"O, we know!" said the ladies; "Sir F----is Sir F. Clavering; he's often here: two or three times a week with the captain. My little boy has been out for bill stamps for him. Oh, Lor! I beg pardon, I shouldn't have mentioned no secrets," Mrs. Bolton blurted out, being talked perfectly into good-nature by this time. "But we know you to be a gentleman, Mr. Pendennis, for I'm sure you have shown that you can _beayve_ as such. Hasn't Mr. Pendennis, Fanny?"
Fanny loved her mother for that speech. She cast up her dark eyes to the low ceiling, and said, "O, that he has, I'm sure, ma," with a voice full of feeling.
Pen was rather curious about the bill stamps, and concerning the transactions in Strong's chambers. And he asked, when Altamont came and joined the chevalier, whether he, too, sent out for bill stamps, who he was, whether he saw many people, and so forth. These questions, put with considerable adroitness by Pen, who was interested about Sir Francis Clavering's doings from private motives of his own, were artlessly answered by Mrs. Bolton. and to the utmost of her knowledge and ability, which, in truth, were not very great.
These questions answered, and Pen being at a loss for more, luckily recollected his privilege as a member of the press, and asked the ladies whether they would like any orders for the play? The play was their delight, as it is almost always the delight of every theatrical person. When Bolton was away professionally (it appeared that of late the porter of Shepherd's Inn had taken a serious turn, drank a good deal, and otherwise made himself unpleasant to the ladies of his family), they would like of all things to slip out and go to the theater, little Barney their son, keeping the lodge; and Mr.
Pendennis's most generous and most genteel compliment of orders was received with boundless gratitude by both mother and daughter.
Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure: her face beamed with it. She looked, and nodded, and laughed at her mamma, who nodded and laughed in her turn. Mrs. Bolton was not superannuated for pleasure yet, or by any means too old for admiration, she thought. And very likely Mr.
Pendennis, in his conversation with her, had insinuated some compliments, or shaped his talk so as to please her. At first against Pen, and suspicious of him, she was his partisan now, and almost as enthusiastic about him as her daughter. When two women get together to like a man, they help each other on; each pushes the other forward, and the second, out of sheer sympathy, becomes as eager as the principal: at least, so it is said by philosophers who have examined this science.
So the offer of the play tickets, and other pleasantries, put all parties into perfect good-humor, except for one brief moment, when one of the younger children, hearing the name of "Astley's" pronounced, came forward and stated that she should like very much to go, too; on which Fanny said, "Don't bother!" rather sharply; and mamma said, "Git-long, Betsy Jane, do now, and play in the court:" so that the two little ones, namely, Betsy Jane and Ameliar Ann, went away in their little innocent pinafores, and disported in the court-yard on the smooth gravel, round about the statue of Shepherd the Great.
And here, as they were playing, they very possibly communicated with an old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn; for while Pen was making himself agreeable to the ladies at the lodge, who were laughing, delighted at his sallies, an old gentleman passed under the archway from the Inn-square, and came and looked in at the door of the lodge.
He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. Arthur seated upon a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy discourse with Mrs.
Bolton and her daughter.
"What! Mr. Bows? How d'you do, Bows!" cried out Pen, in a cheery, loud voice. "I was coming to see you, and was asking your address of these ladies."
"You were coming to see _me_, were you, sir?" Bows said, and came in with a sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. "Plague on that old man!" somebody thought in the room: and so, perhaps, some one else besides her.
CHAPTER X.
IN SHEPHERD'S INN.
[Illustration]
Our friend Pen said "How d'ye do, Mr. Bows," in a loud, cheery voice, on perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in a dashing, off-hand manner; yet you could have seen a blush upon Arthur's face (answered by Fanny, whose cheek straightway threw out a similar fluttering red signal), and after Bows and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former had ironically accepted the other's assertion that he was about to pay Mr. Costigan's chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather guilty silence in the company, which Pen presently tried to dispel by making a great rattling and noise. The silence of course departed at Mr.
Arthur's noise, but the gloom remained and deepened, as the darkness does in a vault if you light up a single taper in it. Pendennis tried to describe, in a jocular manner, the transactions of the night previous, and attempted to give an imitation of Costigan vainly expostulating with the check-taker at Vauxhall. It was not a good imitation. What stranger can imitate that perfection? Nobody laughed.
Mrs. Bolton did not in the least understand what part Mr. Pendennis was performing, and whether it was the check-taker or the captain he was taking off. Fanny wore an alarmed face, and tried a timid giggle; old Mr. Bows looked as glum as when he fiddled in the orchestra, or played a difficult piece upon the old piano at the Back-Kitchen.
Pen felt that his story was a failure; his voice sank and dwindled away dismally at the end of it--flickered, and went out; and it was all dark again. You could hear the ticket-porter, who lolls about Shepherd's Inn, as he passed on the flags under the archway: the clink of his boot-heels was noted by every body.
