A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2

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




"He used to come for Emly Budd, who danced Columbine in 'Arleykin
Ornpipe, or the Battle of Navarino,' when Miss De la Bosky was took
ill--a pretty dancer, and a fine stage figure of a woman--and he was a
great sugar-baker in the city, with a country ouse at Omerton; and he
used to drive her in the tilbry down Goswell-street-road; and one
day they drove and was married at St. Bartholomew's Church Smithfield,
where they had their bands read quite private; and she now keeps her
carriage; and I sor her name in the paper as patroness of the
Manshing-House Ball for the Washywomen's Asylum. And look at Lady
Mirabel--Capting Costigan's daughter--she was profeshnl, as all very
well know." Thus, and more to this purpose, Mrs. Bolton spoke, now
peeping through the window-curtain, now cleaning the mugs and plates,
and consigning them to their place in the corner cupboard; and
finishing her speech as she and Fanny shook out and folded up the
dinner-cloth between them, and restored it to its drawer in the table.

Although Costigan had once before been made pretty accurately to
understand what Pen's pecuniary means and expectations were, I suppose
Cos had forgotten the information acquired at Chatteris years ago, or
had been induced by his natural enthusiasm to exaggerate his friend's
income. He had described Fairoaks Park in the most glowing terms to
Mrs. Bolton, on the preceding evening, as he was walking about with
her during Pen's little escapade with Fanny, had dilated upon the
enormous wealth of Pen's famous uncle, the major, and shown an
intimate acquaintance with Arthur's funded and landed property. Very
likely Mrs. Bolton, in her wisdom, had speculated upon these matters
during the night; and had had visions of Fanny driving in her
carriage, like Mrs. Bolton's old comrade, the dancer of
Sadler's Wells.

In the last operation of table-cloth folding, these two foolish women,
of necessity, came close together; and as Fanny took the cloth and
gave it the last fold, her mother put her finger under the young
girl's chin, and kissed her. Again the red signal flew out, and
fluttered on Fanny's cheek. What did it mean? It was not alarm this
time. It was pleasure which caused the poor little Fanny to blush so.
Poor little Fanny! What? is love sin; that it is so pleasant at the
beginning, and so bitter at the end?

After the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that she was
a-goin out upon business, and that Fanny must keep the lodge; which
Fanny, after a very faint objection indeed, consented to do. So Mrs.
Bolton took her bonnet and market-basket, and departed; and the
instant she was gone, Fanny went and sate by the window which
commanded Bows's door, and never once took her eyes away from that
quarter of Shepherd's Inn.

Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of the place,
and making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them
held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton's
collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She
noticed nothing but Bows's door.

At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. He had come
out. He would pass the door again. But her poor little countenance
fell in an instant more. Pendennis, indeed, came out; but Bows
followed after him. They passed under the archway together. He only
took off his hat, and bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak.
In three or four minutes--Fanny did not know how long, but she
looked furiously at him when he came into the lodge--Bows returned
alone, and entered into the porter's room.

"Where's your ma, dear?" he said to Fanny.

"I don't know," Fanny said, with an angry toss. "I don't follow ma's
steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows."

"Am I my mother's keeper?" Bows said, with his usual melancholy
bitterness. "Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I've brought a cake
for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other
who can read them the next best."

When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows
put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went
off to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work,
and pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great
excitement and anger, as she plied her needle, Bows sate so that he
could command the entrance from the lodge to the street. But the
person whom, perhaps, he expected to see, never made his appearance
again. And Mrs. Bolton came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in
place of the person whom _she_ had expected to see. The reader perhaps
can guess what was his name?

The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to
the apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of
the Milesian kings, was not particularly satisfactory to either party.
Pen was sulky. If Bows had any thing on his mind, he did not care to
deliver himself of his thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan,
who remained in the apartment during the whole of Pen's visit; having
quitted his bed-chamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the
arrival of that gentleman. We have witnessed the deshabillé of Major
Pendennis: will any man wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero,
Costigan? It would seem that the captain, before issuing from his
bedroom, scented himself with otto of whisky. A rich odor of that
delicious perfume breathed from out him, as he held out the grasp of
cordiality to his visitor. The hand which performed that grasp shook
woefully: it was a wonder how it could hold the razor with which the
poor gentleman daily operated on his chin.

