in the paper as patroness of the Manshing-House Ball for the Washywomen’s Asylum. And look at Lady Mirabel—capting Costigan’s daughter—she was profeshnl, as all very well know.” Thus, and more to this purpose, Mrs. Bolton spoke, now peeping through the window-curtain, now cleaning the mugs and plates, and consigning them to their place in the corner cupboard; and finishing her speech as she and Fanny shook out and folded up the dinner-cloth between them, and restored it to its drawer in the table.
Although Costigan had once before been made pretty accurately to understand what Pen’s pecuniary means and expectations were, I suppose Cos had forgotten the information acquired at Chatteris years ago, or had been induced by his natural enthusiasm to exaggerate his friend’s income. He had described Fairoaks Park in the most glowing terms to Mrs. Bolton, on the preceding evening, as he was walking about with her during Pen’s little escapade with Fanny, had dilated upon the enormous wealth of Pen’s famous uncle, the Major, and shown an intimate acquaintance with Arthur’s funded and landed property. Very likely Mrs. Bolton, in her wisdom, had speculated upon these matters during the night; and had had visions of Fanny driving in her carriage, like Mrs. Bolton’s old comrade, the dancer of Sadler’s Wells.
In the last operation of table-cloth folding, these two foolish women, of necessity, came close together; and as Fanny took the cloth and gave it the last fold, her mother put her finger under the young girl’s chin, and kissed her. Again the red signal flew out, and fluttered on Fanny’s cheek. What did it mean? It was not alarm this time. It was pleasure which caused the poor little Fanny to blush so. Poor little Fanny! What? is love sin? that it is so pleasant at the beginning, and so bitter at the end?
After the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that she was a-goin out upon business, and that Fanny must keep the lodge; which Fanny, after a very faint objection indeed, consented to do. So Mrs. Bolton took her bonnet and market-basket, and departed; and the instant she was gone, Fanny went and sate by the window which commanded Bows’s door, and never once took her eyes away from that quarter of Shepherd’s Inn.
Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of the place, and making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton’s collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She noticed nothing but Bows’s door.
At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. He had come out. He would pass the door again. But her poor little countenance fell in an instant more. Pendennis, indeed, came out; but Bows followed after him. They passed under the archway together. He only took off his hat, and bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak.
In three or four minutes—Fanny did not know how long, but she looked furiously at him when he came into the lodge—Bows returned alone, and entered into the porter’s room.
“Where’s your Ma, dear?” he said to Fanny.
“I don’t know,” Fanny said, with an angry toss. “I don’t follow Ma’s steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows.”
“Am I my mother’s keeper?” Bows said, with his usual melancholy bitterness. “Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I’ve brought a cake for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other who can read them the next best.”
When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went off to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work, and pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great excitement and anger, as she plied her needle. Bows sate so that he could command the entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person whom, perhaps, he expected to see, never made his appearance again. And Mrs. Bolton came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in place of the person whom she had expected to see. The reader perhaps can guess what was his name?
The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to the apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of the Milesian kings, was not particularly satisfactory to either party. Pen was sulky. If Bows had anything on his mind, he did not care to deliver himself of his thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan, who remained in the apartment during the whole of Pen’s visit; having quitted his bedchamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the arrival of that gentleman. We have witnessed the deshabille of Major Pendennis: will any man wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero, Costigan? It would seem that the Captain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto-of-whisky. A rich odour of that delicious perfume breathed from out him, as he held out the grasp of cordiality to his visitor. The hand which performed that grasp shook wofully: it was a wonder how it could hold the razor with which the poor gentleman daily operated on his chin.
Bows’s room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade’s was disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. His books and manuscript music were trimly arranged upon shelves. A lithographed portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. Haller, with the actress’s sprawling signature at the corner, hung faithfully over the old gentleman’s bed. Lady Mirabel wrote much better than Miss Fotheringay had been able to do. Her Ladyship had laboured assiduously to acquire the art of penmanship since her marriage; and, in a common note of invitation or acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows loved the old handwriting best, though; the fair artist’s earlier manner. He had but one specimen of the new style, a note in reply to a song composed and dedicated to Lady Mirabel, by her most humble servant Robert Bows; and which document was treasured in his desk amongst his other state papers. He was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg; or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy in the caresses, or agitated by the illness of a poodle. But it was hard upon Bows, and grating to his feelings as a man and a sentimentalist, that he should find Pen again upon his track, and in pursuit of this little Fanny.
Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his company was perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and Bows, and that the visit of the former was intended for himself. He expressed himself greatly pleased with that mark of poloightness and promised, in his own mind, that he would repay that obligation at least—which was not the only debt which the Captain owed in life—by several visits to his young friend. He entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of ten days previous; for Pen, in his quality of Journalist, remembered to have seen some of the Captain’s opinions in the Sporting and Theatrical Newspaper, which was Costigan’s oracle. He stated that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were gone to Baden-Baden, and were most pressing in their invitations that he should join them there. Pen replied with great gravity, that he had heard that Baden was very pleasant, and the Grand Duke exceedingly hospitable to English. Costigan answered, that the laws of hospitalitee bekeam a Grand Juke; that he sariously would think about visiting him; and made some remarks upon the splendid festivities at Dublin Castle, when his Excellency the Earl of Portansherry held the Viceraygal Coort there, and of which he, Costigan, had been a humble but pleased spectator. And Pen—as he heard these oft-told well-remembered legends—recollected the time when he had given a sort of credence to them, and had a certain respect for the Captain. Emily and first love, and the little room at Chatteris, and the kind talk with Bows on the bridge, came back to him. He felt quite kindly disposed towards his two old friends; and cordially shook the hands of both of them when he rose to go away.
He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton whilst the Captain was talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other selfish meditations. He only remembered her again as Bows came hobbling down the stairs after him, bent evidently upon following him out of Shepherd’s Inn.
Mr. Bows’s precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of Mr. Arthur Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow’s feeble persecution. Confound him, what does he mean by dogging me? thought Pen. And he burst out laughing when he was in the Strand and by himself, as he thought of the elder’s stratagem. It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps the thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own sense of humour.
He went off to endeavour to banish the thoughts which occupied him, whatever those thoughts might be, and tried various places of amusement with but indifferent success. He struggled up the highest stairs of the Panorama; but when he had arrived, panting at the height of the eminence, Care had come up with him, and was bearing him company. He went to the Club, and wrote a long letter home, exceedingly witty and sarcastic, and in which, if he did not say a single word about Vauxhall and Fanny Bolton, it was because he thought that subject, however interesting to himself, would not be very interesting to his mother and Laura. Nor could the novels or the library table fix his attention, nor the grave and respectable Jawkins (the only man in town), who wished to engage him in conversation; nor any of the amusements which he tried, after flying from Jawkins. He passed a Comic Theatre on his way home, and saw ‘Stunning Farce,’ ‘Roars of Laughter,’ ‘Good Old English Fun and Frolic,’ placarded in vermilion letters on the gate. He went into the pit, and saw the lovely Mrs. Leary, as usual, in a man’s attire; and that eminent buffo actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as a woman. Horseman’s travesty seemed to him a horrid and hideous degradation; Mrs. Leary’s glances and ankles had not the least effect. He laughed again, and bitterly, to himself, as he thought of the effect which she had produced upon him, on the first night of his arrival in London, a short time—what a long long time ago!
L. In or near the Temple Garden
Fashion has long deserted the green and pretty Temple Garden, which in Shakespeare makes York and Lancaster to pluck the innocent white and red roses which became the badges of their bloody wars; and the learned and pleasant writer of the Handbook of London tells us that “the commonest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth a bud” in that smoky air. Not many of the present occupiers of the buildings round about the quarter know or care, very likely, whether or not roses grow there, or pass the old gate, except on their way to chambers. The attorneys’ clerks don’t carry flowers in their bags, or posies under their arms, as they run to the counsel’s chambers—the few lawyers who take constitutional walks think very little about York and Lancaster, especially since the railroad business is over. Only antiquarians and literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with much interest, and fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator with his short face pacing up and down the road; or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next ‘Citizen of the World,’ or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-coloured suit, and a wig that sadly wants the barber’s powder and irons, one sees the Great Doctor step up to him (his Scotch lackey following at the lexicographer’s heels, a little the worse for port wine that they have been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy! Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator are as real to us now as the two doctors and the boozy and faithful Scotchman. The poetical figures live in our memory just as much as the real personages,—and as Mr. Arthur Pendennis was of a romantic and literary turn, by no means addicted to the legal pursuits common in the neighbourhood of the place, we may presume that he was cherishing some such poetical reflections as these, when, upon the evening after the events recorded in the last chapter, the young gentleman chose the Temple Gardens as a place for exercise and meditation.
On the Sunday evening the Temple is commonly calm. The chambers are for the most part vacant: the great lawyers are giving grand dinner-parties at their houses in the Belgravian or Tyburnian districts; the agreeable young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and paying their respects to Mr. Kewsy’s excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine’s accomplished daughters: the uninvited are partaking of the economic joint and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining themselves, and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with Circuit jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at all, except poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making him gruel; or Mr. Toodle, who is an amateur of the flute, and whom you may hear piping solitary from his chambers in the second floor; or young Tiger, the student, from whose open windows comes a great gush of cigar smoke, and at whose door are a quantity of dishes and covers, bearing the insignia of Dicks’ or the Cock. But stop! Whither does Fancy lead us? It is vacation time; and with the exception of Pendennis, nobody is in Chambers at all.
