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The History of Pendennis, Volume 2

by William Makepeace Thackeray · English · Gutenberg #9904 · 985,297 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The History of Pendennis, Volume 2

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray


        
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9904]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9904

Credits: Produced by Lee Dawei, Michael Lockey and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, VOLUME 2 ***




Produced by Lee Dawei, Michael Lockey and PG Distributed Proofreaders









THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS.




HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES, HIS FRIENDS AND HIS GREATEST ENEMY.





BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.




WITH ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD BY THE AUTHOR,

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOLUME II.

1858





CHAPTER

1.--RELATES TO MR. HARRY FOKER's AFFAIRS

2.--CARRIES THE READER BOTH TO RICHMOND AND GREENWICH

3.--CONTAINS A NOVEL INCIDENT

4.--ALSATIA

5.--IN WHICH THE COLONEL NARRATES SOME OF HIS ADVENTURES

6.--A CHAPTER OF CONVERSATIONS

7.--MISS AMORY'S PARTNERS

8.--MONSEIGNEUR S'AMUSE

9.--A VISIT OF POLITENESS

10.--IN SHEPHERD'S INN

11.--IN OR NEAR THE TEMPLE GARDEN

12.--THE HAPPY VILLAGE AGAIN

13.--WHICH HAD VERY NEARLY BEEN THE LAST OF THE STORY

14.--A CRITICAL CHAPTER

15.--CONVALESCENCE

16.--FANNY'S OCCUPATION'S GONE

17.--IN WHICH FANNY ENGAGES A NEW MEDICAL MAN

18.--FOREIGN GROUND

19.--"FAIROAKS TO LET"

20.--OLD FRIENDS

21.--EXPLANATIONS

22.--CONVERSATIONS

23.--THE WAY OF THE WORLD

24.--WHICH ACCOUNTS PERHAPS FOR CHAPTER XXIII

25.--PHILLIS AND CORYDON

26.--TEMPTATIONS

27.--IN WHICH PEN BEGINS HIS CANVASS

28.--IN WHICH PEN BEGINS TO DOUBT ABOUT HIS ELECTION

29.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR IS BIDDEN TO STAND AND DELIVER

30.--IN WHICH THE MAJOR NEITHER YIELDS HIS MONEY NOR HIS LIFE

31.--IN WHICH PENDENNIS COUNTS HIS EGGS

32.--FIAT JUSTITIA

33.--IN WHICH THE DECKS BEGIN TO CLEAR

34.--MR. AND MRS. SAM HUXTER

35.--SHOWS HOW ARTHUR HAD BETTER HAVE TAKEN A RETURN-TICKET

36.--A CHAPTER OF MATCH-MAKING

37.--EXEUNT OMNES PENDENNIS.





CHAPTER I.

RELATES TO MR. HARRY FOKER'S AFFAIRS.


Since that fatal but delightful night in Grosvenor place, Mr. Harry
Foker's heart had been in such a state of agitation as you would
hardly have thought so great a philosopher could endure. When we
remember what good advice he had given to Pen in former days, how an
early wisdom and knowledge of the world had manifested itself in the
gifted youth; how a constant course of self-indulgence, such as
becomes a gentleman of his means and expectations, ought by right to
have increased his cynicism, and made him, with every succeeding day
of his life, care less and less for every individual in the world,
with the single exception of Mr. Harry Foker, one may wonder that he
should fall into the mishap to which most of us are subject once or
twice in our lives, and disquiet his great mind about a woman. But
Foker, though early wise, was still a man. He could no more escape the
common lot than Achilles, or Ajax, or Lord Nelson, or Adam our first
father, and now, his time being come, young Harry became a victim to
Love, the All-conqueror.

When he went to the Back Kitchen that night after quitting Arthur
Pendennis at his staircase-door in Lamb-court, the gin-twist and
deviled turkey had no charms for him, the jokes of his companions
fell flatly on his ear; and when Mr. Hodgen, the singer of "The Body
Snatcher," had a new chant even more dreadful and humorous than that
famous composition, Foker, although he appeared his friend, and said
"Bravo Hodgen," as common politeness, and his position as one of the
chiefs of the Back Kitchen bound him to do, yet never distinctly heard
one word of the song, which under its title of "The Cat in the
Cupboard," Hodgen has since rendered so famous. Late and very tired,
he slipped into his private apartments at home and sought the downy
pillow, but his slumbers were disturbed by the fever of his soul, and
the very instant that he woke from his agitated sleep, the image of
Miss Amory presented itself to him, and said, "Here I am, I am your
princess and beauty, you have discovered me, and shall care for
nothing else hereafter."

Heavens, how stale and distasteful his former pursuits and friendships
appeared to him! He had not been, up to the present time, much
accustomed to the society of females of his own rank in life. When he
spoke of such, he called them "modest women." That virtue which, let
us hope they possessed, had not hitherto compensated to Mr. Foker for
the absence of more lively qualities which most of his own relatives
did not enjoy, and which he found in Mesdemoiselles, the ladies of the
theater. His mother, though good and tender, did not amuse her boy;
his cousins, the daughters of his maternal uncle, the respectable Earl
of Rosherville, wearied him beyond measure. One was blue, and a
geologist; one was a horsewoman, and smoked cigars; one was
exceedingly Low Church, and had the most heterodox views on religious
matters; at least, so the other said, who was herself of the very
Highest Church faction, and made the cupboard in her room into an
oratory, and fasted on every Friday in the year. Their paternal house
of Drummington, Foker could very seldom be got to visit. He swore he
had rather go to the tread-mill than stay there. He was not much
beloved by the inhabitants. Lord Erith, Lord Rosherville's heir,
considered his cousin a low person, of deplorably vulgar habits and
manners; while Foker, and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a
dullard, the nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker's
opprobrium, the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George
Robert, Earl of Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on one
evening when he condescended to play at billiards with his nephew,
that young gentleman poked his lordship in the side with his cue, and
said, "Well, old cock, I've seen many a bad stroke in my life, but I
never saw such a bad one as that there." He played the game out with
angelic sweetness of temper, for Harry was his guest as well as his
nephew; but he was nearly having a fit in the night; and he kept to
his own rooms until young Harry quitted Drummington on his return to
Oxbridge, where the interesting youth was finishing his education at
the time when the occurrence took place. It was an awful blow to the
venerable earl; the circumstance was never alluded to in the family:
he shunned Foker whenever he came to see them in London or in the
country, and could hardly be brought to gasp out a "How d'ye do?" to
the young blasphemer. But he would not break his sister Agnes's
heart, by banishing Harry from the family altogether; nor, indeed,
could he afford to break with Mr. Foker, senior, between whom and his
lordship there had been many private transactions, producing an
exchange of bank checks from Mr. Foker, and autographs from the earl
himself, with the letters I O U written over his illustrious
signature.

[Illustration]

Besides the four daughters of Lord Gravesend whose various qualities
have been enumerated in the former paragraph, his lordship was blessed
with a fifth girl, the Lady Ann Milton, who, from her earliest years
and nursery, had been destined to a peculiar position in life. It was
ordained between her parents and her aunt, that when Mr. Harry Foker
attained a proper age, Lady Ann should become his wife. The idea had
been familiar to her mind when she yet wore pinafores, and when
Harry, the dirtiest of little boys, used to come back with black eyes
from school to Drummington, or to his father's house of Logwood, where
Lady Ann lived much with her aunt. Both of the young people coincided
with the arrangement proposed by the elders, without any protests or
difficulty. It no more entered Lady Ann's mind to question the order
of her father, than it would have entered Esther's to dispute the
commands of Ahasuerus. The heir-apparent of the house of Foker was
also obedient, for when the old gentleman said, "Harry, your uncle and
I have agreed that when you're of a proper age, you'll marry Lady Ann.
She won't have any money, but she's good blood, and a good one to look
at, and I shall make you comfortable. If you refuse, you'll have your
mother's jointure, and two hundred a year during my life:" Harry, who
knew that his sire, though a man of few words, was yet implicitly to
be trusted, acquiesced at once in the parental decree, and said,
"Well, sir, if Ann's agreeable, I say ditto. She's not a
bad-looking girl."

"And she has the best blood in England, sir. Your mother's blood, your
own blood, sir," said the brewer. "There's nothing like it, sir."

"Well, sir, as you like it," Harry replied. "When you want me, please
ring the bell. Only there's no hurry, and I hope you'll give us a long
day. I should like to have my fling out before I marry."

"Fling away, Harry," answered the benevolent father. "Nobody prevents
you, do they?" And so very little more was said upon this subject, and
Mr. Harry pursued those amusements in life which suited him best; and
hung up a little picture of his cousin in his sitting-room, amidst the
French prints, the favorite actresses and dancers, the racing and
coaching works of art, which suited his taste and formed his gallery.
It was an insignificant little picture, representing a simple round
face with ringlets; and it made, as it must be confessed, a very poor
figure by the side of Mademoiselle Petitot, dancing over a rainbow, or
Mademoiselle Redowa, grinning in red boots and a lancer's cap.

Being engaged and disposed of, Lady Ann Milton did not go out so much
in the world as her sisters; and often stayed at home in London at the
parental house in Gaunt-square, when her mamma with the other ladies
went abroad. They talked and they danced with one man after another,
and the men came and went, and the stories about them were various.
But there was only this one story about Ann: she was engaged to Harry
Foker: she never was to think about any body else. It was not a very
amusing story.

Well, the instant Foker awoke on the day after Lady Clavering's
dinner, there was Blanche's image glaring upon him with its clear gray
eyes, and winning smile. There was her tune ringing in his ears, "Yet
round about the spot, ofttimes I hover, ofttimes I hover," which poor
Foker began piteously to hum, as he sat up in his bed under the
crimson silken coverlet. Opposite him was a French print, of a Turkish
lady and her Greek lover, surprised by a venerable Ottoman, the
lady's husband; on the other wall, was a French print of a gentleman
and lady, riding and kissing each other at the full gallop; all round
the chaste bed-room were more French prints, either portraits of gauzy
nymphs of the Opera or lovely illustrations of the novels; or mayhap,
an English chef-d'oeuvre or two, in which Miss Calverley of T. R. E. O.
would be represented in tight pantaloons in her favorite page part; or
Miss Rougemont as Venus; their value enhanced by the signatures of
these ladies, Maria Calverley, or Frederica Rougemont, inscribed
underneath the prints in an exquisite fac-simile. Such were the
pictures in which honest Harry delighted. He was no worse than many of
his neighbors; he was an idle, jovial, kindly fast man about town; and
if his rooms were rather profusely decorated with works of French art,
so that simple Lady Agnes, his mamma, on entering the apartments where
her darling sate enveloped in fragrant clouds of Latakia, was often
bewildered by the novelties which she beheld there, why, it must be
remembered, that he was richer than most young men, and could better
afford to gratify his taste.

A letter from Miss Calverley written in a very dégagé style of
spelling and hand-writing, scrawling freely over the filigree paper,
and commencing by calling Mr. Harry, her dear Hokey-pokey-fokey, lay
on his bed table by his side, amid keys, sovereigns, cigar-cases, and
a bit of verbena, which Miss Amory had given him, and reminding him of
the arrival of the day when he was "to stand that dinner at the
Elefant and Castle, at Richmond, which he had promised;" a card for a
private box at Miss Rougemont's approaching benefit, a bundle of
tickets for "Ben Budgeon's night, the North Lancashire Pippin, at
Martin Faunce's, the Three-corned Hat in St. Martin's Lane; where
Conkey Sam, Dick the Nailor, and Deadman (the Worcestershire Nobber),
would put on the gloves, and the lovers of the good old British sport
were invited to attend"--these and sundry other memoirs of Mr. Foker's
pursuits and pleasures lay on the table by his side when he woke.

