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The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2




The _carte_ was examined on the wall, and Fanny was asked to choose
her favorite dish; upon which the young creature said she was fond of
lobster, too, but also owned to a partiality for raspberry-tart. This
delicacy was provided by Pen, and a bottle of the most frisky
Champagne was moreover ordered for the delight of the ladies. Little
Fanny drank this: what other sweet intoxication had she not drunk in
the course of the night?

When the supper, which was very brisk and gay, was over, and Captain
Costigan and Mrs. Bolton had partaken of some of the rack punch that
is so fragrant at Vauxhall, the bill was called and discharged by Pen
with great generosity, "like a foin young English gentleman of th'
olden toime, be Jove," Costigan enthusiastically remarked. And as,
when they went out of the box, he stepped forward and gave Mrs. Bolton
his arm, Fanny fell to Pen's lot, and the young people walked away in
high good-humor together, in the wake of their seniors.

The Champagne and the rack punch, though taken in moderation by all
persons, except perhaps poor Cos, who lurched ever so little in his
gait, had set them in high spirits and good humor, so that Fanny began
to skip and move her brisk little feet in time to the band, which was
playing waltzes and galops for the dancers. As they came up to the
dancing, the music and Fanny's feet seemed to go quicker together; she
seemed to spring, as if naturally, from the ground, and as if she
required repression to keep her there.

"Shouldn't you like a turn?" said the Prince of Fairoaks. "What fun
it would be! Mrs. Bolton, ma'am, do let me take her once round." Upon
which Mr. Costigan said, "Off wid you!" and Mrs. Bolton not refusing
(indeed, she was an old war-horse, and would have liked, at the
trumpet's sound, to have entered the arena herself), Fanny's shawl was
off her back in a minute, and she and Arthur were whirling round in a
waltz in the midst of a great deal of queer, but exceedingly
joyful company.

Pen had no mishap this time with little Fanny, as he had with Miss
Blanche in old days; at least, there was no mishap of his making. The
pair danced away with great agility and contentment; first a waltz,
then a galop, then a waltz again, until, in the second waltz, they
were bumped by another couple who had joined the Terpsichorean choir.
This was Mr. Huxter and his pink satin young friend, of whom we have
already had a glimpse.

Mr. Huxter very probably had been also partaking of supper, for he was
even more excited now than at the time when he had previously claimed
Pen's acquaintance; and having run against Arthur and his partner, and
nearly knocked them down, this amiable gentleman of course began to
abuse the people whom he had injured, and broke out into a volley of
slang against the unoffending couple. "Now, then, stoopid! Don't keep
the ground if you can't dance, old Slow Coach!" the young surgeon
roared out (using, at the same time, other expressions far more
emphatic), and was joined in his abuse by the shrill language and
laughter of his partner, to the interruption of the ball, the terror
of poor little Fanny, and the immense indignation of Pen.

Arthur was furious; and not so angry at the quarrel as at the shame
attending it. A battle with a fellow like that! A row in a public
garden, and with a porter's daughter on his arm! What a position for
Arthur Pendennis! He drew poor little Fanny hastily away from the
dancers to her mother, and wished that lady, and Costigan, and poor
Fanny underground, rather than there, in his companionship, and under
his protection.

When Huxter commenced his attack, that free spoken young gentleman had
not seen who was his opponent, and directly he was aware that it was
Arthur whom he had insulted, he began to make apologies. "Hold your
stoopid tongue, Mary," he said to his partner. "It's an old friend and
crony at home. I beg pardon, Pendennis; wasn't aware it was you, old
boy" Mr. Huxter had been one of the boys of the Clavering School, who
had been present at a combat which has been mentioned in the early
part of this story, when young Pen knocked down the biggest champion
of the academy, and Huxter knew that it was dangerous to quarrel
with Arthur.

His apologies were as odious to the other as his abuse had been. Pen
stopped his tipsy remonstrances by telling him to hold his tongue, and
desiring him not to use his (Pendennis's) name in that place or any
other; and he walked out of the gardens with a titter behind him from
the crowd, every one of whom he would have liked to massacre for
having been witness to the degrading broil. He walked out of the
gardens, quite forgetting poor little Fanny, who came trembling behind
him with her mother and the stately Costigan.

He was brought back to himself by a word from the captain, who touched
him on the shoulder just as they were passing the inner gate.