Bows's room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade's was
disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. His books and
manuscript music were trimly arranged upon shelves. A lithographed
portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. Haller, with the actress's
sprawling signature at the corner, hung faithfully over the old
gentleman's bed. Lady Mirabel wrote much better than Miss Fotheringay
had been able to do. Her ladyship had labored assiduously to acquire
the art of penmanship since her marriage; and, in a common note of
invitation or acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows loved
the old handwriting best, though; the fair artist's earlier manner. He
had but one specimen of the new style, a note in reply to a song
composed and dedicated to Lady Mirabel, by her most humble servant
Robert Bows; and which document was treasured in his desk among his
other state papers. He was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to
write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the
man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he
took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a
leg, or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck.
Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be
so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their
youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy
in the caresses, or agitated by the illness of a poodle. But it was
hard upon Bows, and grating to his feelings as a man and a
sentimentalist, that he should find Pen again upon his track, and in
pursuit of this little Fanny.

Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his company was
perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and Bows, and that the visit of
the former was intended for himself. He expressed himself greatly
pleased with that mark of poloightness, and promised, in his own mind,
that he would repay that obligation at least--which was not the only
debt which the captain owed in life--by several visits to his young
friend. He entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of
ten days previous; for Pen, in his quality of journalist, remembered
to have seen some of the captain's opinions in the Sporting and
Theatrical Newspaper, which was Costigan's oracle. He stated that Sir
Charles and Lady Mirabel were gone to Baden-Baden, and were most
pressing in their invitations that he should join them there. Pen
replied with great gravity, that he had heard that Baden was very
pleasant, and the Grand Duke exceedingly hospitable to English.
Costigan answered, that the laws of hospitalitee bekeam a Grand Juke;
that he sariously would think about visiting him; and made some
remarks upon the splendid festivities at Dublin Castle, when his
Excellency the Earl of Portansherry held the Viceraygal Coort there,
and of which he Costigan had been an humble but pleased spectator. And
Pen--as he heard these oft-told, well-remembered legends--recollected
the time when he had given a sort of credence to them, and had a
certain respect for the captain. Emily and first love, and the little
room at Chatteris; and the kind talk with Bows on the bridge came back
to him. He felt quite kindly disposed toward his two old friends; and
cordially shook the hands of both of them when he rose to go away.

He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton while the captain was
talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other selfish meditations, He
only remembered her again as Bows came hobbling down the stairs after
him, bent evidently upon following him out of Shepherd's Inn.

Mr. Bows's precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of Mr. Arthur
Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow's feeble persecution. Confound
him, what does he mean by dogging me? thought Pen. And he burst out
laughing when he was in the Strand and by himself, as he thought of
the elder's stratagem. It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis.
Perhaps the thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own
sense of humor. He went off to endeavor to banish the thoughts which
occupied him, whatever those thoughts might be, and tried various
places of amusement with but indifferent success. He struggled up the
highest stairs of the Panorama; but when he had arrived, panting, at
the height of the eminence, Care had come up with him, and was bearing
him company. He went to the Club, and wrote a long letter home,
exceedingly witty and sarcastic, and in which, if he did not say a
single word about Vauxhall and Fanny Bolton, it was because he thought
that subject, however interesting to himself, would not be very
interesting to his mother and Laura. Nor could the novels on the
library table fix his attention, nor the grave and respectable Jawkins
(the only man in town), who wished to engage him in conversation; nor
any of the amusements which he tried, after flying from Jawkins. He
passed a Comic Theater on his way home, and saw "Stunning Farce,"
"Roars of Laughter," "Good Old English Fun and Frolic," placarded in
vermilion letters on the gate. He went into the pit, and saw the
lovely Mrs. Leary, as usual, in a man's attire; and that eminent buffo
actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as a woman. Horseman's travestie seemed
to him a horrid and hideous degradation; Mrs. Leary's glances and
ankles had not the least effect. He laughed again, and bitterly, to
himself, as he thought of the effect which she had produced upon him,
on the first night of his arrival in London, a short time--what a
long, long time ago.