Ah! how faint all these pleasures seemed now. What did he care for
Conkey Sam or the Worcestershire Nobber? What for the French prints
ogling him from all sides of the room; those regular stunning slap-up
out-and-outers? And Calverley spelling bad, and calling him
Hokey-fokey, confound her impudence! The idea of being engaged to a
dinner at the Elephant and Castle at Richmond, with that old woman
(who was seven and thirty years old, if she was a day), filled his
mind with dreary disgust now, instead of that pleasure which he had
only yesterday expected to find from the entertainment.

When his fond mamma beheld her boy that morning, she remarked on the
pallor of his cheek, and the general gloom of his aspect. "Why do you
go on playing billiards at that wicked Spratt's?" Lady Agnes asked.
"My dearest child, those billiards will kill you, I'm sure they will."

"It isn't the billiards," Harry said, gloomily. "Then it's the
dreadful Back Kitchen," said the Lady Agnes. "I've often thought,
d'you know, Harry, of writing to the landlady, and begging that she
would have the kindness to put only very little wine in the negus
which you take, and see that you have your shawl on before you get
into your brougham."

"Do, ma'am. Mrs. Cutts is a most kind, motherly woman," Harry said.
"But it isn't the Back Kitchen, neither," he added with a
ghastly sigh.

As Lady Agnes never denied her son any thing, and fell into all his
ways with the fondest acquiescence, she was rewarded by a perfect
confidence on young Harry's part, who never thought to disguise from
her a knowledge of the haunts which he frequented; and, on the
contrary, brought her home choice anecdotes from the clubs and
billiard-rooms, which the simple lady relished, if she did not
understand. "My son goes to Spratt's," she would say to her
confidential friends. "All the young men go to Spratt's after their
balls. It is _de rigeur_, my dear; and they play billiards as they
used to play macao and hazard in Mr. Fox's time. Yes, my dear father
often told me that they sate up _always_ until nine o'clock the next
morning with Mr. Fox at Brooks's, whom I remember at Drummington, when
I was a little girl, in a buff waistcoat and black satin small
clothes. My brother Erith never played as a young man, nor sate up
late--he had no health for it; but my boy must do as every body does,
you know. Yes, and then he often goes to a place called the Back
Kitchen, frequented by all the wits and authors, you know, whom one
does not see in society, but whom it is a great privilege and pleasure
for Harry to meet, and there he hears the questions of the day
discussed; and my dear father often said that it was our duty to
encourage literature, and he had hoped to see the late Dr. Johnson at
Drummington, only Dr. Johnson died. Yes, and Mr. Sheridan came over
and drank a great deal of wine--every body drank a great deal of wine
in those days--and papa's wine-merchant's bill was ten times as much
as Erith's is, who gets it as he wants it from Fortnum and Mason's,
and doesn't keep any stock at all."

"That was an uncommon good dinner we had yesterday, ma'am," the artful
Harry broke out. "Their clear soup's better than ours. Moufflet will
put too much taragon into every thing. The suprème de volaille was
very good--uncommon, and the sweets were better than Moufflet's
sweets. Did you taste the plombière, ma'am and the maraschino jelly?
Stunningly good that maraschino jelly!"

Lady Agnes expressed her agreement in these, as in almost all other
sentiments of her son, who continued the artful conversation, saying,

"Very handsome house that of the Claverings. Furniture, I should say,
got up regardless of expense. Magnificent display of plate, ma'am."
The lady assented to all these propositions.

"Very nice people the Claverings."

"Hem!" said Lady Agnes.

"I know what you mean. Lady C. ain't distangy exactly, but she is very
good-natured." "O very," mamma said, who was herself one of the
most good-natured of women.

"And Sir Francis, he don't talk much before ladies: but after dinner
he comes out uncommon strong, ma'am--a highly agreeable well-informed
man. When will you ask them to dinner? Look out for an early day,
ma'am;" and looking into Lady Agnes's pocket-book, he chose a day only
a fortnight hence (an age that fortnight seemed to the young
gentleman), when the Claverings were to be invited to Grosvenor-street.

The obedient Lady Agnes wrote the required invitation. She was
accustomed to do so without consulting her husband, who had his own
society and habits, and who left his wife to see her own friends
alone. Harry looked at the card; but there was an omission in the
invitation which did not please him.

"You have not asked Miss Whatdyecallem--Miss Emery, Lady Clavering's
daughter."

"O, that little creature!" Lady Agnes cried. "No, I think not, Harry."

"We must ask Miss Amory," Foker said. "I--I want to ask Pendennis; and
he's very sweet upon her. Don't you think she sings very well, ma'am?"

"I thought her rather forward, and didn't listen to her singing. She
only sang at you and Mr. Pendennis, it seemed to me. But I will ask
her if you wish, Harry," and so Miss Amory's name was written on the
card with her mother's.

This piece of diplomacy being triumphantly executed, Harry embraced
his fond parent with the utmost affection, and retired to his own
apartments, where he stretched himself on his ottoman, and lay
brooding silently, sighing for the day which was to bring the fair
Miss Amory under his paternal roof, and devising a hundred wild
schemes for meeting her.

On his return from making the grand tour, Mr. Foker, junior, had
brought with him a polyglot valet, who took the place of Stoopid, and
condescended to wait at dinner, attired in shirt fronts of worked
muslin, with many gold studs and chains, upon his master and the
elders of the family. This man, who was of no particular country, and
spoke all languages indifferently ill, made himself useful to Mr.
Harry in a variety of ways--read all the artless youth's
correspondence, knew his favorite haunts and the addresses of his
acquaintance, and officiated at the private dinners which the young
gentleman gave. As Harry lay upon his sofa after his interview with
his mamma, robed in a wonderful dressing-gown, and puffing his pipe in
gloomy silence, Anatole, too, must have remarked that something
affected his master's spirits; though he did not betray any ill-bred
sympathy with Harry's agitation of mind. When Harry began to dress
himself in his out-of-door morning costume: he was very hard indeed to
please, and particularly severe and snappish about his toilet: he
tried, and cursed, pantaloons of many different stripes, checks, and
colors: all the boots were villainously varnished, the shirts too
"loud" in pattern. He scented his linen and person with peculiar
richness this day; and what must have been the valet's astonishment,
when, after some blushing and hesitation on Harry's part, the young
gentleman asked, "I say, Anatole, when I engaged you, didn't
you--hem--didn't you say that you could dress--hem--dress hair?"

The valet said, "Yes, he could."

"_Cherchy alors une paire de tongs--et--curly moi un pew_" Mr. Foker
said, in an easy manner; and the valet wondering whether his master
was in love or was going masquerading, went in search of the
articles--first from the old butler who waited upon Mr. Foker, senior,
on whose bald pate the tongs would have scarcely found a hundred hairs
to seize, and finally of the lady who had the charge of the meek
auburn fronts of the Lady Agnes. And the tongs being got, Monsieur
Anatole twisted his young master's locks until he had made Harry's
head as curly as a negro's; after which the youth dressed himself with
the utmost care and splendor and proceeded to sally out.

"At what time sall I order de drag, sir, to be to Miss Calverley's
door, sir?" the attendant whispered as his master was going forth.

"Confound her! Put the dinner off--I can't go!" said Foker. "No, hang
it--I must go. Poyntz and Rougemont, and ever so many more are coming.
The drag at Pelham Corner at six o'clock, Anatole."

The drag was not one of Mr. Foker's own equipages, but was hired from
a livery stable for festive purposes; Foker, however, put his own
carriage into requisition that morning, and for what purpose does the
kind reader suppose? Why to drive down to Lamb-court, Temple, taking
Grosvenor-place by the way (which lies in the exact direction of the
Temple from Grosvenor-street, as every body knows), where he just had
the pleasure of peeping upward at Miss Amory's pink window curtains,
having achieved which satisfactory feat, he drove off to Pen's
chambers. Why did he want to see his dear friend Pen so much? Why did
he yearn and long after him; and did it seem necessary to Foker's very
existence that he should see Pen that morning, having parted with him
in perfect health on the night previous? Pen had lived two years in
London, and Foker had not paid half a dozen visits to his chambers.
What sent him thither now in such a hurry?

What?--if any young ladies read this page, I have only to inform them
that when the same mishap befalls them, which now had for more than
twelve hours befallen Harry Foker, people will grow interesting to
them for whom they did not care sixpence on the day before; as on the
other hand persons of whom they fancied themselves fond will be found
to have become insipid and disagreeable. Then your dearest Eliza or
Maria of the other day, to whom you wrote letters and sent locks of
hair yards long, will on a sudden be as indifferent to you as your
stupidest relation: while, on the contrary, about _his_ relations you
will begin to feel such a warm interest! such a loving desire to
ingratiate yourself with _his_ mamma; such a liking for that dear kind
old man _his_ father! If He is in the habit of visiting at any house,
what advances you will make in order to visit there too. If He has a
married sister you will like to spend long mornings with her. You will
fatigue your servant by sending notes to her, for which there will be
the most pressing occasion, twice or thrice in a day. You will cry if
your mamma objects to your going too often to see His family. The only
one of them you will dislike, is perhaps his younger brother, who is
at home for the holidays, and who will persist in staying in the room
when you come to see your dear new-found friend, his darling second
sister. Something like this will happen to you, young ladies, or, at
any rate, let us hope it may. Yes, you must go through the hot fits
and the cold fits of that pretty fever. Your mothers, if they would
acknowledge it, have passed through it before you were born, your dear
papa being the object of the passion of course--who could it be but
he? And as you suffer it so will your brothers in their way--and after
their kind. More selfish than you: more eager and headstrong than you:
they will rush on their destiny when the doomed charmer makes her
appearance. Or if they don't, and you don't, Heaven help you! As the
gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love
and lose is the next best. You don't die of the complaint: or very few
do. The generous wounded heart suffers and survives it. And he is not
a man, or she a woman, who is not conquered by it, or who does not
conquer it in his time...... Now, then, if you ask why Henry Foker,
Esquire, was in such a hurry to see Arthur Pendennis, and felt such a
sudden value and esteem for him, there is no difficulty in saying it
was because Pen had become really valuable in Mr. Foker's eyes;
because if Pen was not the rose, he yet had been near that fragrant
flower of love. Was not he in the habit of going to her house in
London? Did he not live near her in the country?--know all about the
enchantress? What, I wonder, would Lady Ann Milton, Mr. Foker's cousin
and _prétendue_, have said, if her ladyship had known all that was
going on in the bosom of that funny little gentleman?