"There's no ray-admittance except ye pay again," the captain said.
"Hadn't I better go back and take the fellow your message?"

Pen burst out laughing, "Take him a message! Do you think I would
fight with such a fellow as that?" he asked.

"No, no! Don't, don't!" cried out little Fanny. "How can you be so
wicked, Captain Costigan?" The captain muttered something about honor,
and winked knowingly at Pen, but Arthur said gallantly, "No, Fanny,
don't be frightened. It was my fault to have danced in such a place. I
beg your pardon, to have asked you to dance there." And he gave her
his arm once more, and called a cab, and put his three friends
into it.

He was about to pay the driver, and to take another carriage for
himself, when little Fanny, still alarmed, put her little hand out,
and caught him by the coat, and implored him and besought him to
come in.

"Will nothing satisfy you," said Pen, in great good-humor, "that I am
not going back to fight him? Well, I will come home with you. Drive to
Shepherd's Inn, Cab." The cab drove to its destination. Arthur was
immensely pleased by the girl's solicitude about him: her tender
terrors quite made him forget his previous annoyance.

Pen put the ladies into their lodge, having shaken hands kindly with
both of them; and the captain again whispered to him that he would see
um in the morning if he was inclined, and take his message to that
"scounthrel." But the captain was in his usual condition when he made
the proposal; and Pen was perfectly sure that neither he nor Mr.
Huxter, when they awoke, would remember any thing about the dispute.





CHAPTER IX.

A VISIT OF POLITENESS.


[Illustration]

Costigan never roused Pen from his slumbers; there was no hostile
message from Mr. Huxter to disturb him; and when Pen woke, it was with
a brisker and more lively feeling than ordinarily attends that moment
in the day of the tired and _blasé_ London man. A city man wakes up
to care and consols, and the thoughts of 'Change and the
counting-house take possession of him as soon as sleep flies from
under his nightcap; a lawyer rouses himself with the early morning to
think of the case that will take him all his day to work upon, and the
inevitable attorney to whom he has promised his papers ere night.
Which of us has not his anxiety instantly present when his eyes are
opened, to it and to the world, after his night's sleep? Kind
strengthener that enables us to face the day's task with renewed
heart! Beautiful ordinance of Providence that creates rest as it
awards labor.

Mr. Pendennis's labor, or rather his disposition, was of that sort
that his daily occupations did not much interest him, for the
excitement of literary composition pretty soon subsides with the hired
laborer, and the delight of seeing one's self in print only extends to
the first two or three appearances in the magazine or newspaper page.
Pegasus put into harness, and obliged to run a stage every day, is as
prosaic as any other hack, and won't work without his whip or his feed
of corn. So, indeed Mr. Arthur performed his work at the Pall Mall
Gazette (and since his success as a novelist with an increased
salary), but without the least enthusiasm, doing his best or pretty
nearly, and sometimes writing ill and sometimes well. He was a
literary hack, naturally fast in pace, and brilliant in action.
Neither did society, or that portion which he saw, excite or amuse him
overmuch. In spite of his brag and boast to the contrary, he was too
young as yet for women's society, which probably can only be had in
perfection when a man has ceased to think about his own person, and
has given up all designs of being a conqueror of ladies; he was too
young to be admitted as an equal among men who had made their mark in
the world, and of whose conversation he could scarcely as yet expect
to be more than a listener. And he was too old for the men of pleasure
of his own age; too much a man of pleasure for the men of business;
destined, in a word, to be a good deal alone. Fate awards this lot of
solitude to many a man; and many like it from taste, as many without
difficulty bear it. Pendennis, in reality, suffered it very
equanimously; but in words, and according to his wont, grumbled over
it not a little.