CHAPTER XI

IN OR NEAR THE TEMPLE GARDEN.


Fashion has long deserted the green and pretty Temple Garden, in which
Shakspeare makes York and Lancaster to pluck the innocent white and
red roses which became the badges of their bloody wars; and the
learned and pleasant writer of the Handbook of London tells us that
"the commonest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth
a bud" in that smoky air. Not many of the present occupiers of the
buildings round about the quarter know, or care, very likely, whether
or not roses grow there, or pass the old gate, except on their way to
chambers. The attorneys' clerks don't carry flowers in their bags, or
posies under their arms, as they run to the counsel's chambers; the
few lawyers who take constitutional walks think very little about York
and Lancaster, especially since the railroad business is over. Only
antiquarians and literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with
much interest, and fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator
with his short face pacing up and down the road; or dear Oliver
Goldsmith in the summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next
"Citizen of the World," or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is
fashioning for him, or the dunning letter that Mr. Newberry has sent.
Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a
snuff-colored suit, and a wig that sadly wants the barber's powder and
irons, one sees the Great Doctor step up to him, (his Scotch lackey
following at the lexicographer's heels, a little the worse for Port
wine that they have been taking at the Miter), and Mr. Johnson asks
Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams.
Kind faith of Fancy! Sir Hoger and Mr. Spectator are as real to us now
as the two doctors and the boozy and faithful Scotchman. The poetical
figures live in our memory just as much as the real personages--and as
Mr. Arthur Pendennis was of a romantic and literary turn, by no means
addicted to the legal pursuits common in the neighborhood of the
place, we may presume that he was cherishing some such poetical
reflections as these, when, upon the evening after the events recorded
in the last chapter the young gentleman chose the Temple Gardens as a
place for exercise and meditation.

On the Sunday evening the Temple is commonly calm. The chambers are
for the most part vacant; the great lawyers are giving grand dinner
parties at their houses in the Belgravian or Tyburnian districts: the
agreeable young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and
paying their respects to Mr. Kewsy's excellent claret, or Mr. Justice
Ermine's accomplished daughters; the uninvited are partaking of the
economic joint, and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club,
entertaining themselves and the rest of the company in the Club-room,
with Circuit jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at
all, except poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making
him gruel; or Mr. Toodle, who is an amateur of the flute, and whom you
may hear piping solitary from his chambers in the second floor: or
young Tiger, the student, from whose open windows come a great gush of
cigar smoke, and at whose door are a quantity of dishes and covers,
bearing the insignia of Dicks' or the Cock. But stop! Whither does
Fancy lead us? It is vacation time; and with the exception of
Pendennis, nobody is in chambers at all.

Perhaps it was solitude, then, which drove Pen into the Garden; for
although he had never before passed the gate, and had looked rather
carelessly at the pretty flower-beds, and the groups of pleased
citizens sauntering over the trim lawn and the broad gravel-walks by
the river, on this evening it happened, as we have said, that the
young gentleman, who had dined alone at a tavern in the neighborhood
of the Temple, took a fancy, as he was returning home to his chambers,
to take a little walk in the gardens, and enjoy the fresh evening air,
and the sight of the shining Thames. After walking for a brief space,
and looking at the many peaceful and happy groups round about him, he
grew tired of the exercise, and betook himself to one of the
summer-houses which flank either end of the main walk, and there
modestly seated himself. What were his cogitations? The evening was
delightfully bright and calm; the sky was cloudless; the chimneys on
the opposite bank were not smoking; the wharves and warehouses looked
rosy in the sunshine, and as clear as if they too, had washed for the
holiday. The steamers rushed rapidly up and down the stream, laden
with holiday passengers. The bells of the multitudinous city churches
were ringing to evening prayers--such peaceful Sabbath evenings as
this Pen may have remembered in his early days, as he paced, with his
arm round his mother's waist, on the terrace before the lawn at
home. The sun was lighting up the little Brawl, too, as well as the
broad Thames, and sinking downward majestically behind the Clavering
elms, and the tower of the familiar village church. Was it thoughts of
these, or the sunset merely, that caused the blush in the young man's
face? He beat time on the bench, to the chorus of the bells without;
flicked the dust off his shining boots with his pocket-handkerchief,
and starting up, stamped with his foot and said, "No, by Jove, I'll go
home." And with this resolution, which indicated that some struggle as
to the propriety of remaining where he was, or of quitting the garden,
had been going on in his mind, he stepped out of the summer-house.

