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 any thing? Dammy, Strong, did I split any thing?”
“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 recognized 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 any body 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 sattens 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. 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 kep 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 soirées–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 restaurateurs, 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 swep off in another way. One night, at the countess’s, there was several of us at supper–Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell, the Honorable 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 Honorable 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 bed-side. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him if he would like to take any thing, when my servant should get it for him; but the Honorable 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 any thing, 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 any thing 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 any price.’ ‘_En effet_’ says the marky, twiddling his little black mustaches 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 honor 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 voici._’ 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 honor, 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 said, ‘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 while I’m fond of her. She said she could not bear 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 jewelry, 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 honor 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 honor?’
“‘Field of honor 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 honor–I thought, I–but no matter. Good-by, 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 honor.’
“What could I do? Every body 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 honor; 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 any thing 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 suffered 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, by 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 two 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 colors 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 honor 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-humor. “Look here, baronet, I apologize; on my honor, 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, it’s 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 Gad, or any where 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’ve 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 every body, 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 check 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 cleaned out, leaving that infernal check 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 farther 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.
CHAPTER VI.
A CHAPTER OF CONVERSATIONS.
[Illustration]
Every day, after the entertainments 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 also 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. Every body 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 rumors 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 honorable 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 favor 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 bay-window at Bays’s. Don’t look offended, I only mean that I am _blasé_ 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 every where–every where, 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 humor 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 protégé 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 neighborhood 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 forebore 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 dispatched 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 toward that fane in a carriage-and-four, so to speak, and might halt and take refreshments almost whenever he pleased. He wore varnished boots from the earliest period of youth, and had cambric handkerchiefs and lemon-colored 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 Havannas, 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, &c., 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 neighbor, 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 any body 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. “O, you don’t know how miserable that man made me,” she said, “or what a life I passed between 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 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 jail before his trial, instead of afterward, he would have saved me a deal of shame and 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 it. For 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 happy 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 among 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 up-stairs 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 humor.
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“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 brusk, 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 every body 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 any thing 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 any body 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-by, 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 honor of a conversation, and patronized 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 any body should think of patronizing 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, ‘O 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, every body went there –every body who was in society: and then we talked of the new embassador 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 soirée to the neighboring 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 among 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.”
[Illustration]
“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 gayety 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 women 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 combinations 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 neighbor 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 girl’s 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 civilization. Ye gods! how rapidly we live and grow! In nine months, Mr. Paxton grows you a pine apple 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 pine-apples so is the race of man. Hoiaper–what’s the Greek for a pine-apple, 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, while 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 gayly till the big bruised brazen one bumps him and sends him down–eh, vogue la galère!–you see a man sink in the race, and say good-by 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 galère, 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 pommeling 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. “And 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 world, 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 it, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in the contest? “That philosopher,” Pen said, “had held a great place among 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 cushion, and cries out, that the whole struggle is an accursed one, and the works of the world are evil. Many a conscience-striken 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 paralyzed 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 laborer 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 reveler 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.”
CHAPTER VII.
MISS AMORY’S PARTNERS.
The noble Henry Foker, of whom we have lost sight for a few pages, has been in the mean while 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 ardor, 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 favorite 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 among ill-regulated young gentlemen, and such, indeed, was Mr. H. Foker’s condition, who, having been bred up to indulge in every propensity toward 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 practiced? 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 you, sir, 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 very elevation of your virtue and high attributes, of necessity lonely; we can’t reach up and talk familiarly with such potentates. Good-by, 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 worshiped 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, among us, we need never despair. I have read of the passion of a transported pickpocket for a female convict (each of them being advanced in age, 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 honored 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, among 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, pâtes, 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 splendor 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 neighborhood of Jermyn-street, where his friends Loder, Punter, little Moss Abrams, 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 regarded each 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, that I have for cold boiled veal.” Upon which Blanche of course remarked, that Mr. Pendennis was wicked, _méchant_, 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 practiced 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 practiced 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 step-daughter. 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 gray 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, flavored 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 ball-room then passing before them, and about whose appearance or character Mr. Harry spoke with artless freedom, and a considerable dash of humor.
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 god-mother, 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 danced and waltzed with renewed vigor and grace.
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 favorite? 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 courtesy 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 expression 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 honor which had just been shown to her, and with other intoxicating events of the evening, that her good humor 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 every thing that was nice, and her ear with every thing that was sweet and flattering–oh! what an object he was! The rings round his eyes were of the color 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 humor; 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 worshiper must have looked upward 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.
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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-colored 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.
Among 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 dandyfied 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 every body: 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 peach? 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 cab-stand 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 sympathizing 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 valor! 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 splendor 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 fullness of his heart; and Mr. Pen must have been too much occupied with his own affairs to remark the concern and agitation of his neighbor, 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 ça_,” 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 toward 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 any thing it ain’t. Talking about money and such a girl as that, it’s–it’s–what-d’ye-callem–_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, eying 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 any thing 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 the sofa, face forward, 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 every body. 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-by! 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 he?” 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 that 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 shriveled, 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 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 willfully or fatally astray, while the natural truth and love which should illumine him grew 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, 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?
CHAPTER VIII.
MONSEIGNEUR S’AMUSE.
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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 neighbors, 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 bay-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 mustaches, 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 chargé 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 _blasé_ 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 any thing but misanthropical. If he could not get a good dinner he sat 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-parlor or on board a Greenwich steam-boat, or in a jaunt to Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette; or in a visit to the summer theaters 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 or the lovely equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humor 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: he was pleased to possess it: and said that he hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another man has an ardor for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said that anthropology was his favorite 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 coqueting of a wrinkled dowager in a ball-room, 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 while 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 humor 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 forever, 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 every thing. But you began to use the bear’s-grease pot directly the hair-dresser 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 while 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 humor, 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 fire-works 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 splendors 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 recognized, “Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honor, 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 any reet 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, oi’ve seen Vauxhall, and I scawrun any interfayrance on moi account: but for these leedies, one of them has never been there, and oi should think ye’d harly take advantage of me misfartune in losing the tickut, to deproive her of her pleasure.”
“It ain’t no use, captain. I can’t go about your business,” the checktaker 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 door-keeper, peevishly, out of the illuminated box. And at this minute Arthur came up, and recognizing 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 toward 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 favorite 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 sympathized 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–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 gray 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 demeanor.
“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. 4.”
Fanny made a little courtesy, 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 courtesy; “and I’ve never been at Vauxhall, sir, and Pa 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 splendor such as the finest fairy tale, the finest pantomime she had ever witnessed at the theater, had never realized. 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 _blasé_ 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 native countee)–Mr. Pendennis, ye’ve been me preserver, and oi 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 splendor 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 patronizing and affable manner pointing out to them the edifices worthy of note, and discoursing, 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 honor 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 would 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 color 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 Caracoline, little Tom Tufthunt was in attendance upon Lord Colchicum; and rather pleased, too, with his position. When Don Juan scales 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 peer 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 god-father 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 patronize 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 mantle-piece 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 dark porter’s 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 among them, one or two of the acquaintances of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
Among 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 woe-begone 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 toward him with no little kindness and pity–but Harry did not see the beautiful dark eyes.
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“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 short 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 trowsers 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.