"You were coming to see me, sir," Mr. Bows said. "Won't you have the kindness to walk up to my chambers with me? You do them a great honor, I am sure. They are rather high up; but--"
"O! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd's Inn is twice as cheerful as Lamb Court," Mr. Pendennis broke in.
"I knew that you had third floor apartments," Mr. Bows said; "and was going to say--you will please not take my remark as discourteous--that the air up three pair of stairs is wholesomer for gentlemen, than the air of a porter's lodge."
"Sir!" said Pen, whose candle flamed up again in his wrath, and who was disposed to be as quarrelsome as men are when they are in the wrong. "Will you permit me to choose my society without--"
"You were so polite as to say that you were about to honor my umble domicile with a visit," Mr. Bows said, with a sad voice. "Shall I show you the way? Mr. Pendennis and I are old friends, Mrs. Bolton--very old acquaintances; and at the earliest dawn of his life we crossed each other."
The old man pointed toward the door with a trembling finger, and a hat in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly theatrical; so were his words, when he spoke, somewhat artificial, and chosen from the vocabulary which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of the orators before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or masquerading, as Pen knew very well, though he was disposed to pooh-pooh the old fellow's melodramatic airs. "Come along, sir," he said, "as you are so very pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good day. Good-by, Miss Fanny; I shall always think of our night at Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure I will remember the theatre-tickets." And he took her hand, pressed it, was pressed by it, and was gone.
"What a nice young man, to be sure!" cried Mrs. Bolton.
"D'you think so, ma?" said Fanny.
"I was a-thinkin who he was like. When I was at the Wells with Mrs.
Serle," Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through the window curtain after Pen, as he went up the court with Bows; "there was a young gentleman from the city, that used to come in a tilbry, in a white at, the very image of him, ony his whiskers was black, and Mr. P's.
is red.
"Law, ma! they are a most beautiful hawburn," Fanny said.
"He used to come for Emly Budd, who danced Columbine in 'Arleykin Ornpipe, or the Battle of Navarino,' when Miss De la Bosky was took ill--a pretty dancer, and a fine stage figure of a woman--and he was a great sugar-baker in the city, with a country ouse at Omerton; and he used to drive her in the tilbry down Goswell-street-road; and one day they drove and was married at St. Bartholomew's Church Smithfield, where they had their bands read quite private; and she now keeps her carriage; and I sor her name in the paper as patroness of the Manshing-House Ball for the Washywomen's Asylum. And look at Lady Mirabel--Capting Costigan's daughter--she was profeshnl, as all very well know." Thus, and more to this purpose, Mrs. Bolton spoke, now peeping through the window-curtain, now cleaning the mugs and plates, and consigning them to their place in the corner cupboard; and finishing her speech as she and Fanny shook out and folded up the dinner-cloth between them, and restored it to its drawer in the table.
Although Costigan had once before been made pretty accurately to understand what Pen's pecuniary means and expectations were, I suppose Cos had forgotten the information acquired at Chatteris years ago, or had been induced by his natural enthusiasm to exaggerate his friend's income. He had described Fairoaks Park in the most glowing terms to Mrs. Bolton, on the preceding evening, as he was walking about with her during Pen's little escapade with Fanny, had dilated upon the enormous wealth of Pen's famous uncle, the major, and shown an intimate acquaintance with Arthur's funded and landed property. Very likely Mrs. Bolton, in her wisdom, had speculated upon these matters during the night; and had had visions of Fanny driving in her carriage, like Mrs. Bolton's old comrade, the dancer of Sadler's Wells.
In the last operation of table-cloth folding, these two foolish women, of necessity, came close together; and as Fanny took the cloth and gave it the last fold, her mother put her finger under the young girl's chin, and kissed her. Again the red signal flew out, and fluttered on Fanny's cheek. What did it mean? It was not alarm this time. It was pleasure which caused the poor little Fanny to blush so.
Poor little Fanny! What? is love sin; that it is so pleasant at the beginning, and so bitter at the end?
After the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that she was a-goin out upon business, and that Fanny must keep the lodge; which Fanny, after a very faint objection indeed, consented to do. So Mrs.
Bolton took her bonnet and market-basket, and departed; and the instant she was gone, Fanny went and sate by the window which commanded Bows's door, and never once took her eyes away from that quarter of Shepherd's Inn.
Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of the place, and making believe to read out of a picture-book, which one of them held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton's collection. Fanny did not hear her sisters prattling over it. She noticed nothing but Bows's door.
At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. He had come out. He would pass the door again. But her poor little countenance fell in an instant more. Pendennis, indeed, came out; but Bows followed after him. They passed under the archway together. He only took off his hat, and bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak.
In three or four minutes--Fanny did not know how long, but she looked furiously at him when he came into the lodge--Bows returned alone, and entered into the porter's room.
"Where's your ma, dear?" he said to Fanny.