Perhaps it was solitude, then, which drove Pen into the garden; for although he had never before passed the gate, and had looked rather carelessly at the pretty flower-beds, and the groups of pleased citizens sauntering over the trim lawn and the broad gravel-walks by the river, on this evening it happened, as we have said, that the young gentleman, who had dined alone at a tavern in the neighbourhood of the Temple, took a fancy, as he was returning home to his chambers, to take a little walk in the gardens, and enjoy the fresh evening air, and the sight of the shining Thames. After walking for a brief space, and looking at the many peaceful and happy groups round about him, he grew tired of the exercise, and betook himself to one of the summer-houses which flank either end of the main walk, and there modestly seated himself. What were his cogitations? The evening was delightfully bright and calm; the sky was cloudless; the chimneys on the opposite bank were not smoking; the wharfs warehouses looked rosy in the sunshine, and as clear as if they, too, had washed for the holiday. The steamers rushed rapidly up and down the stream, laden with holiday passengers. The bells of the multitudinous city churches were ringing to evening prayers—such peaceful Sabbath evenings as this Pen may have remembered in his early days, as he paced, with his arm round his mother’s waist, on the terrace before the lawn at home. The sun was lighting up the little Brawl, too, as well as the broad Thames, and sinking downwards majestically behind the Clavering elms, and the tower of the familiar village church. Was it thoughts of these, or the sunset merely, that caused the blush in the young man’s face? He beat time on the bench, to the chorus of the bells without; flicked the dust off his shining boots with his pocket-handkerchief, and starting up, stamped with his foot and said, “No, by Jove, I’ll go home.” And with this resolution, which indicated that some struggle as to the propriety of remaining where he was, or of quitting the garden, had been going on in his mind, he stepped out of the summer-house.
He nearly knocked down two little children, who did not indeed reach much higher than his knee, and were trotting along the gravel-walk, with their long blue shadows slanting towards the east.
One cried out “Oh!” the other began to laugh; and with a knowing little infantile chuckle, said, “Missa Pendennis!” And Arthur, looking down, saw his two little friends of the day before, Mesdemoiselles Ameliar-Ann and Betsy-Jane. He blushed more than ever at seeing them, and seizing the one whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the air, and kissed her: at which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry in great alarm.
This cry brought up instantly two ladies in clean collars and new ribbons, and grand shawls, namely: Mrs. Bolton in a rich scarlet Caledonian Cashmere, and a black silk dress, and Miss F. Bolton with a yellow scarf and a sweet sprigged muslin, and a parasol—quite the lady. Fanny did not say one single word: though; her eyes flashed a welcome, and shone as bright—as bright as the most blazing windows in Paper Buildings. But Mrs. Bolton, after admonishing Betsy-Jane, said, “Lor sir—how very odd that we should meet you year! I ope you ave your ealth well, sir.—Ain’t it odd, Fanny, that we should meet Mr. Pendennis?” What do you mean by sniggering, Mesdames? When young Croesus has been staying at a country-house, have you never, by any singular coincidence, been walking with your Fanny in the shrubberies? Have you and your Fanny never happened to be listening to the band of the Heavies at Brighton, when young De Boots and Captain Padmore came clinking down the Pier? Have you and your darling Frances never chanced to be visiting old widow Wheezy at the cottage on the common, when the young curate has stepped in with a tract adapted to the rheumatism? Do you suppose that, if singular coincidences occur at the Hall, they don’t also happen at the Lodge?
It was a coincidence, no doubt: that was all. In the course of the conversation on the day previous, Mr. Pendennis had merely said, in the simplest way imaginable, and in reply to a question of Miss Bolton, that although some of the courts were gloomy, parts of the Temple were very cheerful and agreeable, especially the chambers looking on the river and around the gardens, and that the gardens were a very pleasant walk on Sunday evenings and frequented by a great number of people—and here, by the merest chance, all our acquaintances met together, just like so many people in genteel life. What could be more artless, good-natured, or natural?
Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was unusually smart and brilliant in his costume. His white duck trousers and white hat, his neckcloth of many colours, his light waistcoat, gold chains, and shirt-studs, gave him the air of a prince of the blood at least. How his splendour became his figure! Was anybody ever like him? some one thought. He blushed—how his blushes became him! the same individual said to herself. The children, on seeing him the day before, had been so struck with him, that after he had gone away they had been playing at him. And Ameliar-Ann, sticking her little chubby fingers into the arm-holes of her pinafore, as Pen was wont to do with his waistcoat, had said, “Now, Bessy-Jane, I’ll be Missa Pendennis.” Fanny had laughed till she cried, and smothered her sister with kisses for that feat. How happy, too, she was to see Arthur embracing the child!
If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn and pale. Arthur remarked it, and asked kindly why she looked so fatigued.
“I was awake all night,” said Fanny, and began to blush a little.
“I put out her candle, and hordered her to go to sleep and leave off readin,” interposed the fond mother.