Alas! when Foker reached Lamb-court, leaving his carriage for the
admiration of the little clerks who were lounging in the arch-way that
leads thence into Flag-court which leads into Upper Temple-lane,
Warrington was in the chambers, but Pen was absent. Pen was gone to
the printing-office to see his proofs. "Would Foker have a pipe, and
should the laundress go to the Cock and get him some beer?"
--Warrington asked, remarking with a pleased surprise the
splendid toilet of this scented and shiny-booted young aristocrat; but
Foker had not the slightest wish for beer or tobacco: he had very
important business: he rushed away to the "Pall-Mall Gazette" office,
still bent upon finding Pen. Pen had quitted that place. Foker wanted
him that they might go together to call upon Lady Clavering. Foker
went away disconsolate, and whiled away an hour or two vaguely at
clubs: and when it was time to pay a visit, he thought it would be but
decent and polite to drive to Grosvenor-place and leave a card upon
Lady Clavering. He had not the courage to ask to see her when the door
was opened, he only delivered two cards, with Mr. Henry Foker engraved
upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony. Jeames received the
tickets bowing his powdered head. The varnished doors closed upon him.
The beloved object was as far as ever from him, though so near. He
thought he heard the tones of a piano and of a siren singing, coming
from the drawing-room and sweeping over the balcony-shrubbery of
geraniums. He would have liked to stop and listen, but it might not
be. "Drive to Tattersall's," he said to the groom, in a voice
smothered with emotion--"And bring my pony round," he added, as the
man drove rapidly away.

As good luck would have it, that splendid barouche of Lady
Clavering's, which has been inadequately described in a former
chapter, drove up to her ladyship's door just as Foker mounted the
pony which was in waiting for him. He bestrode the fiery animal, and
dodged about the arch of the Green Park, keeping the carriage well in
view, until he saw Lady Clavering enter, and with her--whose could be
that angel form, but the enchantress's, clad in a sort of gossamer,
with a pink bonnet and a light-blue parasol--but Miss Amory?

The carriage took its fair owners to Madame Rigodon's cap and lace
shop, to Mrs. Wolsey's Berlin worsted shop--who knows to what other
resorts of female commerce? Then it went and took ices at Hunter's,
for Lady Clavering was somewhat florid in her tastes and amusements,
and not only liked to go abroad in the most showy carriage in London,
but that the public should see her in it too. And so, in a white
bonnet with a yellow feather, she ate a large pink ice in the sunshine
before Hunter's door, till Foker on his pony, and the red jacket who
accompanied him, were almost tired of dodging.

Then at last she made her way into the Park, and the rapid Foker made
his dash forward. What to do? Just to get a nod of recognition from
Miss Amory and her mother; to cross them a half-dozen times in the
drive; to watch and ogle them from the other side of the ditch, where
the horsemen assemble when the band plays in Kensington Gardens. What
is the use of looking at a woman in a pink bonnet across a ditch? What
is the earthly good to be got out of a nod of the head? Strange that
men will be contented with such pleasures, or if not contented, at
least that they will be so eager in seeking them. Not one word did
Harry, he so fluent of conversation ordinarily, change with his
charmer on that day. Mutely he beheld her return to her carriage, and
drive away among rather ironical salutes from the young men in the
Park. One said that the Indian widow was making the paternal rupees
spin rapidly; another said that she ought to have burned herself
alive, and left the money to her daughter. This one asked who
Clavering was?--and old Tom Eales, who knew every body, and never
missed a day in the Park on his gray cob, kindly said that Clavering
had come into an estate over head and heels in mortgage: that there
were dev'lish ugly stories about him when he was a young man, and that
it was reported of him that he had a share in a gambling house, and
had certainly shown the white feather in his regiment. "He plays
still; he is in a hell every night almost," Mr. Eales added. "I
should think so, since his marriage," said a wag.

"He gives devilish good dinners," said Foker, striking up for the
honor of his host of yesterday.

"I daresay, and I daresay he doesn't ask Eales," the wag said. "I say,
Eales, do you dine at Clavering's--at the Begum's?"

"_I_ dine there?" said Mr. Eales, who would have dined with Beelzebub,
if sure of a good cook, and when he came away, would have painted his
host blacker than fate had made him.

"You might, you know, although you _do_ abuse him so," continued the
wag. "They say it's very pleasant. Clavering goes to sleep after
dinner; the Begum gets tipsy with cherry-brandy, and the young lady
sings songs to the young gentlemen. She sings well, don't she, Fo?"

"Slap up," said Fo. "I tell you what, Poyntz, she sings like a--
whatdyecallum--you know what I mean--like a mermaid, you know, but
that's not their name."

"I never heard a mermaid sing," Mr. Poyntz, the wag replied. "Who ever
heard a mermaid? Eales, you are an old fellow, did you?"

"Don't make a lark of me, hang it, Poyntz," said Foker, turning red,
and with tears almost in his eyes, "you know what I mean: it's those
what's-his-names--in Homer, you know. I never said I was a
good scholar."

"And nobody ever said it of you, my boy," Mr. Poyntz remarked, and
Foker striking spurs into his pony, cantered away down Rotten Row, his
mind agitated with various emotions, ambitions, mortifications. He
_was_ sorry that he had not been good at his books in early life--that
he might have cut out all those chaps who were about her, and who
talked the languages, and wrote poetry, and painted pictures in her
album, and--and that. "What am I," thought little Foker, "compared to
her? She's all soul, she is, and can write poetry or compose music, as
easy as I could drink a glass of beer. Beer?--damme, that's all I'm
fit for, is beer. I am a poor, ignorant little beggar, good for
nothing but Foker's Entire. I misspent my youth, and used to get the
chaps to do my exercises. And what's the consequences now? O, Harry
Foker, what a confounded little fool you have been!"

As he made this dreary soliloquy, he had cantered out of Rotten Row
into the Park, and there was on the point of riding down a large, old,
roomy family carriage, of which he took no heed, when a cheery voice
cried out, "Harry, Harry!" and looking up, he beheld his aunt, the
Lady Rosherville, and two of her daughters, of whom the one who spoke
was Harry's betrothed, the Lady Ann.

He started back with a pale, scared look, as a truth about which he
had not thought during the whole day, came across him. _There_ was his
fate, there, in the back seat of that carriage.

"What is the matter Harry? why are you so pale? You have been raking
and smoking too much, you wicked boy," said Lady Ann.

Foker said, "How do, aunt?" "How do, Ann?" in a perturbed
manner--muttered something about a pressing engagement--indeed he saw
by the Park clock that he must have been keeping his party in the
drag waiting for nearly an hour--and waved a good-by. The little man
and the little pony were out of sight in an instant--the great
carriage rolled away. Nobody inside was very much interested about his
coming or going; the countess being occupied with her spaniel, the
Lady Lucy's thoughts and eyes being turned upon a volume of sermons,
and those of Lady Ann upon a new novel, which the sisters had just
procured from the library.





CHAPTER II.

CARRIES THE READER BOTH TO RICHMOND AND GREENWICH.


[Illustration]

Poor Foker found the dinner at Richmond to be the most dreary
entertainment upon which ever mortal man wasted his guineas. "I wonder
how the deuce I could ever have liked these people," he thought in his
own mind. "Why, I can see the crow's-feet under Rougemont's eyes, and
the paint on her cheeks is laid on as thick as clown's in a pantomime!
The way in which that Calverley talks slang, is quite disgusting. I
hate chaff in a woman. And old Colchicum! that old Col, coming down
here in his brougham, with his coronet on it, and sitting bodkin
between Mademoiselle Coralie and her mother! It's too bad. An English
peer, and a horse-rider of Franconi's! It won't do; by Jove, it won't
do. I ain't proud; but it will _not_ do!"

"Twopence-halfpenny for your thoughts, Fokey!" cried out Miss
Rougemont, taking her cigar from her truly vermilion lips, as she
beheld the young fellow lost in thought, seated at the head of his
table, amidst melting ices, and cut pine-apples, and bottles full and
empty, and cigar-ashes scattered on fruit, and the ruins of a dessert
which had no pleasure for him.

"_Does_ Foker ever think?" drawled out Mr. Poyntz. "Foker, here is a
considerable sum of money offered by a fair capitalist at this end of
the table for the present emanations of your valuable and acute
intellect, old boy!"

"What the deuce is that Poyntz a talking about?" Mrs. Calverley asked
of her neighbor. "I hate him. He's a drawlin', sneerin' beast."

"What a droll of a little man is that little Fokare, my lor,"
Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich
twang of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright
black eyes had got their fire. "What a droll of a man! He does not
look to have twenty years."

"I wish I were of his age," said the venerable Colchicum, with a sigh,
as he inclined his purple face toward a large goblet of claret.

"_C'te Jeunesse. Peuh! je m'en fiche_," said Madame Brack, Coralie's
mamma, taking a great pinch out of Lord Colchicum's delicate gold
snuff-box. "_Je n'aime que les hommes faits, moi. Comme milor Coralie!
n'est ce pas que tu n'aimes que les hommes faits, ma bichette?"

My lord said, with a grin, "You flatter me, Madame Brack."

"_Taisez vous, Maman, vous n'ètes qu'une bête_," Coralie cried, with a
shrug of her robust shoulders; upon which, my lord said that _she_ did
not flatter at any rate; and pocketed his snuff-box, not desirous that
Madame Brack's dubious fingers should plunge too frequently into
his Mackabaw.

There is no need to give a prolonged detail of the animated
conversation which ensued during the rest of the banquet; a
conversation which would not much edify the reader. And it is scarcely
necessary to say, that all ladies of the _corps de danse_ are not like
Miss Calverley, any more than that all peers resemble that illustrious
member of their order, the late lamented Viscount Colchicum. But there
have been such in our memories who have loved the society of riotous
youth better than the company of men of their own age and rank, and
have given the young ones the precious benefit of their experience and
example; and there have been very respectable men too who have not
objected so much to the kind of entertainment as to the publicity of
it. I am sure, for instance, that our friend Major Pendennis would
have made no sort of objection to join a party of pleasure, provided
that it were _en petit comité_, and that such men as my Lord Steyne
and my Lord Colchicum were of the society. "Give the young men their
pleasures," this worthy guardian said to Pen more than once. "I'm not
one of your straight-laced moralists, but an old man of the world,
begad; and I know that as long as it lasts, young men will be young
men." And there were some young men to whom this estimable philosopher
accorded about seventy years as the proper period for sowing their
wild oats: but they were men of fashion.

Mr. Foker drove his lovely guests home to Brompton in the drag that
night; but he was quite thoughtful and gloomy during the whole of the
little journey from Richmond; neither listening to the jokes of the
friends behind him and on the box by his side, nor enlivening them, as
was his wont, by his own facetious sallies. And when the ladies whom
he had conveyed alighted at the door of their house, and asked then
accomplished coachman whether he would not step in and take some thing
to drink, he declined with so melancholy an air, that they supposed
that the governor and he had had a difference, or that some calamity
had befallen him: and he did not tell these people what the cause of
his grief was, but left Mesdames Rougemont and Calverley, unheeding
the cries of the latter, who hung over her balcony like Jezebel, and
called out to him to ask him to give another party soon.

He sent the drag home under the guidance of one of the grooms, and
went on foot himself; his hands in his pockets, plunged in thought.
The stars and moon shining tranquilly over head, looked down upon Mr.
Foker that night, as he, in his turn, sentimentally regarded them. And
he went and gazed upward at the house in Grosvenor-place, and at the
windows which he supposed to be those of the beloved object; and he
moaned and he sighed in a way piteous and surprising to witness, which
Policeman X. did, who informed Sir Francis Clavering's people, as they
took the refreshment of beer on the coach-box at the neighboring
public-house, after bringing home their lady from the French play,
that there had been another chap hanging about the premises that
evening--a little chap, dressed like a swell.