"What a nice little artless creature that was," Mr. Pen thought at the
very instant of waking after the Vauxhall affair; "what a pretty
natural manner she has; how much pleasanter than the minanderies of
the young ladies in the ball-rooms" (and here he recalled to himself
some instances of what he could not help seeing was the artful
simplicity of Miss Blanche, and some of the stupid graces of other
young ladies in the polite world); "who could have thought that such a
pretty rose could grow in a porter's lodge, or bloom in that dismal
old flower-pot of a Shepherd's Inn? So she learns to sing from old
Bows? If her singing voice is as sweet as her speaking voice, it must
be pretty. I like those low _voilées_ voices. 'What would you like me
to call you?' indeed. Poor little Fanny! It went to my heart to adopt
the grand air with her, and tell her to call me 'sir.' But we'll have
no nonsense of that sort--no Faust and Margaret business for me. That
old Bows! So he teaches her to sing, does he? He's a dear old fellow,
old Bows: a gentleman in those old clothes: a philosopher, and with a
kind heart, too. How good he was to me in the Fotheringay business.
He, too, has had his griefs and his sorrows. I must cultivate old
Bows. A man ought to see people of all sorts. I am getting tired of
genteel society. Besides, there's nobody in town. Yes, I'll go and see
Bows, and Costigan, too; what a rich character! begad, I'll study him,
and put him into a book." In this way our young anthropologist talked
with himself: and as Saturday was the holiday of the week, the "Pall
Mall Gazette" making its appearance upon that day, and the
contributors to that journal having no further calls upon their brains
or ink-bottles, Mr. Pendennis determined he would take advantage of
his leisure, and pay a visit to Shepherd's Inn--of course to see
old Bows.

The truth is, that if Arthur had been the most determined _roué_ and
artful Lovelace who ever set about deceiving a young girl, he could
hardly have adopted better means for fascinating and overcoming poor
little Fanny Bolton than those which he had employed on the previous
night. His dandyfied protecting air, his conceit, generosity, and good
humor, the very sense of good and honesty which had enabled him to
check the tremulous advances of the young creature, and not to take
advantage of that little fluttering sensibility--his faults and his
virtues at once contributed to make her admire him; and if we could
peep into Fanny's bed (which she shared in a cupboard, along with
those two little sisters to whom we have seen Mr. Costigan
administering ginger-bread and apples), we should find the poor little
maid tossing upon her mattress, to the great disturbance of its other
two occupants, and thinking over all the delights and events of that
delightful, eventful night, and all the words, looks, and actions of
Arthur, its splendid hero. Many novels had Fanny read, in secret and
at home, in three volumes and in numbers. Periodical literature had
not reached the height which it has attained subsequently, and the
girls of Fanny's generation were not enabled to purchase sixteen pages
of excitement for a penny, rich with histories of crime, murder,
oppressed virtue, and the heartless seductions of the aristocracy; but
she had had the benefit of the circulating library which, in
conjunction with her school and a small brandy-ball and millinery
business, Miss Minifer kept--and Arthur appeared to her at once as the
type and realization of all the heroes of all those darling, greasy
volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. Pen, we have seen, was
rather a dandy about shirts and haberdashery in general. Fanny had
looked with delight at the fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of
his shirt studs, at his elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white
gloves, and at the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The prince
had appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image
traversed constantly her restless slumbers; the tone of his voice, the
blue light of his eyes, the generous look, half love half pity--the
manly protecting smile, the frank, winning laughter--all these were
repeated in the girl's fond memory. She felt still his arm encircling
her, and saw him smiling so grand as he filled up that delicious glass
of Champagne. And then she thought of the girls, her friends, who used
to sneer at her--of Emma Baker, who was so proud, forsooth, because
she was engaged to a cheesemonger, in a white apron, near Clare
Market; and of Betsy Rodgers, who made such a to-do about _her_
young man--an attorney's clerk, indeed, that went about with a bag!

So that, at about two o'clock in the afternoon--the Bolton family
having concluded, their dinner (and Mr. B., who besides his place of
porter of the Inn, was in the employ of Messrs. Tressler, the eminent
undertakers of the Strand, being absent in the country with the
Countess of Estrich's hearse), when a gentleman in a white hat and
white trowsers made his appearance under the Inn archway, and stopped
at the porter's wicket, Fanny was not in the least surprised, only
delighted, only happy, and blushing beyond all measure. She knew it
could be no other than He. She knew He'd come. There he was: there was
His Royal Highness beaming upon her from the gate. She called to her
mother, who was busy in the upper apartment, "Mamma, mamma," and ran
to the wicket at once, and opened it, pushing aside the other
children. How she blushed as she gave her hand to him! How affably he
took off his white hat as he came in; the children staring up at him!
He asked Mrs. Bolton if she had slept well, after the fatigues of the
night, and hoped she had no headache: and he said that as he was
going that way, he could not pass the door without asking news of his
little partner.