“You were reading! And what was it that interested you so?” asked Pen, amused.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” said Fanny.
“What?”
“‘Walter Lorraine,’” Fanny sighed out. “How I do hate that Neaera—Neaera—I don’t know the pronunciation. And I love Leonora, and Walter, oh, how dear he is!”
How had Fanny discovered the novel of ‘Walter Lorraine,’ and that Pen was the author? This little person remembered every single word which Mr. Pendennis had spoken on the night previous, and how he wrote in books and newspapers. What books? She was so eager to know, that she had almost a mind to be civil to old Bows, who was suffering under her displeasure since yesterday, but she determined first to make application to Costigan. She began by coaxing the Captain and smiling upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner and set his humble apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted mending (and indeed the Captain’s linen-closet contained some curious specimens of manufactured flax and cotton). She would mend his shirts—all his shirts. What horrid holes—what funny holes! She put her little face through one of them, and laughed at the old warrior in the most winning manner. She would have made a funny little picture looking through the holes. Then she daintily removed Costigan’s dinner things, tripping about the room as she had seen the dancers do at the play; and she danced to the Captain’s cupboard, and produced his whisky-bottle, and mixed him a tumbler, and must taste a drop of it—a little drop; and the Captain must sing her one of his songs, his dear songs, and teach it to her. And when he had sung an Irish melody in his rich quavering voice, fancying it was he who was fascinating the little siren, she put her little question about Arthur Pendennis and his novel, and having got an answer, cared for nothing more, but left the Captain at the piano about to sing her another song, and the dinner-tray on the passage, and the shirts on the chair, and ran downstairs quickening her pace as she sped.
Captain Costigan, as he said, was not a litherary cyarkter, nor had he as yet found time to peruse his young friend’s ellygant perfaurumance, though he intended to teak an early opporchunitee of purchasing a cawpee of his work. But he knew the name of Pen’s novel from the fact that Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back Kitchen, spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great friendship; for Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan wondered that Doolan did not kick him etc.) by the sobriquet of Walter Lorraine,—and was hence enabled to give Fanny the information which she required.
“And she went and ast for it at the libery,” Mrs. Bolton said, “—several liberies—and some ad it and it was bout, and some adn’t it. And one of the liberies as ad it wouldn’t let er ave it without a sovering: and she adn’t one, and she came back a-cryin to me—didn’t you, Fanny?—and I gave her a sovering.”
“And, oh, I was in such a fright lest any one should have come to the libery and took it while I was away,” Fanny said, her cheeks and eyes glowing. “And, oh, I do like it so!”
Arthur was touched by this artless sympathy, immensely flattered and moved by it. “Do you like it?” he said. “If you will come up to my chambers I will—No, I will bring you one—no, I will send you one. Good night. Thank you, Fanny. God bless you. I mustn’t stay with you. Good-bye, good-bye.” And, pressing her hand once, and nodding to her mother and the other children, he strode out of the gardens.
He quickened his pace as he went from them, and ran out of the gate talking to himself. “Dear, dear little thing,” he said,—“darling little Fanny! You are worth them all. I wish to heaven Shandon was back. I’d go home to my mother. I mustn’t see her. I won’t. I won’t, so help me——”
As he was talking thus, and running, the passers-by turning to look at him, he ran against a little old man, and perceived it was Mr. Bows.
“Your very umble servant, sir,” said Mr. Bows, making a sarcastic bow, and lifting his old hat from his forehead.
“I wish you a good day,” Arthur answered sulkily. “Don’t let me detain you, or give you the trouble to follow me again. I am in a hurry, sir. Good evening.”
Bows thought Pen had some reason for hurrying to his rooms. “Where are they?” exclaimed the old gentleman. “You know whom I mean. They’re not in your rooms, sir, are they? They told Bolton they were going to church at the Temple, they weren’t there. They are in your chambers: they mustn’t stay in your chambers, Mr. Pendennis.”
“Damn it, sir!” cried out Pendennis, fiercely. “Come and see if they are in my chambers: here’s the court and the door—come in and see.” And Bows, taking off his hat and bowing first, followed the young man.
They were not in Pen’s chambers, as we know. But when the gardens were closed, the two women, who had had but a melancholy evening’s amusement, walked away sadly with the children, and they entered into Lamb Court, and stood under the lamp-post which cheerfully ornaments the centre of that quadrangle, and looked up to the third floor of the house where Pendennis’s chambers were, and where they saw a light presently kindled. Then this couple of fools went away, the children dragging wearily after them, and returned to Mr. Bolton, who was immersed in rum-and-water at his lodge in Shepherd’s Inn.
Mr. Bows looked round the blank room which the young man occupied, and which had received but very few ornaments or additions since the last time we saw them. Warrington’s old bookcase and battered library, Pen’s writing-table with its litter of papers, presented an aspect cheerless enough. “Will you like to look in the bedrooms, Mr. Bows, and see if my victims are there?” he said bitterly; “or whether I have made away with the little girls, and hid them in the coal-hole?”