And now with that perspicuity and ingenuity and enterprise which only
belongs to a certain passion, Mr. Foker began to dodge Miss Amory
through London, and to appear wherever he could meet her. If Lady
Clavering went to the French play, where her ladyship had a box, Mr.
Foker, whose knowledge of the language, as we have heard, was not
conspicuous, appeared in a stall. He found out where her engagements
were (it is possible that Anatole, his man, was acquainted with Sir
Francis Clavering's gentleman, and so got a sight of her ladyship's
engagement-book), and at many of these evening parties Mr. Foker made
his appearance, to the surprise of the world, and of his mother
especially, whom he ordered to apply for cards to these parties, for
which until now he had shown a supreme contempt. He told the pleased
and unsuspicious lady that he went to parties because it was right for
him to see the world: he told her that he went to the French play
because he wanted to perfect himself in the language, and there was no
such good lesson as a comedy or vaudeville--and when one night the
astonished Lady Agnes saw him stand up and dance, and complimented him
upon his elegance and activity, the mendacious little rogue asserted
that he had learned to dance in Paris, whereas Anatole knew that his
young master used to go off privily to an academy in Brewer-street,
and study there for some hours in the morning. The casino of our
modern days was not invented, or was in its infancy as yet; and
gentlemen of Mr. Foker's time had not the facilities of acquiring the
science of dancing which are enjoyed by our present youth.

Old Pendennis seldom missed going to church. He considered it to be
his duty as a gentleman to patronize the institution of public
worship, and that it was quite a correct thing to be seen in church of
a Sunday. One day it chanced that he and Arthur went thither together:
the latter, who was now in high favor, had been to breakfast with his
uncle, from whose lodging they walked across the Park to a church not
far from Belgrave-square. There was a charity sermon at Saint James's,
as the major knew by the bills posted on the pillars of his parish
church, which probably caused him, for he was a thrifty man, to
forsake it for that day: besides he had other views for himself and
Pen. "We will go to church, sir, across the Park; and then, begad,
we will go to the Claverings' house, and ask them for lunch in a
friendly way. Lady Clavering likes to be asked for lunch, and is
uncommonly kind, and monstrous hospitable."

"I met them at dinner last week, at Lady Agnes Foker's, sir," Pen
said, "and the Begum was very kind indeed. So she was in the country:
so she is every where. But I share your opinion about Miss Amory; one
of your opinions, that is, uncle, for you were changing, the last time
we spoke about her."

"And what do you think of her now?" the elder said.

"I think her the most confounded little flirt in London," Pen
answered, laughing. "She made a tremendous assault upon Harry Foker,
who sat next to her; and to whom she gave all the talk, though I took
her down."

"Bah! Henry Foker is engaged to his cousin, all the world knows it:
not a bad coup of Lady Rosherville's, that. I should say, that the
young man at his father's death, and old Mr. Foker's life's devilish
bad: you know he had a fit, at Arthur's, last year: I should say, that
young Foker won't have less than fourteen thousand a year from the
brewery, besides Logwood and the Norfolk property. I've no pride about
_me_, Pen. I like a man of birth certainly, but dammy, I like a
brewery which brings in a man fourteen thousand a year; hey, Pen? Ha,
ha, that's the sort of man for me. And I recommend you now that you
are _lancéd_ in the world, to stick to fellows of that sort; to
fellows who have a stake in the country, begad."

"Foker sticks to me, sir," Arthur answered. "He has been at our
chambers several times lately. He has asked me to dinner. We are
almost as great friends, as we used to be in our youth: and his talk
is about Blanche Amory from morning till night. I'm sure he's sweet
upon her."

"I'm sure he is engaged to his cousin, and that they will keep the
young man to his bargain," said the major. "The marriages in these
families are affairs of state. Lady Agnes was made to marry old Foker
by the late Lord, although she was notoriously partial to her cousin
who was killed at Albuera afterward, and who saved her life out of the
lake at Drummington. I remember Lady Agnes, sir, an exceedingly fine
woman. But what did she do? of course she married her father's man.
Why, Mr. Foker sate for Drummington till the Reform Bill, and paid
dev'lish well for his seat, too. And you may depend upon this, sir,
that Foker senior, who is a parvenu, and loves a great man, as all
parvenus do, has ambitious views for his son as well as himself, and
that your friend Harry must do as his father bids him Lord bless you!
I've known a hundred cases of love in young men and women: hey, Master
Arthur, do you take me? They kick, sir, they resist, they make a deuce
of a riot and that sort of thing, but they end by listening to
reason, begad."

"Blanche is a dangerous girl, sir," Pen said. "I was smitten with
her myself once, and very far gone, too," he added; "but that is
years ago."

"Were you? How far did it go? Did she return it?" asked the major,
looking hard at Pen.

Pen, with a laugh, said "that at one time he did think he was pretty
well in Miss Amory's good graces. But my mother did not like her, and
the affair went off." Pen did not think it fit to tell his uncle all
the particulars of that courtship which had passed between himself and
the young lady.

"A man might go farther and fare worse, Arthur," the major said, still
looking queerly at his nephew.

"Her birth, sir; her father was the mate of a ship, they say; and she
has not money enough," objected Pen, in a dandyfied manner. "What's
ten thousand pound and a girl bred up like her?"

"You use my own words, and it is all very well. But, I tell you in
confidence, Pen--in strict honor, mind--that it's my belief she has a
devilish deal more than ten thousand pound: and from what I saw of her
the other day, and--and have heard of her--I should say she was a
devilish accomplished, clever girl: and would make a good wife with a
sensible husband."

"How do you know about her money?" Pen asked, smiling. "You seem to
have information about every body, and to know about all the town."

"I do know a few things, sir, and I don't tell all I know. Mark that,"
the uncle replied. "And as for that charming Miss Amory--for
charming, begad! she is--if I saw her Mrs. Arthur Pendennis, I should
neither be sorry nor surprised, begad! and if you object to ten
thousand pound, what would you say, sir, to thirty, or forty, or
fifty?" and the major looked still more knowingly, and still harder
at Pen.

"Well, sir," he said, to his godfather and namesake, "make her Mrs.
Arthur Pendennis. You can do it as well as I."

"Psha! you are laughing at me, sir," the other replied, rather
peevishly, and you ought not to laugh so near a church gate. "Here we
are at St. Benedict's. They say Mr. Oriel is a beautiful preacher."

Indeed, the bells were tolling, the people were trooping into the
handsome church, the carriages of the inhabitants of the lordly
quarter poured forth their pretty loads of devotees, in whose company
Pen and his uncle, ending their edifying conversation, entered the
fane. I do not know whether other people carry their worldly affairs
to the church door. Arthur, who, from habitual reverence and feeling,
was always more than respectful in a place of worship, thought of the
incongruity of their talk, perhaps; while the old gentleman at his
side was utterly unconscious of any such contrast. His hat was
brushed: his wig was trim: his neckcloth was perfectly tied. He looked
at every soul in the congregation, it is true: the bald heads and the
bonnets, the flowers and the feathers: but so demurely that he hardly
lifted up his eyes from his book--from his book which he could not
read without glasses. As for Pen's gravity, it was sorely put to the
test when, upon looking by chance toward the seats where the servants
were collected, he spied out, by the side of a demure gentleman in
plush, Henry Foker, Esquire, who had discovered this place of
devotion. Following the direction of Harry's eye, which strayed a good
deal from his book, Pen found that it alighted upon a yellow bonnet
and a pink one: and that these bonnets were on the heads of Lady
Clavering and Blanche Amory. If Pen's uncle is not the only man who
has talked about his worldly affairs up to the church door, is poor
Harry Foker the only one who has brought his worldly love into
the aisle?

[Illustration]

When the congregation issued forth at the conclusion of the service,
Foker was out among the first, but Pen came up with him presently, as
he was hankering about the entrance which he was unwilling to leave,
until my lady's barouche, with the bewigged coachman, had borne away
its mistress and her daughter from their devotions.

When the two ladies came out, they found together the Pendennises,
uncle and nephew, and Harry Foker, Esquire, sucking the crook of his
stick, standing there in the sunshine. To see and to ask to eat were
simultaneous with the good-natured Begum, and she invited the three
gentlemen to luncheon straightway.

Blanche was, too, particularly gracious. "O! do come," she said to
Arthur, "if you are not too great a man. I want so to talk to you
about--but we mustn't say what, _here_, you know. What would Mr.
Oriel say?" And the young devotee jumped into the carriage after her
mamma. "I've read every word of it. It's _adorable_," she added, still
addressing herself to Pen.

"I know _who_ is," said Mr. Arthur, making rather a pert bow.

"What's the row about?" asked Mr. Foker, rather puzzled.

"I suppose Miss Amory means 'Walter Lorraine,'" said the major,
looking knowing, and nodding at Pen.

"I suppose so, sir. There was a famous review in the Pall Mall this
morning. It was Warrington's doing, though, and I must not be
too proud."

"A review in Pall Mall?--Walter Lorraine? What the doose do you mean?"
Foker asked. "Walter Lorraine died of the measles, poor little
beggar, when we were at Gray Friars. I remember his mother coming up."

"You are not a literary man, Foker," Pen said, laughing, and hooking
his arm into his friend's. "You must know I have been writing a novel,
and some of the papers have spoken very well of it. Perhaps you don't
read the Sunday papers?"

"I read Bell's Life regular, old boy," Mr. Foker answered: at which
Pen laughed again, and the three gentlemen proceeded in great good-humor
to Lady Clavering's house.

The subject of the novel was resumed after luncheon by Miss Amory, who
indeed loved poets and men of letters if she loved any thing, and was
sincerely an artist in feeling. "Some of the passages in the book made
me cry, positively they did," she said.

Pen said, with some fatuity, "I am happy to think I have a part of
_vos larmes_, Miss Blanche"--And the major (who had not read more than
six pages of Pen's book) put on his sanctified look, saying, "Yes,
there are some passages quite affecting, mons'ous affecting:
and,"--"O, if it makes you cry,"--Lady Amory declared she would not
read it, "that she wouldn't."

"Don't, mamma," Blanche said, with a French shrug of her shoulders;
and then she fell into a rhapsody about the book, about the snatches
of poetry interspersed in it, about the two heroines, Leonora and
Neaera; about the two heroes, Walter Lorraine and his rival the young
duke--"and what good company you introduce us to," said the young
lady, archly, "_quel ton!_ How much of your life have you passed at
court, and are you a prime minister's son, Mr. Arthur?"

Pen began to laugh--"It is as cheap for a novelist to create a duke as
to make a baronet," he said. "Shall I tell you a secret, Miss Amory? I
promoted all my characters at the request of the publisher. The young
duke was only a young baron when the novel was first written; his
false friend the viscount, was a simple commoner, and so on with all
the characters of the story."

"What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! _Comme vous
voilà formé!_" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur
Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the
country best, though!" and she gave him the full benefit of her
eyes--both of the fond, appealing glance into his own, and of the
modest look downward toward the carpet, which showed off her dark
eyelids and long fringed lashes.

Pen of course protested that he had not changed in the least, to which
the young lady replied by a tender sigh; and thinking that she had
done quite enough to make Arthur happy or miserable (as the case might
be), she proceeded to cajole his companion, Mr. Harry Foker, who
during the literary conversation had sate silently imbibing the head
of his cane, and wishing that he was a clever chap, like that Pen.