Mrs. Bolton was, perhaps, rather shy and suspicious about these
advances; but Mr. Pen's good humor was inexhaustible, he could not see
that he was unwelcome. He looked about the premises for a seat, and
none being disengaged, for a dish-cover was on one, a work-box on the
other, and so forth, he took one of the children's chairs, and perched
himself upon that uncomfortable eminence. At this, the children began
laughing, the child Fanny louder than all; at least, she was more
amused than any of them, and amazed at his Royal Highness's
condescension. _He_ to sit down in that chair--that little child's
chair! Many and many a time after she regarded it: haven't we almost
all, such furniture in our rooms, that our fancy peoples with dear
figures, that our memory fills with sweet, smiling faces, which may
never look on us more?

So Pen sate down, and talked away with great volubility to Mrs.
Bolton. He asked about the undertaking business, and how many mutes
went down with Lady Estrich's remains; and about the Inn, and who
lived there. He seemed very much interested about Mr. Campion's cab
and horse, and had met that gentleman in society. He thought he should
like shares in the Polwheedle and Pontydiddlum; did Mrs. Bolton do for
those chambers? Were there any chambers to let in the Inn? It was
better than the Temple: he should like to come to live in Shepherd's
Inn. As for Captain Strong and--Colonel Altamont was his name? he was
deeply interested in them, too. The captain was an old friend at home.
He had dined with him at chambers here, before the colonel came to
live with him. What sort of man was the colonel? Wasn't he a stout
man, with a large quantity of jewelry, and a wig, and large black
whiskers, _very_ black (here Pen was immensely waggish, and caused
hysteric giggles of delight from the ladies), very black, indeed; in
fact, blue-black; that is to say, a rich greenish purple? That was the
man; he had met him, too, at Sir F----in society.

"O, we know!" said the ladies; "Sir F----is Sir F. Clavering; he's
often here: two or three times a week with the captain. My little boy
has been out for bill stamps for him. Oh, Lor! I beg pardon, I
shouldn't have mentioned no secrets," Mrs. Bolton blurted out, being
talked perfectly into good-nature by this time. "But we know you to be
a gentleman, Mr. Pendennis, for I'm sure you have shown that you can
_beayve_ as such. Hasn't Mr. Pendennis, Fanny?"

Fanny loved her mother for that speech. She cast up her dark eyes to
the low ceiling, and said, "O, that he has, I'm sure, ma," with a
voice full of feeling.

Pen was rather curious about the bill stamps, and concerning the
transactions in Strong's chambers. And he asked, when Altamont came
and joined the chevalier, whether he, too, sent out for bill stamps,
who he was, whether he saw many people, and so forth. These questions,
put with considerable adroitness by Pen, who was interested about Sir
Francis Clavering's doings from private motives of his own, were
artlessly answered by Mrs. Bolton. and to the utmost of her knowledge
and ability, which, in truth, were not very great.

These questions answered, and Pen being at a loss for more, luckily
recollected his privilege as a member of the press, and asked the
ladies whether they would like any orders for the play? The play was
their delight, as it is almost always the delight of every theatrical
person. When Bolton was away professionally (it appeared that of late
the porter of Shepherd's Inn had taken a serious turn, drank a good
deal, and otherwise made himself unpleasant to the ladies of his
family), they would like of all things to slip out and go to the
theater, little Barney their son, keeping the lodge; and Mr.
Pendennis's most generous and most genteel compliment of orders was
received with boundless gratitude by both mother and daughter.

Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure: her face beamed with it. She
looked, and nodded, and laughed at her mamma, who nodded and laughed
in her turn. Mrs. Bolton was not superannuated for pleasure yet, or by
any means too old for admiration, she thought. And very likely Mr.
Pendennis, in his conversation with her, had insinuated some
compliments, or shaped his talk so as to please her. At first against
Pen, and suspicious of him, she was his partisan now, and almost as
enthusiastic about him as her daughter. When two women get together to
like a man, they help each other on; each pushes the other forward,
and the second, out of sheer sympathy, becomes as eager as the
principal: at least, so it is said by philosophers who have examined
this science.

So the offer of the play tickets, and other pleasantries, put all
parties into perfect good-humor, except for one brief moment, when one
of the younger children, hearing the name of "Astley's" pronounced,
came forward and stated that she should like very much to go, too; on
which Fanny said, "Don't bother!" rather sharply; and mamma said,
"Git-long, Betsy Jane, do now, and play in the court:" so that the two
little ones, namely, Betsy Jane and Ameliar Ann, went away in their
little innocent pinafores, and disported in the court-yard on the
smooth gravel, round about the statue of Shepherd the Great.