“Your word is sufficient, Mr. Pendennis,” the other said in his sad tone. “You say they are not here, and I know they are not. And I hope they never have been here, and never will come.”
“Upon my word, sir, you are very good, to choose my acquaintances for me,” Arthur said, in a haughty tone; “and to suppose that anybody would be the worse for my society. I remember you, and owe you kindness from old times, Mr. Bows; or I should speak more angrily than I do, about a very intolerable sort of persecution to which you seem inclined to subject me. You followed me out of your Inn yesterday, as if you wanted to watch that I shouldn’t steal something.” Here Pen stammered and turned red, directly he had said the words; he felt he had given the other an opening, which Bows instantly took.
“I do think you came to steal something, as you say the words, sir,” Bows said. “Do you mean to say that you came to pay a visit to poor old Bows, the fiddler; or to Mrs. Bolton, at the porter’s lodge? O fie! Such a fine gentleman as Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, doesn’t condescend to walk up to my garret, or to sit in a laundress’s kitchen, but for reasons of his own. And my belief is that you came to steal a pretty girl’s heart away, and to ruin it, and to spurn it afterwards, Mr. Arthur Pendennis. That’s what the world makes of you young dandies, you gentlemen of fashion, you high and mighty aristocrats that trample upon the people. It’s sport to you, but what is it to the poor, think you; the toys of your pleasures, whom you play with and whom you fling into the streets when you are tired? I know your order, sir. I know your selfishness, and your arrogance, and your pride. What does it matter to my lord, that the poor man’s daughter is made miserable, and her family brought to shame? You must have your pleasures, and the people of course must pay for them. What are we made for, but for that? It’s the way with you all—the way with you all, sir.”
Bows was speaking beside the question, and Pen had his advantage here, which he was not sorry to take—not sorry to put off the debate from the point upon which his adversary had first engaged it. Arthur broke out with a sort of laugh, for which he asked Bows’s pardon. “Yes, I am an aristocrat,” he said, “in a palace up three pair of stairs, with a carpet nearly as handsome as yours, Mr. Bows. My life is passed in grinding the people, is it?—in ruining virgins and robbing the poor? My good sir, this is very well in a comedy, where Job Thornberry slaps his breast, and asks my Lord how dare he trample on an honest man and poke out an Englishman’s fireside; but in real life, Mr. Bows, to a man who has to work for his bread as much as you do—how can you talk about aristocrats tyrannising over the people? Have I ever done you a wrong? or assumed airs of superiority over you? Did you not have an early regard for me—in days when we were both of us romantic young fellows, Mr. Bows? Come, don’t be angry with me now, and let us be as good friends as we were before.”
“Those days were very different,” Mr. Bows answered; “and Mr. Arthur Pendennis was an honest, impetuous young fellow then; rather selfish and conceited, perhaps, but honest. He liked you then, because you were ready to ruin yourself for a woman.”
“And now, sir?” Arthur asked.
“And now times are changed, and you want a woman to ruin herself for you,” Bows answered. “I know this child, sir. I’ve always said this lot was hanging over her. She has heated her little brain with novels, until her whole thoughts are about love and lovers, and she scarcely sees that she treads on a kitchen floor. I have taught the little thing. She is full of many talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am fond of the girl, sir. I’m a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don’t like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have but this child that I care for. Have pity upon me, and don’t take her away from me, Mr. Pendennis—don’t take her away.”
The old man’s voice broke as he spoke. Its accents touched Pen, much more than the menacing or sarcastic tone which Bows had commenced by adopting.
“Indeed,” said he, kindly, “you do me a wrong if you fancy I intend one to poor little Fanny. I never saw her till Friday night. It was the merest chance that our friend Costigan threw her into my way. I have no intentions regarding her—that is——”
“That is, you know very well that she is a foolish girl, and her mother a foolish woman,—that is, you meet her in the Temple Gardens, and of course without previous concert,—that is, that when I found her yesterday reading the book you’ve wrote, she scorned me,” Bows said. “What am I good for but to be laughed at? a deformed old fellow like me; an old fiddler, that wears a threadbare coat, and gets his bread by playing tunes at an ale-house? You are a fine gentleman, you are. You wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your finger. You go to dine with great people. Who ever gives a crust to old Bows? And yet I might have been as good a man as the best of you. I might have been a man of genius, if I had had the chance; ay, and have lived with the master-spirits of the land. But everything had failed with me. I’d ambition once, and wrote plays, poems, music—nobody would give me a hearing. I never loved a woman, but she laughed at me; and here I am in my old age alone—alone! Don’t take this girl from me, Mr. Pendennis, I say again. Leave her with me a little longer. She was like a child to me till yesterday. Why did you step in, and made her to mock my deformity and old age?”