If the major thought that by telling Miss Amory of Mr. Foker's
engagement to his cousin, Lady Ann Milton (which information the old
gentleman neatly conveyed to the girl as he sate by her side at
luncheon below stairs)--if, we say, the major thought that the
knowledge of this fact would prevent Blanche from paying any further
attention to the young heir of Foker's Entire, he was entirely
mistaken. She became only the more gracious to Foker: she praised him,
and every thing belonging to him; she praised his mamma; she praised
the pony which he rode in the Park; she praised the lovely breloques
or gimcracks which the young gentleman wore at his watch-chain, and
that dear little darling of a cane, and those dear little delicious
monkeys' heads with ruby eyes, which ornamented Harry's shirt, and
formed the buttons of his waistcoat. And then, having praised and
coaxed the weak youth until he blushed and tingled with pleasure, and
until Pen thought she really had gone quite far enough, she took
another theme.

"I am afraid Mr. Foker is a very sad young man," she said, turning
round to Pen.

"He does not look so," Pen answered with a sneer.

"I mean we have heard sad stories about him. Haven't we, mamma? What
was Mr. Poyntz saying here, the other day, about that party at
Richmond? O you naughty creature!" But here, seeing that Harry's
countenance assumed a great expression of alarm, while Pen's wore a
look of amusement, she turned to the latter and said, "I believe you
are just as bad: I believe you would have liked to have been
there--wouldn't you? I know you would: yes--and so should I."

"Lor, Blanche!" mamma cried.

"Well, I would. I never saw an actress in my life. I would give any
thing to know one; for I adore talent. And I adore Richmond, that I
do; and I adore Greenwich, and I say I _should_ like to go there."

"Why should not we three bachelors," the major here broke out,
gallantly, and to his nephew's special surprise, "beg these ladies to
honor us with their company at Greenwich? Is Lady Clavering to go on
forever being hospitable to us, and may we make no return? Speak for
yourselves young men--eh, begad! Here is my nephew, with his pockets
full of money--his pockets full, begad! and Mr. Henry Foker, who as I
have heard say is pretty well to do in the world, how is your lovely
cousin, Lady Ann, Mr. Foker?--here are these two young ones--and they
allow an old fellow like me to speak. Lady Clavering will you do me
the favor to be my guest? and Miss Blanche shall be Arthur's, if she
will be so good."

"O delightful," cried Blanche.

"I like a bit of fun, too," said Lady Clavering; "and we will take
some day when Sir Francis--"

"When Sir Francis dines out--yes mamma," the daughter said, "it will
be charming."

And a charming day it was. The dinner was ordered at Greenwich, and
Foker, though he did not invite Miss Amory, had some delicious
opportunities of conversation with her during the repast, and
afterward on the balcony of their room at the hotel, and again during
the drive home in her ladyship's barouche. Pen came down with his
uncle, in Sir Hugh Trumpington's brougham, which the major borrowed
for the occasion.

"I am an old soldier, begad," he said, "and I learned in early life to
make myself comfortable."

And, being an old soldier, he allowed the two young men to pay for the
dinner between them, and all the way home in the brougham he rallied
Pen about Miss Amory's evident partiality for him: praised her good
looks, spirits, and wit: and again told Pen in the strictest
confidence, that she would be a devilish deal richer than people
thought.





CHAPTER III.

CONTAINS A NOVEL INCIDENT.


[Illustration]

Some account has been given in a former part of this story, how Mr.
Pen, during his residence at home, after his defeat at Oxbridge, had
occupied himself with various literary compositions, and among other
works, had written the greater part of a novel. This book, written
under the influence of his youthful embarrassments, amatory and
pecuniary, was of a very fierce, gloomy and passionate sort--the
Byronic despair, the Wertherian despondency, the mocking bitterness of
Mephistopheles of Faust, were all reproduced and developed in the
character of the hero; for our youth had just been learning the German
language, and imitated, as almost all clever lads do, his favorite
poets and writers. Passages in the volumes once so loved, and now read
so seldom, still bear the mark of the pencil with which he noted them
in those days. Tears fell upon the leaf of the book, perhaps, or
blistered the pages of his manuscript as the passionate young man
dashed his thoughts down. If he took up the books afterward, he had no
ability or wish to sprinkle the leaves with that early dew of former
times: his pencil was no longer eager to score its marks of approval:
but as he looked over the pages of his manuscript, he remembered what
had been the overflowing feelings which had caused him to blot it, and
the pain which had inspired the line. If the secret history of books
could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted
down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become
interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! Many a bitter smile
passed over Pen's face as he read his novel, and recalled the time and
feelings which gave it birth. How pompous some of the grand passages
appeared; and how weak others were in which he thought he had
expressed his full heart! This page was imitated from a then favorite
author, as he could now clearly see and confess, though he had
believed himself to be writing originally then. As he mused over
certain lines he recollected the place and hour where he wrote them:
the ghost of the dead feeling came back as he mused, and he blushed to
review the faint image. And what meant those blots on the page? As you
come in the desert to a ground where camels' hoofs are marked in the
clay, and traces of withered herbage are yet visible, you know that
water was there once; so the place in Pen's mind was no longer green,
and the fons lacrymarum was dried up.

He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the latter sate over
his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticulation, according to his
wont when excited, and with a bitter laugh, thumped his manuscript
down on the table, making the tea-things rattle, and the blue milk
dance in the jug. On the previous night he had taken the manuscript
out of a long neglected chest, containing old shooting jackets, old
Oxbridge scribbling books, his old surplice, and battered cap and
gown, and other memorials of youth, school, and home. He read in the
volume in bed until he fell asleep, for the commencement of the tale
was somewhat dull, and he had come home tired from a London
evening party.

"By Jove!" said Pen, thumping down his papers, "when I think that
these were written but very few years ago, I am ashamed of my memory.
I wrote this when I believed myself to be eternally in love with that
little coquette, Miss Amory. I used to carry down verses to her, and
put them into the hollow of a tree, and dedicate them 'Amori.'"

"That was a sweet little play upon words," Warrington remarked, with a
puff "Amory--Amori. It showed profound scholarship. Let us hear a bit
of the rubbish." And he stretched over from his easy chair, and caught
hold of Pen's manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using
in order to put a coal into his pipe. Thus, in possession of the
volume, he began to read out from the "Leaves from the Life-book of
Walter Lorraine."

"'False as thou art beautiful! heartless as thou art fair! mockery of
Passion!' Walter cried, addressing Leonora; 'what evil spirit hath
sent thee to torture me so? O Leonora * * * '"

"Cut that part," cried out Pen, making a dash at the book, which,
however, his comrade would not release. "Well! don't read it out, at
any rate. That's about my other flame, my first--Lady Mirabel that is
now. I saw her last night at Lady Whiston's. She asked me to a party
at her house, and said, that, as old friends, we ought to meet
oftener. She has been seeing me any time these two years in town, and
never thought of inviting me before; but seeing Wenham talking to me,
and Monsieur Dubois, the French literary man, who had a dozen orders
on, and might have passed for a Marshal of France, she condescended to
invite me. The Claverings are to be there on the same evening. Won't
it be exciting to meet one's two flames at the same table?" "Two
flames!--two heaps of burnt-out cinders," Warrington said. "Are both
the beauties in this book?"

"Both or something like them," Pen said. "Leonora, who marries the
duke, is the Fotheringay. I drew the duke from Magnus Charters, with
whom I was at Oxbridge; it's a little like him; and Miss Amory is
Neaera. By gad, Warrington, I did love that first woman! I thought of
her as I walked home from Lady Whiston's in the moonlight; and the
whole early scenes came back to me as if they had been yesterday. And
when I got home I pulled out the story which I wrote about her and the
other three years ago: do you know, outrageous as it is, it has some
good stuff in it, and if Bungay won't publish it, I think Bacon will."

"That's the way of poets," said Warrington. "They fall in love, jilt,
or are jilted; they suffer, and they cry out that they suffer more
than any other mortals: and when they have experienced feelings
enough, they note them down in a book, and take the book to market.
All poets are humbugs, all literary men are humbugs; directly a man
begins to sell his feelings for money he's a humbug. If a poet gets a
pain in his side from too good a dinner, he bellows Ai, Ai, louder
than Prometheus."

"I suppose a poet has greater sensibility than another man," said Pen,
with some spirit. "That is what makes him a poet. I suppose that he
sees and feels more keenly: it is that which makes him speak of what
he feels and sees. You speak eagerly enough in your leading articles
when you espy a false argument in an opponent, or detect a quack in
the House. Paley, who does not care for any thing else in the world,
will talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the
privilege which you take yourself, and the free use of his faculty,
and let him be what nature has made him. Why should not a man sell his
sentimental thoughts as well as you your political ideas, or Paley his
legal knowledge? Each alike is a matter of experience and practice. It
is not money which causes you to perceive a fallacy, or Paley to argue
a point; but a natural or acquired aptitude for that kind of truth:
and a poet sets down his thoughts and experiences upon paper as a
painter does a landscape or a face upon canvas, to the best of his
ability, and according to his particular gift. If ever I think I have
the stuff in me to write an epic, by Jove, I will try. If I only feel
that I am good enough to crack a joke or tell a story, I will
do that."

"Not a bad speech, young one," Warrington said, "but that does not
prevent all poets from being humbugs."

"What--Homer, Aeschylus, Shakspeare, and all?"

"Their names are not to be breathed in the same sentence with you
pigmies," Mr. Warrington said; "there are men and men, sir."

"Well, Shakspeare was a man who wrote for money, just as you and I
do," Pen answered, at which Warrington confounded his impudence, and
resumed his pipe and his manuscript.

There was not the slightest doubt then that this document contained a
great deal of Pen's personal experiences, and that "Leaves from the
Life-book of Walter Lorraine" would never have been written but for
Arthur Pendennis's own private griefs, passions, and follies. As we
have become acquainted with these in the first volume of his
biography, it will not be necessary to make large extracts from the
novel of "Walter Lorraine," in which the young gentleman had depicted
such of them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were
suitable for the purposes of his story.

Now, though he had kept it in his box for nearly half of the period
during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to
lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be
questioned altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried his novel for this
time, in order that the work might improve, but because he did not
know where else to bestow it, or had no particular desire to see it. A
man who thinks of putting away a composition for ten years before he
shall give it to the world, or exercise his own maturer judgment upon
it, had best be very sure of the original strength and durability of
the work; otherwise, on withdrawing it from its crypt, he may find
that, like small wine, it has lost what flavor it once had, and is
only tasteless when opened. There are works of all tastes and smacks,
the small and the strong, those that improve by age, and those that
won't bear keeping at all, but are pleasant at the first draught, when
they refresh and sparkle.

Now Pen had never any notion, even in the time of his youthful
inexperience and fervor of imagination, that the story he was writing
was a masterpiece of composition, or that he was the equal of the
great authors whom he admired; and when he now reviewed his little
performance, he was keenly enough alive to its faults, and pretty
modest regarding its merits. It was not very good, he thought; but it
was as good as most books of the kind that had the run of circulating
libraries and the career of the season. He had critically examined
more than one fashionable novel by the authors of the day then
popular, and he thought that his intellect was as good as theirs, and
that he could write the English language as well as those ladies or
gentlemen; and as he now ran over his early performance, he was
pleased to find here and there passages exhibiting both fancy and
vigor, and traits, if not of genius, of genuine passion and feeling.
This, too, was Warrington's verdict, when that severe critic, after
half-an-hour's perusal of the manuscript, and the consumption of a
couple of pipes of tobacco, laid Pen's book down, yawning
portentously. "I can't read any more of that balderdash now," he said;
"but it seems to me there is some good stuff in it, Pen, my boy.
There's a certain greenness and freshness in it which I like, somehow.
The bloom disappears off the face of poetry after you begin to shave.
You can't get up that naturalness and artless rosy tint in after days.
Your cheeks are pale, and have got faded by exposure to evening
parties, and you are obliged to take curling-irons, and macassar, and
the deuce knows what to your whiskers; they curl ambrosially, and you
are very grand and genteel, and so forth; but, ah! Pen, the spring
time was the best."