"I don't know," Fanny said, with an angry toss. "I don't follow ma's steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows."
"Am I my mother's keeper?" Bows said, with his usual melancholy bitterness. "Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I've brought a cake for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other who can read them the next best."
When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went off to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work, and pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great excitement and anger, as she plied her needle, Bows sate so that he could command the entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person whom, perhaps, he expected to see, never made his appearance again. And Mrs. Bolton came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in place of the person whom _she_ had expected to see. The reader perhaps can guess what was his name?
The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to the apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of the Milesian kings, was not particularly satisfactory to either party.
Pen was sulky. If Bows had any thing on his mind, he did not care to deliver himself of his thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan, who remained in the apartment during the whole of Pen's visit; having quitted his bed-chamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the arrival of that gentleman. We have witnessed the deshabille of Major Pendennis: will any man wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero, Costigan? It would seem that the captain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto of whisky. A rich odor of that delicious perfume breathed from out him, as he held out the grasp of cordiality to his visitor. The hand which performed that grasp shook woefully: it was a wonder how it could hold the razor with which the poor gentleman daily operated on his chin.
Bows's room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade's was disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. His books and manuscript music were trimly arranged upon shelves. A lithographed portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. Haller, with the actress's sprawling signature at the corner, hung faithfully over the old gentleman's bed. Lady Mirabel wrote much better than Miss Fotheringay had been able to do. Her ladyship had labored assiduously to acquire the art of penmanship since her marriage; and, in a common note of invitation or acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows loved the old handwriting best, though; the fair artist's earlier manner. He had but one specimen of the new style, a note in reply to a song composed and dedicated to Lady Mirabel, by her most humble servant Robert Bows; and which document was treasured in his desk among his other state papers. He was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg, or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck.
Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy in the caresses, or agitated by the illness of a poodle. But it was hard upon Bows, and grating to his feelings as a man and a sentimentalist, that he should find Pen again upon his track, and in pursuit of this little Fanny.
Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his company was perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and Bows, and that the visit of the former was intended for himself. He expressed himself greatly pleased with that mark of poloightness, and promised, in his own mind, that he would repay that obligation at least--which was not the only debt which the captain owed in life--by several visits to his young friend. He entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of ten days previous; for Pen, in his quality of journalist, remembered to have seen some of the captain's opinions in the Sporting and Theatrical Newspaper, which was Costigan's oracle. He stated that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were gone to Baden-Baden, and were most pressing in their invitations that he should join them there. Pen replied with great gravity, that he had heard that Baden was very pleasant, and the Grand Duke exceedingly hospitable to English.
Costigan answered, that the laws of hospitalitee bekeam a Grand Juke; that he sariously would think about visiting him; and made some remarks upon the splendid festivities at Dublin Castle, when his Excellency the Earl of Portansherry held the Viceraygal Coort there, and of which he Costigan had been an humble but pleased spectator. And Pen--as he heard these oft-told, well-remembered legends--recollected the time when he had given a sort of credence to them, and had a certain respect for the captain. Emily and first love, and the little room at Chatteris; and the kind talk with Bows on the bridge came back to him. He felt quite kindly disposed toward his two old friends; and cordially shook the hands of both of them when he rose to go away.
He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton while the captain was talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other selfish meditations, He only remembered her again as Bows came hobbling down the stairs after him, bent evidently upon following him out of Shepherd's Inn.
Mr. Bows's precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of Mr. Arthur Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow's feeble persecution. Confound him, what does he mean by dogging me? thought Pen. And he burst out laughing when he was in the Strand and by himself, as he thought of the elder's stratagem. It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis.
Perhaps the thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own sense of humor. He went off to endeavor to banish the thoughts which occupied him, whatever those thoughts might be, and tried various places of amusement with but indifferent success. He struggled up the highest stairs of the Panorama; but when he had arrived, panting, at the height of the eminence, Care had come up with him, and was bearing him company. He went to the Club, and wrote a long letter home, exceedingly witty and sarcastic, and in which, if he did not say a single word about Vauxhall and Fanny Bolton, it was because he thought that subject, however interesting to himself, would not be very interesting to his mother and Laura. Nor could the novels on the library table fix his attention, nor the grave and respectable Jawkins (the only man in town), who wished to engage him in conversation; nor any of the amusements which he tried, after flying from Jawkins. He passed a Comic Theater on his way home, and saw "Stunning Farce,"
"Roars of Laughter," "Good Old English Fun and Frolic," placarded in vermilion letters on the gate. He went into the pit, and saw the lovely Mrs. Leary, as usual, in a man's attire; and that eminent buffo actor, Tom Horseman, dressed as a woman. Horseman's travestie seemed to him a horrid and hideous degradation; Mrs. Leary's glances and ankles had not the least effect. He laughed again, and bitterly, to himself, as he thought of the effect which she had produced upon him, on the first night of his arrival in London, a short time--what a long, long time ago.