“I am guiltless of that, at least,” Arthur said, with something of a sigh. “Upon my word of honour, I wish I had never seen the girl. My calling is not seduction, Mr. Bows. I did not imagine that I had made an impression on poor Fanny, until—until to-night. And then, sir, I was sorry, and was flying from my temptation, as you came upon me. And,” he added, with a glow upon his cheek, which, in the gathering darkness, his companion could not see, and with an audible tremor in his voice, “I do not mind telling you, sir, that on this Sabbath evening, as the church bells were ringing, I thought of my own home, and of women angelically pure and good, who dwell there; and I was running hither as I met you, that I might avoid the danger which beset me, and ask strength of God Almighty to do my duty.”
After these words from Arthur a silence ensued, and when the conversation was resumed by his guest, the latter spoke in a tone which was much more gentle and friendly. And on taking farewell of Pen, Bows asked leave to shake hands with him, and with a very warm and affectionate greeting on both sides, apologised to Arthur for having mistaken him, and paid him some compliments which caused the young man to squeeze his old friend’s hand heartily again. And as they parted at Pen’s door, Arthur said he had given a promise, and he hoped and trusted that Mr. Bows might rely on it?
“Amen to that prayer,” said Mr. Bows, and went slowly down the stair.
LI. The happy Village again
Early in this history, we have had occasion to speak of the little town of Clavering, near which Pen’s paternal home of Fairoaks stood, and of some of the people who inhabite the place; and as the society there was by no means amusing or pleasant, our reports concerning it were not carried to any very great length. Mr. Samuel Huxter, the gentleman whose acquaintance we lately made at Vauxhall, was one of the choice spirits of the little town, when he visited it during his vacation, and enlivened the tables of his friends there, by the wit of Bartholomew’s and the gossip of the fashionable London circles which he frequented.
Mr. Hobnell, the young gentleman whom Pen had thrashed in consequence of the quarrel in the Fotheringay affair, was, whilst a pupil at the Grammar School at Clavering, made very welcome at the tea-table of Mrs. Huxter, Samuel’s mother, and was free of the surgery, where he knew the way to the tamarind-pots, and could scent his pocket-handkerchief with rose-water. And it was at this period of his life that he formed an attachment for Miss Sophy Huxter, whom, on his father’s demise, he married, and took home to his house of the Warren, at a few miles from Clavering.
The family had possessed and cultivated an estate there for many years, as yeomen and farmers. Mr. Hobnell’s father pulled down the old farmhouse; built a flaring new whitewashed mansion, with capacious stables; and a piano in the drawing-room; kept a pack of harriers; and assumed the title of Squire Hobnell. When he died, and his son reigned in his stead, the family might be fairly considered to be established as county gentry. And Sam Huxter, at London, did no great wrong in boasting about his brother-in-law’s place, his hounds, horses, and hospitality, to his admiring comrades at Bartholomew’s. Every year, at a time commonly when Mrs. Hobnell could not leave the increasing duties of her nursery, Hobnell came up to London for a lark, had rooms at the Tavistock, and he and Sam indulged in the pleasures of the town together. Ascot, the theatres, Vauxhall, and the convivial taverns in the joyous neighbourhood of Covent Garden, were visited by the vivacious squire, in company with his learned brother. When he was in London, as he said, he liked to do as London does, and to “go it a bit,” and when he returned to the west, he took a new bonnet and shawl to Mrs. Hobnell, and relinquished, for country sports and occupations during the next eleven months, the elegant amusements of London life.
Sam Huxter kept up a correspondence with his relative, and supplied him with choice news of the metropolis, in return for the baskets of hares, partridges, and clouted cream which the squire and his good-natured wife forwarded to Sam. A youth more brilliant and distinguished they did not know. He was the life and soul of their house, when he made his appearance in his native place. His songs, jokes, and fun kept the Warren in a roar. He had saved their eldest darling’s life, by taking a fish-bone out of her throat: in fine, he was the delight of their circle.
As ill-luck would have it, Pen again fell in with Mr. Huxter, only three days after the rencontre at Vauxhall. Faithful to his vow, he had not been to see little Fanny. He was trying to drive her from his mind by occupation, or other mental excitement. He laboured, though not to much profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic for the Pall Mall Gazette, made woeful and savage onslaught on a poem and a romance which came before him for judgment. These authors slain, he went to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyanthus, where the vast solitudes frightened him, and made him only the more moody. He had been to more theatres for relaxation. The whole house was roaring with laughter and applause, and he saw only an ignoble farce that made him sad. It would have damped the spirits of the buffoon on the stage to have seen Pen’s dismal face. He hardly knew what was happening; the scene and the drama passed before him like a dream or a fever. Then he thought he would go to the Back Kitchen, his old haunt with Warrington—he was not a bit sleepy yet. The day before he had walked twenty miles in search after rest, over Hampstead Common and Hendon lanes, and had got no sleep at night. He would go to the Back Kitchen. It was a sort of comfort to him to think he should see Bows. Bows was there, very calm, presiding at the old piano. Some tremendous comic songs were sung, which made the room crack with laughter. How strange they seemed to Pen! He could only see Bows. In an extinct volcano, such as he boasted that his breast was, it was wonderful how he should feel such a flame! Two days’ indulgence had kindled it; two days’ abstinence had set it burning in fury. So, musing upon this, and drinking down one glass after another, as ill luck would have it, Arthur’s eyes lighted upon Mr. Huxter, who had been to the theatre, like himself, and, with two or three comrades, now entered the room. Huxter whispered to his companions, greatly to Pen’s annoyance. Arthur felt that the other was talking about him. Huxter then worked through the room, followed by his friends, and came and took a place opposite Pen, nodding familiarly to him, and holding him out a dirty hand to shake.