"What the deuce have my whiskers to do with the subject in hand?" Pen
said (who, perhaps, may have been nettled by Warrington's allusion
to those ornaments, which, to say the truth, the young man coaxed, and
curled, and oiled, and purfumed, and petted, in rather an
absurd manner).

"Do you think we can do any thing with 'Walter Lorraine?' Shall we
take him to the publishers, or make an _auto-da-fe_ of him?"

"I don't see what is the good of incremation," Warrington said,
"though I have a great mind to put him into the fire, to punish your
atrocious humbug and hypocrisy. Shall I burn him indeed? You have much
too great a value for him to hurt a hair of his head."

[Illustration]

"Have I? Here goes," said Pen, and "Walter Lorraine" went off the
table, and was flung on to the coals. But the fire having done its
duty of boiling the young man's breakfast-kettle, had given up work
for the day, and had gone out, as Pen knew very well; and Warrington,
with a scornful smile, once more took up the manuscript with the tongs
from out of the harmless cinders.

"O, Pen, what a humbug you are!" Warrington said; "and, what is worst
of all, sir, a clumsy humbug. I saw you look to see that the fire was
out before you sent 'Walter Lorraine' behind the bars. No, we won't
burn him: we will carry him to the Egyptians, and sell him. We will
exchange him away for money, yea, for silver and gold, and for beef
and for liquors, and for tobacco and for raiment. This youth will
fetch some price in the market; for he is a comely lad, though not
over strong; but we will fatten him up, and give him the bath, and
curl his hair, and we will sell him for a hundred piastres to Bacon or
to Bungay. The rubbish is salable enough, sir; and my advice to you is
this: the next time you go home for a holiday, take 'Walter Lorraine'
in your carpet-bag--give him a more modern air, prune away, though
sparingly, some of the green passages, and add a little comedy, and
cheerfulness, and satire, and that sort of thing, and then we'll take
him to market, and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but
it will do very well."

"Do you think so, Warrington?" said Pen, delighted; for this was great
praise from his cynical friend.

"You silly young fool! I think it's uncommonly clever," Warrington
said in a kind voice. "So do you, sir." And with the manuscript which
he held in his hand he playfully struck Pen on the cheek. That part of
Pen's countenance turned as red as it had ever done in the earliest
days of his blushes: he grasped the other's hand and said, "Thank you,
Warrington," with all his might; and then he retired to his own room
with his book, and passed the greater part of the day upon his bed
re-reading it: and he did as Warrington had advised, and altered not a
little, and added a great deal, until at length he had fashioned
"Walter Lorraine" pretty much into the shape in which, as the
respected novel-reader knows, it subsequently appeared.

While he was at work upon this performance, the good-natured
Warrington artfully inspired the two gentlemen who "read" for Messrs.
Bacon and Bungay with the greatest curiosity regarding, "Walter
Lorraine," and pointed out the peculiar merits of its distinguished
author. It was at the period when the novel, called "The Fashionable,"
was in vogue among us; and Warrington did not fail to point out, as
before, how Pen was a man of the very first fashion himself, and
received at the houses of some of the greatest personages in the land.
The simple and kind-hearted Percy Popjoy was brought to bear upon
Mrs. Bungay, whom he informed that his friend Pendennis was occupied
upon a work of the most exciting nature; a work that the whole town
would run after, full of wit, genius, satire, pathos, and every
conceivable good quality. We have said before, that Bungay knew no
more about novels than he did about Hebrew or Algebra, and neither
read nor understood any of the books which he published and paid for;
but he took his opinions from his professional advisers and from Mrs.
B., and, evidently with a view to a commercial transaction, asked
Pendennis and Warrington to dinner again. Bacon, when he found that
Bungay was about to treat, of course, began to be anxious and curious,
and desired to out-bid his rival. Was any thing settled between Mr.
Pendennis and the odious house "over the way" about the new book? Mr.
Hack, the confidential reader, was told to make inquiries, and see if
any thing was to be done, and the result of the inquiries of that
diplomatist, was, that one morning, Bacon himself toiled up the
staircase of Lamb-court, and to the door on which the names of Mr.
Warrington, and Mr. Pendennis were painted.

For a gentleman of fashion as poor Pen was represented to be, it must
be confessed, that the apartments he and his friend occupied, were not
very suitable. The ragged carpet had grown only more ragged during the
two years of joint occupancy: a constant odor of tobacco perfumed the
sitting-room: Bacon tumbled over the laundress's buckets in the
passage through which he had to pass; Warrington's shooting jacket was
as shattered at the elbows as usual; and the chair which Bacon was
requested to take on entering, broke down with the publisher.
Warrington burst out laughing, said that Bacon had got the game chair,
and bawled out to Pen to fetch a sound one from his bedroom. And
seeing the publisher looking round the dingy room with an air of
profound pity and wonder, asked him whether he didn't think the
apartments were elegant, and if he would like, for Mrs. Bacon's
drawing-room, any of the articles of furniture? Mr. Warrington's
character as a humorist, was known to Mr. Bacon: "I never can make
that chap out," the publisher was heard to say, "or tell whether he is
in earnest or only chaffing."

It is very possible that Mr. Bacon would have set the two gentlemen
down as impostors altogether, but that there chanced to be on the
breakfast-table certain cards of invitation which the post of the
morning had brought in for Pen, and which happened to come from some
very exalted personages of the _beau-monde_, into which our young man
had his introduction. Looking down upon these, Bacon saw that the
Marchioness of Steyne would be at home to Mr. Arthur Pendennis upon a
given day, and that another lady of distinction proposed to have
dancing at her house upon a certain future evening. Warrington saw the
admiring publisher eying these documents. "Ah," said he, with an air
of simplicity, "Pendennis is one of the most affable young men I ever
knew, Mr. Bacon. Here is a young fellow that dines with all the great
men in London, and yet he'll take his mutton-chop with you and me
quite contentedly. There's nothing like the affability of the old
English gentleman."

"O, no, nothing," said Mr. Bacon.

"And you wonder why he should go on living up three pair of stairs
with me, don't you, now? Well, it _is_ a queer taste. But we are fond
of each other; and as I can't afford to live in a grand house, he
comes and stays in these rickety old chambers with me. He's a man that
can afford to live any where."

"I fancy it don't cost him much _here_," thought Mr. Bacon; and the
object of these praises presently entered the room from his adjacent
sleeping apartment.

Then Mr. Bacon began to speak upon the subject of his visit; said he
heard that Mr. Pendennis had a manuscript novel; professed himself
anxious to have a sight of that work, and had no doubt that they could
come to terms respecting it. What would be his price for it? would he
give Bacon the refusal of it? he would find our house a liberal house,
and so forth. The delighted Pen assumed an air of indifference, and
said that he was already in treaty with Bungay, and could give no
definite answer. This piqued the other into such liberal, though vague
offers, that Pen began to fancy Eldorado was opening to him, and that
his fortune was made from that day.

I shall not mention what was the sum of money which Mr. Arthur
Pendennis finally received for the first edition of his novel of
"Walter Lorraine," lest other young literary aspirants should expect
to be as lucky as he was, and unprofessional persons forsake their own
callings, whatever they may be, for the sake of supplying the world
with novels, whereof there is already a sufficiency. Let no young
people be misled and rush fatally into romance-writing: for one book
which succeeds let them remember the many that fail, I do not say
deservedly or otherwise, and wholesomely abstain: or if they venture,
at least let then do so at their own peril. As for those who have
already written novels, this warning is not addressed, of course, to
them. Let them take their wares to market; let them apply to Bacon and
Bungay, and all the publishers in the Row, or the metropolis, and may
they be happy in their ventures. This world is so wide, and the tastes
of mankind happily so various, that there is always a chance for every
man, and he may win the prize by his genius or by his good fortune.
But what is the chance of success or failure; of obtaining popularity,
or of holding it, when achieved? One man goes over the ice, which
bears him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr.
Pendennis's was an exceptional case, and applies to himself only: and
I assert solemnly, and will to the last maintain, that it is one thing
to write a novel, and another to get money for it.

By merit, then, or good fortune, or the skillful playing off of Bungay
against Bacon which Warrington performed (and which an amateur
novelist is quite welcome to try upon any two publishers in the
trade), Pen's novel was actually sold for a certain sum of money to
one of the two eminent patrons of letters whom we have introduced to
our readers. The sum was so considerable that Pen thought of opening
an account at a banker's, or of keeping a cab and horse, or of
descending into the first floor of Lamb-court into newly furnished
apartments, or of migrating to the fashionable end of the town.

Major Pendennis advised the latter move strongly; he opened his eyes
with wonder when he heard of the good luck that had befallen Pen; and
which the latter, as soon as it occurred, hastened eagerly to
communicate to his uncle. The major was almost angry that Pen should
have earned so much money. "Who the doose reads this kind of thing?"
he thought to himself, when he heard of the bargain which Pen had
made. "_I_ never read your novels and rubbish. Except Paul de Kock,
who certainly makes me laugh, I don't think I've looked into a book of
the sort these thirty years. 'Gad! Pen's a lucky fellow. I should
think he might write one of these in a month now--say a month--that's
twelve in a year. Dammy, he may go on spinning this nonsense for the
next four or five years, and make a fortune. In the mean time, I
should wish him to live properly, take respectable apartments, and
keep a brougham." And on this simple calculation it was that the major
counseled Pen.

Arthur, laughing, told Warrington what his uncle's advice had been;
but he luckily had a much more reasonable counselor than the old
gentleman, in the person of his friend, and in his own conscience,
which said to him, "Be grateful for this piece of good fortune; don't
plunge into any extravagancies. Pay back Laura!" And he wrote a letter
to her, in which he told her his thanks and his regard; and inclosed
to her such an installment of his debt as nearly wiped it off. The
widow and Laura herself might well be affected by the letter. It was
written with genuine tenderness and modesty; and old Dr. Portman, when
he read a passage in the letter, in which Pen, with an honest heart
full of gratitude, humbly thanked Heaven for his present prosperity,
and for sending him such dear and kind friends to support him in his
ill-fortune,--when Doctor Portman read this portion of the letter,
his voice faltered, and his eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. And
when he had quite finished reading the same, and had taken his glasses
off his nose, and had folded up the paper and given it back to the
widow, I am constrained to say, that after holding Mrs. Pendennis's
hand for a minute, the doctor drew that lady toward him and fairly
kissed her: at which salute, of course, Helen burst out crying on the
doctor's shoulder, for her heart was too full to give any other reply:
and the doctor, blushing a great deal after his feat, led the lady,
with a bow, to the sofa, on which he seated himself by her; and he
mumbled out, in a low voice, some words of a Great Poet whom he loved
very much, and who describes how in the days of his prosperity he had
made "the widow's heart to sing for joy."

"The letter does the boy very great honor, very great honor, my dear,"
he said, patting it as it lay on Helen's knee--"and I think we have
all reason to be thankful for it--very thankful. I need not tell you
in what quarter, my dear, for you are a sainted woman: yes, Laura, my
love, your mother is a sainted woman. And Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, I
shall order a copy of the book for myself, and another at the
Book club."