And here, as they were playing, they very possibly communicated with
an old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn; for while Pen was
making himself agreeable to the ladies at the lodge, who were
laughing, delighted at his sallies, an old gentleman passed under the
archway from the Inn-square, and came and looked in at the door of
the lodge.

He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated
upon a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with Mrs.
Bolton and her daughter.

"What! Mr. Bows? How d'you do, Bows!" cried out Pen, in a cheery, loud
voice. "I was coming to see you, and was asking your address of
these ladies."

"You were coming to see _me_, were you, sir?" Bows said, and came in
with a sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. "Plague on that old
man!" somebody thought in the room: and so, perhaps, some one else
besides her.





CHAPTER X.

IN SHEPHERD'S INN.


[Illustration]

Our friend Pen said "How d'ye do, Mr. Bows," in a loud, cheery voice,
on perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in a dashing, off-hand
manner; yet you could have seen a blush upon Arthur's face (answered
by Fanny, whose cheek straightway threw out a similar fluttering red
signal), and after Bows and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former
had ironically accepted the other's assertion that he was about to pay
Mr. Costigan's chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather guilty
silence in the company, which Pen presently tried to dispel by making
a great rattling and noise. The silence of course departed at Mr.
Arthur's noise, but the gloom remained and deepened, as the darkness
does in a vault if you light up a single taper in it. Pendennis tried
to describe, in a jocular manner, the transactions of the night
previous, and attempted to give an imitation of Costigan vainly
expostulating with the check-taker at Vauxhall. It was not a good
imitation. What stranger can imitate that perfection? Nobody laughed.
Mrs. Bolton did not in the least understand what part Mr. Pendennis
was performing, and whether it was the check-taker or the captain he
was taking off. Fanny wore an alarmed face, and tried a timid giggle;
old Mr. Bows looked as glum as when he fiddled in the orchestra, or
played a difficult piece upon the old piano at the Back-Kitchen.
Pen felt that his story was a failure; his voice sank and
dwindled away dismally at the end of it--flickered, and went out;
and it was all dark again. You could hear the ticket-porter, who lolls
about Shepherd's Inn, as he passed on the flags under the archway: the
clink of his boot-heels was noted by every body.

"You were coming to see me, sir," Mr. Bows said. "Won't you have the
kindness to walk up to my chambers with me? You do them a great honor,
I am sure. They are rather high up; but--"

"O! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd's Inn is twice as cheerful
as Lamb Court," Mr. Pendennis broke in.

"I knew that you had third floor apartments," Mr. Bows said; "and was
going to say--you will please not take my remark as discourteous--that
the air up three pair of stairs is wholesomer for gentlemen, than the
air of a porter's lodge."

"Sir!" said Pen, whose candle flamed up again in his wrath, and who
was disposed to be as quarrelsome as men are when they are in the
wrong. "Will you permit me to choose my society without--"

"You were so polite as to say that you were about to honor my umble
domicile with a visit," Mr. Bows said, with a sad voice. "Shall I show
you the way? Mr. Pendennis and I are old friends, Mrs. Bolton--very
old acquaintances; and at the earliest dawn of his life we crossed
each other."

The old man pointed toward the door with a trembling finger, and a hat
in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly theatrical; so were his
words, when he spoke, somewhat artificial, and chosen from the
vocabulary which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of
the orators before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or
masquerading, as Pen knew very well, though he was disposed to
pooh-pooh the old fellow's melodramatic airs. "Come along, sir," he
said, "as you are so very pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good
day. Good-by, Miss Fanny; I shall always think of our night at
Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure I will remember the
theatre-tickets." And he took her hand, pressed it, was pressed by it,
and was gone.

"What a nice young man, to be sure!" cried Mrs. Bolton.

"D'you think so, ma?" said Fanny.

"I was a-thinkin who he was like. When I was at the Wells with Mrs.
Serle," Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through the window curtain
after Pen, as he went up the court with Bows; "there was a young
gentleman from the city, that used to come in a tilbry, in a white at,
the very image of him, ony his whiskers was black, and Mr. P's.
is red.

"Law, ma! they are a most beautiful hawburn," Fanny said.

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