He nearly knocked down two little children, who did not indeed reach
much higher than his knee, and were trotting along the gravel-walk,
with their long blue shadows slanting toward the east.

One cried out, "Oh!" the other began to laugh; and with a knowing
little infantine chuckle, said, "Missa Pendennis!" And Arthur looking
down, saw his two little friends of the day before, Mesdemoiselles
Ameliar-Ann and Betsy-Jane. He blushed more than ever at seeing them,
and seizing the one whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the
air, and kissed her; at which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry
in great alarm.

This cry brought up instantly two ladies in clean collars and new
ribbons, and grand shawls, namely, Mrs. Bolton in a rich scarlet
Caledonian Cashmere, and a black silk dress, and Miss F. Bolton with a
yellow scarf and a sweet sprigged muslin, and a parasol--quite the
lady. Fanny did not say one single word: though her eyes flashed a
welcome, and shone as bright--as bright as the most blazing windows in
Paper Buildings. But Mrs. Bolton, after admonishing Betsy-Jane, said,
"Lor, sir, how _very_ odd that we should meet _you_ year? I ope you
ave your ealth well, sir. Ain't it odd, Fanny, that we should meet Mr.
Pendennis?" What do you mean by sniggering, mesdames? When young
Croesus has been staying at a country-house, have you never, by any
singular coincidence, been walking with your Fanny in the shrubberies?
Have you and your Fanny never happened to be listening to the band of
the Heavies at Brighton, when young De Boots and Captain Padmore came
clinking down the Pier? Have you and your darling Frances never
chanced to be visiting old widow Wheezy at the cottage on the common,
when the young curate has stepped in with a tract adapted to the
rheumatism? Do you suppose that, if singular coincidences occur at the
Hall, they don't also happen at the Lodge?

It _was_ a coincidence, no doubt: that was all. In the course of the
conversation on the day previous, Mr. Pendennis had merely said, in
the simplest way imaginable, and in reply to a question of Miss
Bolton, that although some of the courts were gloomy, parts of the
Temple were very cheerful and agreeable, especially the chambers
looking on the river and around the gardens, and that the gardens were
a very pleasant walk on Sunday evenings, and frequented by a great
number of people--and here, by the merest chance, all our
acquaintances met together, just like so many people in genteel
life. What could be more artless, good-natured, or natural?

[Illustration]

Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was unusually smart
and brilliant in his costume. His white duck trowsers and white hat,
his neckcloth of many colors, his light waistcoat, gold chains, and
shirt studs, gave him the air of a prince of the blood at least. How
his splendor became his figure! Was any body ever like him? some one
thought. He blushed--how his blushes became him! the same individual,
said to herself. The children, on seeing him the day before, had
been so struck with him, that after he had gone away they had been
playing at him. And Ameliar-Ann, sticking her little chubby fingers
into the arm-holes of her pinafore, as Pen was won't to do with his
waistcoat, had said, "Now, Bessy-Jane, I'll be Missa Pendennis."
Fanny had laughed till she cried, and smothered her sister with kisses
for that feat. How happy, too, she was to see Arthur embracing
the child!

[Illustration]

If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn and pale.
Arthur remarked it, and asked kindly why she looked so fatigued.

"I was awake all night," said Fanny, and began to blush a little.

"I put out her candle, and _hordered_ her to go to sleep and leave off
readin," interposed the fond mother.