We may be sure that the widow and Laura walked out to meet the mail
which brought them their copy of Pen's precious novel, as soon as that
work was printed and ready for delivery to the public; and that they
read it to each other: and that they also read it privately and
separately, for when the widow came out of her room in her
dressing-gown at one o'clock in the morning with volume two, which she
had finished, she found Laura devouring volume three in bed. Laura did
 not say much about the book, but Helen pronounced that it was a
happy mixture of Shakspeare, and Byron, and Walter Scott, and was
quite certain that her son was the greatest genius, as he was the best
son, in the world.

Did Laura not think about the book and the author, although she said
so little? At least she thought about Arthur Pendennis. Kind as his
tone was, it vexed her. She did not like his eagerness to repay that
money. She would rather that her brother had taken her gift as she
intended it; and was pained that there should be money calculations
between them. His letters from London, written with the good-natured
wish to amuse his mother, were full of descriptions of the famous
people and the entertainments, and magnificence of the great city.
Every body was flattering him and spoiling him, she was sure. Was he
not looking to some great marriage, with that cunning uncle for a
Mentor (between whom and Laura there was always an antipathy), that
inveterate worldling, whose whole thoughts were bent upon pleasure,
and rank, and fortune? He never alluded to--to old times, when he
spoke of her. He had forgotten them and her, perhaps: had he not
forgotten other things and people?

These thoughts may have passed in Miss Laura's mind, though she did
not, she could not, confide them to Helen. She had one more secret,
too, from that lady, which she could not divulge, perhaps, because she
knew how the widow would have rejoiced to know it. This regarded an
event which had occurred during that visit to Lady Rockminster, which
Laura had paid in the last Christmas holidays: when Pen was at home
with his mother, and when Mr. Pynsent, supposed to be so cold and so
ambitious, had formally offered his hand to Miss Bell. No one except
herself and her admirer knew of this proposal: or that Pynsent had
been rejected by her, and probably the reasons she gave to the
mortified young man himself, were not those which actuated her
refusal, or those which she chose to acknowledge to herself. "I
never," she told Pynsent, "can accept such an offer as that which you
make me, which you own is unknown to your family, as I am sure it
would be unwelcome to them. The difference of rank between us is too
great. You are very kind to me here--too good and kind, dear Mr.
Pynsent--but I am little better than a dependent."

"A dependent! who ever so thought of you? You are the equal of all the
world," Pynsent broke out.

"I am a dependent at home, too," Laura said, sweetly, "and indeed I
would not be otherwise. Left early a poor orphan, I have found the
kindest and tenderest of mothers, and I have vowed never to leave her
--never. Pray do not speak of this again--here, under your relative's
roof, or elsewhere. It is impossible."

"If Lady Rockminster asks you herself, will you listen to her?"
Pynsent cried, eagerly.

"No," Laura said. "I beg you never to speak of this any more. I must
go away if you do;" and with this she left him.

Pynsent never asked for Lady Rockminster's intercession; he knew how
vain it was to look for that: and he never spoke again on that subject
to Laura or to any person.

When at length the famous novel appeared, it not only met with
applause from more impartial critics than Mrs. Pendennis, but, luckily
for Pen, it suited the taste of the public, and obtained a quick and
considerable popularity. Before two months were over, Pen had the
satisfaction and surprise of seeing the second edition of "Walter
Lorraine," advertised in the newspapers; and enjoyed the pleasure of
reading and sending home the critiques of various literary journals
and reviewers upon his book. Their censure did not much affect him;
for the good-natured young man was disposed to accept with
considerable humility the dispraise of others. Nor did their praise
elate him overmuch; for, like most honest persons, he had his own
opinion about his own performance, and when a critic praised him in
the wrong place, he was hurt rather than pleased by the compliment.
But if a review of his work was very laudatory, it was a great
pleasure to him to send it home to his mother at Fairoaks, and to
think of the joy which it would give there. There are some natures,
and perhaps, as we have said, Pendennis's was one, which are improved
and softened by prosperity and kindness, as there are men of other
dispositions, who become arrogant and graceless under good fortune.
Happy he who can endure one or the other with modesty and good-humor!
Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be,
by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor!





CHAPTER IV.

ALSATIA.


Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the purlieus of
the Inns of Court, Shepherd's Inn is always to be found in the close
neighborhood of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, and the Temple. Somewhere
behind the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych-street,
Holywell-street, Chancery-lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the
outer world; and it is approached by curious passages, and ambiguous
smoky alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers,
brandy-ball and hard-bake venders, purveyors of theatrical prints for
youth, dealers in dingy furniture, and bedding suggestive of any thing
but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark casements with their wares.
The doors are many-belled, and crowds of dirty children form endless
groups about the steps, or around the shell-fish dealers' trays in
these courts, whereof the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are
drabbled with a never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here,
in deadly, guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig
administration, against the bishops and dignified clergy, against the
German relatives of an august royal family; Punch sets up his theater,
sure of an audience, and occasionally of a halfpenny from the swarming
occupants of the houses; women scream after their children for
loitering in the gutter, or, worse still, against the husband who
comes reeling from the gin-shop. There is a ceaseless din and life in
these courts, out of which you pass into the tranquil, old-fashioned
quadrangle of Shepherd's Inn. In a mangy little grass-plat in the
center rises up the statue of Shepherd, defended by iron railings from
the assaults of boys. The hall of the Inn, on which the founder's
arms are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall and
ancient chambers are carried round other two sides, and over the
central archway, which leads into Oldcastle-street, and so into the
great London thoroughfare.

The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once: but the laity have
long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that
any of the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices
of the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the
ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of
Genius and Capital Company, another--the only gentleman whose name
figures here and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears
mustaches, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a week; and
whose West End offices are in Curzon-street, Mayfair, where Mrs.
Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to whom her husband lends
money. There, and on his glazed cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion;
here he is Campion and Co.; and the same tuft which ornaments his
chin, sprouts from the under lip of the rest of the firm. It is
splendid to see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings,
as the vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers. The horse
flings froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the
shining bit. The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering
white--the luster of that equipage makes a sunshine in that
shady place.

Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion's cab and horse
many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court in his carpet
slippers and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked over his eye. He
suns himself there after his breakfast when the day is suitable; and
goes and pays a visit to the porter's lodge, where he pats the heads
of the children, and talks to Mrs. Bolton about the thayatres and me
daughter Leedy Mirabel. Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession
once, and danced at the Wells in early days as the thirteenth of Mr.
Serle's forty pupils.

Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which were
Mr. Podmore's, and whose name is still on the door (somebody else's
name, by the way, is on almost all the doors in Shepherd's Inn). When
Charley Podmore (the pleasing tenor singer, T.R.D.L., and at the
Back-Kitchen Concert Rooms), married, and went to live at Lambeth, he
ceded his chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them
in common now, and you may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows's piano of
fine days when the windows are open, and when he is practicing for
amusement, or for the instruction of a theatrical pupil, of whom he
has one or two. Fanny Bolton is one, the porteress's daughter, who has
heard tell of her mother's theatrical glories, which she longs to
emulate. She has a good voice and a pretty face and figure for the
stage; and she prepares the rooms and makes the beds and breakfasts
for Messrs. Costigan and Bows, in return for which the latter
instructs her in music and singing. But for his unfortunate propensity
to liquor (and in that excess she supposes that all men of fashion
indulge), she thinks the captain the finest gentleman in the world,
and believes in all the versions of all his stories; and she is very
fond of Mr. Bows, too, and very grateful to him; and this shy, queer
old gentleman has a fatherly fondness for her, too, for in truth his
heart is full of kindness, and he is never easy unless he
loves somebody.

[Illustration]

Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction before his
humble door in Shepherd's Inn: and to hear him talk of a morning (for
his evening song is of a much more melancholy nature) you would fancy
that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were in the constant habit of
calling at his chambers, and bringing with them the select nobility to
visit the "old man, the honest old half-pay captain, poor old Jack
Costigan," as Cos calls himself.

The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband's card (which has
been stuck in the little looking-glass over the mantle-piece of the
sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months past), and has come in
person to see her father, but not of late days. A kind person,
disposed to discharge her duties gravely, upon her marriage with Sir
Charles, she settled a little pension upon her father, who
occasionally was admitted to the table of his daughter and son-in-law.
At first poor Cos's behavior "in the hoight of poloit societee," as he
denominated Lady Mirabel's drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was
absurd. As he clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected
the longest and richest words in his vocabulary to deck his
conversation, and adopted a solemnity of demeanor which struck with
astonishment all those persons in whose company he happened to be.
"Was your Leedyship in the Pork to-dee?" he would demand of his
daughter. "I looked for your equipage in veen:--the poor old man was
not gratified by the soight of his daughter's choriot. Sir Chorlus, I
saw your neem at the Levée; many's the Levee at the Castle at Dublin
that poor old Jack Costigan has attended in his time. Did the Juke
look pretty well? Bedad, I'll call at Apsley House and lave me cyard
upon 'um. I thank ye, James, a little dthrop more champeane." Indeed,
he was magnificent in his courtesy to all, and addressed his
observations not only to the master and the guests, but to the
domestics who waited at the table, and who had some difficulty in
maintaining their professional gravity while they waited on
Captain Costigan.

On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan
maintained a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time
when he got to the Back-Kitchen, where he bragged about his
son-in-law's clart and burgundee, until his own utterance began to
fail him, over his sixth tumbler of whiskey-punch. But with
familiarity his caution vanished, and poor Cos lamentably disgraced
himself at Sir Charles Mirabel's table, by premature inebriation. A
carriage was called for him: the hospitable door was shut upon him.
Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at the Kitchen of his
resemblance to King Lear in the plee--of his having a thankless
choild, bedad--of his being a pore worn-out, lonely old man, dthriven
to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows
in punch.

It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of fathers, but
it must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when his credit was
exhausted and his money gone, he would not unfrequently beg money from
his daughter, and make statements to her not altogether consistent
with strict truth. On one day a bailiff was about to lead him to
prison, he wrote, "unless the--to you insignificant--sum of three
pound five can be forthcoming to liberate a poor man's gray hairs from
jail." And the good-natured Lady Mirabel dispatched the money
necessary for her father's liberation, with a caution to him to be
more economical for the future. On a second occasion the captain met
with a frightful accident, and broke a plate-glass window in the
Strand, for which the proprietor of the shop held him liable. The
money was forthcoming on this time too, to repair her papa's disaster,
and was carried down by Lady Mirabel's servant to the slip-shod
messenger and aid-de-camp of the captain, who brought the letter
announcing his mishap. If the servant had followed the captain's
aid-de-camp who carried the remittance, he would have seen that
gentleman, a person of Costigan's country too (for have we not said,
that however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer Irish
gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecuniary affairs?)
call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle down to the Roscius's
Head, Harlequin-yard, Drury-lane, where the captain was indeed in
pawn, and for several glasses containing rum and water, or other
spirituous refreshment, of which he and his staff had partaken. On a
third melancholy occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness,
and wanted money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call
in; and this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father's safety, and
perhaps reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight of her
father, called for her carriage and drove to Shepherd's Inn, at the
gate of which she alighted, whence she found the way to her father's
chambers, "No. 4, third floor, name of Podmore over the door," the
porteress said, with many courtesies, pointing toward the door of the
house into which the affectionate daughter entered, and mounted the
dingy stair. Alas! the door, surmounted by the name of Podmore, was
opened to her by poor Cos in his shirt-sleeves, and prepared with the
gridiron to receive the mutton-chops, which Mrs. Bolton had gone
to purchase.

Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have letters
constantly addressed to him at Brookes's, with the information that
Captain Costigan was in the hall waiting for an answer; or when he
went to play his rubber at the Travelers', to be obliged to shoot out
of his brougham and run up the steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law
should seize upon him; and to think that while he read his paper or
played his whist, the captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall
Mall, with that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed
steadily upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man; he
was old, and had many infirmities: he cried about his father-in-law to
his wife, whom he adored with senile infatuation: he said he must go
abroad--he must go and live in the country--he should die, or have
another fit if he saw that man again--he knew he should. And it was
only by paying a second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to
him, that if he plagued Sir Charles by letters, or addressed him in
the street, or made any further applications for loans, his allowance
would be withdrawn altogether; that Lady Mirabel was enabled to keep
her papa in order, and to restore tranquillity to her husband. And on
occasion of this visit, she sternly rebuked Bows for not keeping a
better watch over the captain; desired that he should not be allowed
to drink in that shameful way; and that the people at the horrid
taverns which he frequented should be told, upon no account to give
him credit. "Papa's conduct is bringing me to the grave," she said
(though she looked perfectly healthy), "and you, as an old man, Mr.
Bows, and one that pretended to have a regard for us, ought to be
ashamed of abetting him in it." These were the thanks which honest
Bows got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not
suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other
men, or had greater reason to grumble. On the second floor of the
next house to Bows's, in Shepherd's Inn, at No. 3, live two other
acquaintances of ours. Colonel Altamont, agent to the Nawaab of
Lucknow, and Captain the Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is
over their door. The captain does not choose to let all the world know
where he lives, and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn-street
hotel; and as for the Embassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian
potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James's
or Leadenhall-street, but is here on a confidential mission, quite
independent of the East India Company or the Board of Control.

"In fact," as Strong says, "Colonel Altamont's object being financial,
and to effectuate a sale of some of the principal diamonds and rubies
of the Lucknow crown, his wish is _not_ to report himself at the India
House or in Cannon-row, but rather to negotiate with private
capitalists--with whom he has had important transactions both in this
country and on the Continent."

We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong's had been very
comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir Francis Clavering in
London, and the chevalier might boast with reason to the friends who
visited him, that few retired captains were more snugly quartered than
he, in his crib in Shepherd's Inn. There were three rooms below: the
office where Strong transacted his business--whatever that might
be--and where still remained the desk and railings of the departed
officials who had preceded him, and the chevalier's own bedroom and
sitting room; and a private stair led out of the office to two upper
apartments, the one occupied by Colonel Altamont, and the other
serving as the kitchen of the establishment, and the bedroom of Mr.
Grady, the attendant. These rooms were on a level with the apartments
of our friends Bows and Costigan next door at No. 4; and by reaching
over the communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonnette-box
which bloomed in Bows's window.

From Grady's kitchen casement often came odors still more fragrant.
The three old soldiers who formed the garrison of No. 4, were all
skilled in the culinary art. Grady was great at an Irish stew; the
colonel was famous for pillaus and curries; and as for Strong, he
could cook any thing. He made French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews,
fricassees, and omelettes, to perfection; nor was there any man in
England more hospitable than he when his purse was full, or his credit
was good. At those happy periods, he could give a friend, as he said,
a good dinner, a good glass of wine, and a good song afterward; and
poor Cos often heard with envy the roar of Strong's choruses, and the
musical clinking of the glasses as he sate in his own room, so far
removed and yet so near to those festivities. It was not expedient to
invite Mr. Costigan always; his practice of inebriation was
lamentable; and he bored Strong's guests with his stories when sober,
and with his maudlin tears when drunk.

A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the chevalier;
and though Major Pendennis would not much have relished their company,
Arthur and Warrington liked it not a little, and Pen thought it
as amusing as the society of the finest gentlemen in the finest houses
which he had the honor to frequent. There was a history about every
man of the set: they seemed all to have had their tides of luck and
bad fortune. Most of them had wonderful schemes and speculations in
their pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary fortunes.
Jack Holt had been in Don Carlos's army, when Ned Strong had fought on
the other side; and was now organizing a little scheme for smuggling
tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any
man who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer
of the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who
had been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been
sunk in the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty
thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty thousand pounds in
bars and doubloons. "Give me eighteen hundred pounds," Tom said, "and
I'm off tomorrow. I take out four men, and a diving-bell with me; and
I return in ten months to take my seat in parliament, by Jove! and to
buy back my family estate." Keightley, the manager of the Tredyddlum
and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet under water), besides
singing as good a second as any professional man, and besides the
Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna Sponge Company, and a little
quicksilver operation in view, which would set him straight with the
world yet. Filby had been every thing: a corporal of dragoons, a
field-preacher, and missionary-agent for converting the Irish; an
actor at a Greenwich fair-booth, in front of which his father's
attorney found him when the old gentleman died and left him that
famous property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody
exactly knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis Clavering,
Bart., who liked their society, though he did not much add to its
amusements by his convivial powers. But he was made much of by the
company now, on account of his wealth and position in the world. He
told his little story and sang his little song or two with great
affability; and he had had his own history, too, before his accession
to good fortune; and had seen the inside of more prisons than one, and
written his name on many a stamped paper.

When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had communicated
with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at which he had taken up his
quarters (and which he had reached in a very denuded state,
considering the wealth of diamonds and rubies with which this honest
man was intrusted), Strong was sent to him by his patron the baronet;
paid his little bill at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for
a night or two at the chambers, where he subsequently took up his
residence. To negotiate with this man was very well, but to have such
a person settled in his rooms, and to be constantly burdened with such
society, did not suit the chevalier's taste much: and he grumbled not
a little to his principal.

"I wish you would put this bear into somebody else's cage," he said to
Clavering. "The fellow's no gentleman. I don't like walking with
him. He dresses himself like a nigger on a holiday. I took him to the
play the other night: and, by Jove, sir, he abused the actor who was
doing the part of villain in the play, and swore at him so, that the
people in the boxes wanted to turn him out. The after-piece was the
'Brigand,' where Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he
died, Altamont began to cry like a child, and said it was a d--d
shame, and cried and swore so, that there was another row, and every
body laughing. Then I had to take him away, because he wanted to take
his coat off to one fellow who laughed at him; and bellowed to him to
stand up like a man. Who is he? Where the deuce does he come from? You
had best tell me the whole story. Frank, you must one day. You and he
have robbed a church together, that's my belief. You had better get it
off your mind at once, Clavering, and tell me what this Altamont is,
and what hold he has over you."

"Hang him! I wish he was dead!" was the baronet's only reply; and his
countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did not think fit to
question his patron any further at that time; but resolved, if need
were, to try and discover for himself what was the secret tie between
Altamont and Clavering.





CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH THE COLONEL NARRATES SOME OF HIS ADVENTURES.


Early in the forenoon of the day after the dinner in Grosvenor-place,
at which Colonel Altamont had chosen to appear, the colonel emerged
from his chamber in the upper story at Shepherd's Inn, and entered
into Strong's sitting-room, where the chevalier sat in his easy-chair
with the newspaper and his cigar. He was a man who made his tent
comfortable wherever he pitched it, and long before Altamont's
arrival, had done justice to a copious breakfast of fried eggs and
broiled rashers, which Mr. Grady had prepared _secundum artem_.
Good-humored and talkative, he preferred any company rather than none;
and though he had not the least liking for his fellow-lodger, and
would not have grieved to hear that the accident had befallen him
which Sir Francis Clavering desired so fervently, yet kept on fair
terms with him. He had seen Altamont to bed with great friendliness on
the night previous, and taken away his candle for fear of accidents;
and finding a spirit-bottle empty, upon which he had counted for his
nocturnal refreshment, had drunk a glass of water with perfect
contentment over his pipe, before he turned into his own crib and to
sleep. That enjoyment never failed him: he had always an easy temper,
a faultless digestion, and a rosy cheek; and whether he was going into
action the next morning or to prison (and both had been his lot), in
the camp or the Fleet, the worthy captain snored healthfully through
the night, and woke with a good heart and appetite, for the struggles
or difficulties or pleasures of the day.

The first act of Colonel Altamont was to bellow to Grady for a pint of
pale ale, the which he first poured into a pewter flagon, whence he
transferred it to his own lips. He put down the tankard empty, drew
a great breath, wiped his mouth in his dressing-gown (the difference
of the color of his heard from his dyed whiskers had long struck
Captain Strong, who had seen too that his hair was fair under his
black wig, but made no remarks upon these circumstances)--the colonel
drew a great breath, and professed himself immensely refreshed by his
draught. "Nothing like that beer," he remarked, "when the coppers are
hot. Many a day I've drunk a dozen of Bass at Calcutta, and--and--"

"And at Lucknow, I suppose," Strong said with a laugh. "I got the beer
for you on purpose: knew you'd want it after last night." And the
colonel began to talk about his adventures of the preceding evening.

"I can not help myself," the colonel said, beating his head with his
big hand. "I'm a madman when I get the liquor on board me; and ain't
fit to be trusted with a spirit-bottle. When I once begin I can't stop
till I've emptied it; and when I've swallowed it, Lord knows what I
say or what I don't say. I dined at home here quite quiet. Grady gave
me just my two tumblers, and I intended to pass the evening at the
Black and Red as sober as a parson. Why did you leave that confounded
sample-bottle of Hollands out of the cupboard, Strong? Grady must go
out, too, and leave me the kettle a-boiling for tea. It was of no use,
I couldn't keep away from it. Washed it all down, sir, by Jingo. And
it's my belief I had some more, too, afterward at that infernal little
thieves' den."

"What, were you there, too?" Strong asked, "and before you came to
Grosvenor-place? That was beginning betimes."

"Early hours to be drunk and cleared out before nine o'clock, eh? But
so it was. Yes, like a great big fool, I must go there; and found the
fellows dining, Blackland and young Moss, and two or three more of the
thieves. If we'd gone to Rouge et Noir, I must have won. But we didn't
try the black and red. No, hang 'em, they know'd I'd have beat 'em at
that--I must have beat 'em--I can't help beating 'em, I tell you. But
they was too cunning for me. That rascal Blackland got the bones out,
and we played hazard on the dining-table. And I dropped all the money
I had from you in the morning, be hanged to my luck. It was that that
set me wild, and I suppose I must have been very hot about the head,
for I went off thinking to get some more money from Clavering, I
recollect; and then--and then I don't much remember what happened till
I woke this morning, and heard old Bows, at No. 3, playing on
his pianner."

Strong mused for a while as he lighted his cigar with a coal. "I
should like to know how you always draw money from Clavering,
colonel," he said.

The colonel burst out with a laugh, "Ha, ha! he owes it me," he said.

"I don't know that that's a reason with Frank for paying," Strong
answered. "He owes plenty besides you."

"Well, he gives it me because he is so fond of me," the other said,
with the same grinning sneer. "He loves me like a brother; you know
he does, captain. No?--He don't?--Well, perhaps he don't; and if you
ask me no questions, perhaps I'll tell you no lies, Captain
Strong--put that in your pipe and smoke it, my boy."

"But I'll give up that confounded brandy-bottle," the colonel
continued, after a pause. "I must give it up, or it'll be the ruin of
me." "It makes you say queer things," said the captain, looking
Altamont hard in the face. "Remember what you said last night at
Clavering's table."

"Say? What _did_ I say?" asked the other hastily. "Did I split 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.

[Illustration]

"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.

[Illustration]

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 

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