Pen shook hands with his fellow-townsman. He thought he had been needlessly savage to him on the last night when they had met. As for Huxter, perfectly at good-humour with himself, and the world, it never entered his mind that he could be disagreeable to anybody; and the little dispute, or “chaff,” as he styled it, of Vauxhall, was a trifle which he did not in the least regard.
The disciple of Galen having called for “four stouts,” with which he and his party refreshed themselves, began to think what would be the most amusing topic of conversation with Pen, and hit upon that precise one which was most painful to our young gentleman.
“Jolly night at Vauxhall—wasn’t it?” he said, and winked in a very knowing way.
“I’m glad you liked it,” poor Pen said, groaning in spirit.
“I was dev’lish cut—uncommon—been dining with some chaps at Greenwich. That was a pretty bit of muslin hanging on your arm—who was she?” asked the fascinating student.
The question was too much for Arthur. “Have I asked you any questions about yourself, Mr. Huxter?” he said.
“I didn’t mean any offence—beg pardon—hang it, you cut up quite savage,” said Pen’s astonished interlocutor.
“Do you remember what took place between us the other night?” Pen asked, with gathering wrath. “You forget? Very probably. You were tipsy, as you observed just now, and very rude.”
“Hang it, sir, I asked your pardon,” Huxter said, looking red.
“You did certainly, and it was granted with all my heart. I am sure. But if you recollect, I begged that you would have the goodness to omit me from the list of your acquaintance for the future; and when we met in public, that you would not take the trouble to recognise me. Will you please to remember this, hereafter? and as the song is beginning, permit me to leave you to the unrestrained enjoyment of the music.”
He took his hat, and making a bow to the amazed Mr. Huxter left the table, as Huxter’s comrades, after a pause of wonder, set up such a roar of laughter at Huxter, as called for the intervention of the president of the room; who bawled out, “Silence, gentlemen; do have silence for the Body Snatcher!” which popular song began as Pen left the Back Kitchen. He flattered himself that he had commanded his temper perfectly. He rather wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would have liked to fight him or somebody. He went home. The day’s work, the dinner, the play, the whisky-and-water, the quarrel,—nothing soothed him. He slept no better than on the previous night.
A few days afterwards, Mr. Sam Huxter wrote home a letter to Mr. Hobnell in the country, of which Mr. Arthur Pendennis formed the principal subject. Sam described Arthur’s pursuits in London, and his confounded insolence of behaviour to his old friends from home. He said he was an abandoned criminal, a regular Don Juan, a fellow who, when he did come into the country, ought to be kept out of honest people’s houses. He had seen him at Vauxhall, dancing with an innocent girl in the lower ranks of life, of whom he was making a victim. He had found out from an Irish gentleman (formerly in the army), who frequented a club of which he, Huxter, was member, who the girl was, on whom this conceited humbug was practising his infernal arts; and he thought he should warn her father, etc. etc.,—the letter then touched on general news, conveyed the writer’s thanks for the last parcel and the rabbits, and hinted his extreme readiness for further favours.
About once a year, as we have stated, there was occasion for a christening at the Warren, and it happened that this ceremony took place a day after Hobnell had received the letter of his brother-in-law in town. The infant (a darling little girl) was christened Myra Lucretia, after its two godmothers, Miss Portman and Mrs. Pybus of Clavering, and as of course Hobnell had communicated Sam’s letter to his wife, Mrs. Hobnell imparted its horrid contents to her two gossips. A pretty story it was, and prettily it was told throughout Clavering in the course of that day.