"You were reading! And what was it that interested you so?" asked Pen,
amused.

"Oh, it's so beautiful!" said Fanny.

"What?"

"Walter Lorraine," Fanny sighed out. "How I do _hate_ that Neara
--Neara--I don't know the pronunciation. And how I love Leonora, and
Walter, oh, how dear he is!"

How had Fanny discovered the novel of Walter Lorraine, and that Pen
was the author? This little person remembered every single word which
Mr. Pendennis had spoken on the night previous, and how he wrote in
books and newspapers. What books? She was so eager to know, that she
had almost a mind to be civil to old Bows, who was suffering under her
displeasure since yesterday, but she determined first to make
application to Costigan. She began by coaxing the captain and smiling
upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner
and set his humble apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted
mending (and indeed the captain's linen-closet contained some curious
specimens of manufactured flax and cotton). She would mend his
shirts--_all_ his shirts. What horrid holes--what funny holes! She put
her little face through one of them, and laughed at the old warrior in
the most winning manner. She would have made a funny little picture
looking through the holes. Then she daintily removed Costigan's dinner
things, tripping about the room as she had seen the dancers do at the
play; and she danced to the captain's cupboard, and produced his
whisky bottle, and mixed him a tumbler, and must taste a drop of it--a
little drop; and the captain must sing her one of his songs, his dear
songs, and teach it to her. And when he had sung an Irish melody in
his rich quavering voice, fancying it was he who was fascinating the
little siren, she put her little question about Arthur Pendennis and
his novel, and having got an answer, cared for nothing more, but left
the captain at the piano about to sing her another song, and the
dinner tray on the passage, and the shirts on the chair, and ran down
stairs quickening her pace as she sped.

Captain Costigan, as he said, was not a litherary cyarkter, nor had he
as yet found time to peruse his young friend's ellygant perfaurumance,
though he intended to teak an early opporchunitee of purchasing a
cawpee of his work. But he knew the name of Pen's novel from the fact
that Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the
Back-Kitchen, spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great
friendship; for Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan
wondered that Doolan did not kick him, &c.) by the sobriquet of Walter
Lorraine--and was hence enabled to give Fanny the information which
she required.

"And she went and ast for it at the libery," Mrs. Bolton said--
"several liberies--and some ad it and it was hout, and some adn't it.
And one of the liberies as ad it wouldn't let er ave it without a
sovering: and she adn't one, and she came back a-cryin to me--didn't
you, Fanny?--and I gave her a sovering."

"And, oh, I was in such a fright lest any one should have come to the
libery and took it while I was away," Fanny said, her cheeks and eyes
glowing. "And, oh, I do like it so!"

Arthur was touched by this artless sympathy, immensely flattered and
moved by it. "Do you like it?" he said. "If you will come up to my
chambers I will--No, I will bring you one--no, I will send you one.
Good night. Thank you, Fanny. God bless you. I mustn't stay with you.
Good-by, good-by." And, pressing her hand once, and nodding to her
mother and the other children, he strode out of the gardens.

He quickened his pace as he went from them, and ran out of the gate
talking to himself. "Dear, dear little thing," he said, "darling
little Fanny! You are worth them all. I wish to heaven Shandon was
back, I'd go home to my mother. I mustn't see her. I won't. I won't so
help me--"

As he was talking thus, and running, the passers by turning to look at
him, he ran against a little old man, and perceived it was Mr. Bows.

"Your very umble servant, sir," said Mr. Bows, making a sarcastic bow,
and lifting his old hat from his forehead.

"I wish you a good day," Arthur answered sulkily. "Don't let me detain
you, or give you the trouble to follow me again. I am in a hurry, sir.
Good evening."

Bows thought Pen had some reason for hurrying to his rooms. "Where are
they?" exclaimed the old gentleman. "You know whom I mean. They're not
in your rooms, sir, are they? They told Bolton they were going to
church at the Temple: they weren't there. They are in your chambers:
they mustn't stay in your chambers, Mr. Pendennis."

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.