Myra did not—she was too much shocked to do so—speak on the matter to her mamma, but Mrs. Pybus had no such feelings of reserve. She talked over the matter not only with Mrs. Portman, but with Mr. and the Honourable Mrs. Simcoe, with Mrs. Glanders, her daughters being to that end ordered out of the room, with Madame Fribsby, and, in a word, with the whole of the Clavering society. Madame Fribsby looking furtively up at her picture of the dragoon, and inwards into her own wounded memory, said that men would be men, and as long as they were men would be deceivers; and she pensively quoted some lines from Marmion, requesting to know where deceiving lovers should rest? Mrs. Pybus had no words of hatred, horror, contempt, strong enough for a villain who could be capable of conduct so base. This was what came of early indulgence, and insolence, and extravagance, and aristocratic airs (it is certain that Pen had refused to drink tea with Mrs. Pybus), and attending the corrupt and horrid parties in the dreadful modern Babylon! Mrs. Portman was afraid that she must acknowledge that the mother’s fatal partiality had spoiled this boy, that his literary successes had turned his head, and his horrid passions had made him forget the principles which Doctor Portman had instilled into him in early life. Glanders, the atrocious Captain of Dragoons, when informed of the occurrence by Mrs. Glanders, whistled and made jocular allusions to it at dinner-time; on which Mrs. Glanders called him a brute, and ordered the girls again out of the room, as the horrid Captain burst out laughing. Mr. Simcoe was calm under the intelligence; but rather pleased than otherwise; it only served to confirm the opinion which he had always had of that wretched young man: not that he knew anything about him—not that he had read one line of his dangerous and poisonous works; Heaven forbid that he should: but what could be expected from such a youth, and such frightful, such lamentable, such deplorable want of seriousness? Pen formed the subject for a second sermon at the Clavering chapel-of-ease: where the dangers of London, and the crime of reading or writing novels, were pointed out on a Sunday evening to a large and warm congregation. They did not wait to hear whether he was guilty or not. They took his wickedness for granted: and with these admirable moralists, it was who should fling the stone at poor Pen.
The next day Mrs. Pendennis, alone and almost fainting with emotion and fatigue, walked or rather ran to Dr. Portman’s house to consult the good Doctor. She had had an anonymous letter;—some Christian had thought it his or her duty to stab the good soul who had never done mortal a wrong—an anonymous letter with references to Scripture, pointing out the doom of such sinners and a detailed account of Pen’s crime. She was in a state of terror and excitement pitiable to witness. Two or three hours of this pain had aged her already. In her first moment of agitation she had dropped the letter, and Laura had read it. Laura blushed when she read it; her whole frame trembled, but it was with anger. “The cowards,” she said.—It isn’t true.—No, mother, it isn’t true.”
“It is true, and you’ve done it, Laura,” cried out Helen fiercely. “Why did you refuse him when he asked you? Why did you break my heart and refuse him? It is you who led him into crime. It is you who flung him into the arms of this—this woman.—Don’t speak to me.—Don’t answer me. I will never forgive you, never. Martha, bring me my bonnet and shawl. I’ll go out. I won’t have you come with me. Go away. Leave me, cruel girl; why have you brought this shame on me?” And bidding her daughter and her servants keep away from her, she ran down the road to Clavering.
Doctor Portman, glancing over the letter, thought he knew the handwriting, and, of course, was already acquainted with the charge made against poor Pen. Against his own conscience, perhaps (for the worthy Doctor, like most of us, had a considerable natural aptitude for receiving any report unfavourable to his neighbours), he strove to console Helen; he pointed out that the slander came from an anonymous quarter, and therefore must be the work of a rascal; that the charge might not be true—was not true, most likely—at least, that Pen must be heard before he was condemned; that the son of such a mother was not likely to commit such a crime, etc. etc.
Helen at once saw through his feint of objection and denial. “You think he has done it,” she said,—“you know you think he has done it. Oh, why did I ever leave him, Doctor Portman, or suffer him away from me? But he can’t be dishonest—pray God, not dishonest—you don’t think that, do you? Remember his conduct about that other—person—how madly he was attached to her. He was an honest boy then—he is now. And I thank God—yes, I fall down on my knees and thank God he paid Laura. You said he was good—you did yourself. And now—if this woman loves him—and you know they must—if he has taken her from her home, or she tempted him, which is most likely—why still, she must be his wife and my daughter. And he must leave the dreadful world and come back to me—to his mother, Doctor Portman. Let us go away and bring him back—yes—bring him back—and there shall be joy for the—the sinner that repenteth. Let us go now, directly, dear friend—this very——”
Helen could say no more. She fell back and fainted. She was carried to a bed in the house of the pitying Doctor, and the surgeon was called to attend her. She lay all night in an alarming state. Laura came to her, or to the rectory rather; for she would not see Laura. And Doctor Portman, still beseeching her to be tranquil, and growing bolder and more confident of Arthur’s innocence as he witnessed the terrible grief of the poor mother, wrote a letter to Pen warning him of the rumours that were against him and earnestly praying that he would break off and repent of a connexion so fatal to his best interests and his soul’s welfare.
And Laura?—was her heart not wrung by the thought of Arthur’s crime and Helen’s estrangement? Was it not a bitter blow for the innocent girl to think that at one stroke she should lose all the love which she cared for in the world?