Mrs. Haller at Home
Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth,
where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr.
Foker’s lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that
gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were
over a chemist’s shop whose stock of cigars and sodawater went off
rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr.
Spavin, Foker’s friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter
had driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog,
a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.
Pen’s healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the
waxy debauched little features of Foker’s chum; the latter remarked it.
“Who’s that man?” he thought, “he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand
don’t shake of a morning, I’d bet five to one.”
Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!—Mr. Spavin
could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day,
sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have anything?
There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know
Pendennis’s name, on the card which the latter took out and laid down
(perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)—and so
the young men took leave.
Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his
nails by the shore of the much-sounding sea. It stretched before him
bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay,
foaming and roaring hoarsely: Pen looked them in the face with blank
eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the
lad’s own mind at the time, and what a little power had he to check it!
Pen flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in a
rage at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He must see Foker.
“Suppose I go on—on the Chatteris road, just to see if I can meet him,”
Pen thought. Rebecca was saddled in another half hour, and galloping on
the grass by the Chatteris road. About four miles from Baymouth, the
Clavering road branches off, as everybody knows, and the mare naturally
was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the shoulder, Pen
passed the turning, and rode on to the turnpike without seeing any sign
of the black tandem and red wheels.
As he was at the turnpike he might as well go on: that was quite clear.
So Pen rode to the George, and the hostler told him that Mr. Foker was
there sure enough, and that “he’d been a makin a tremendous row the
night afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the
postboy: which I’m thinking he’d have had the worst of it,” the man
added, with a grin. “Have you carried up your master’s ’ot water to
shave with?” he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker’s
domestic, who here came down the yard bearing his master’s clothes,
most beautifully brushed and arranged. “Show Mr. Pendennis up to ’un,”
and Pen followed the man at last to the apartment, where, in the midst
of an immense bed, Mr. Harry Foker lay reposing.
The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. Foker, so that
you could hardly see his little sallow face and red silk nightcap.
“Hullo!” said Pen.
“Who goes there? brother, quickly tell!” sang out the voice from the
bed. “What! Pendennis again? Is your Mamma acquainted with your
absence? Did you sup with us last night? No stop—who supped with us
last night, Stoopid?”
“There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr.
Costigan, sir,” the man answered, who received all Mr. Foker’s remarks
with perfect gravity.
“Ah yes: the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted and I remember I
wanted to fight a postboy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?”
“No, sir. Fight didn’t come off, sir,” said Stoopid, still with perfect
gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker’s dressing-case—a trunk, the gift
of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never travelled. It
contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug,
silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of
razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker’s beard should come.
“Do it some other day,” said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up
his little lean arms over his head. “No, there was no fight; but there
was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the General chanted—Costigan
I mean.—Did you ever hear him sing ‘The Little Pig under the Bed,’
Pen?”
“The man we met yesterday,” said Pen, all in a tremor, “the father
of—-”
“Of the Fotheringay,—the very man. Ain’t she a Venus, Pen?”
“Please sir, Mr. Costigan’s in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you
asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn’t wake
you on no account; and has been here since eleven o’clock, sir—-”
“How much is it now?”
“One, sir.”
“What would the best of mothers say,” cried the little sluggard, “if
she saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder.
She wants me to cultivate my neglected genus—He, be! I say, Pen, this
isn’t quite like seven o’clock school,—is it, old boy?”—and the young
fellow burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added—“Go in
and talk to the General whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him
to sing you ‘The Little Pig under the Bed;’ it’s capital.” Pen went off
in great perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced
his toilet.
Of Mr. Foker’s two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a
fortune was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the
most doting mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian
school from father to son; at which place, our friend, whose name could
be seen over the playground wall, on a public-house sign, under which
‘Foker’s Entire’ was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of
his trade, his uncomely countenance, his inaptitude for learning and
cleanliness, his gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how
a susceptible youth, under the tyranny of his schoolfellows, becomes
silent and a sneak, may understand how in a very few months after his
liberation from bondage, he developed himself as he had done; and
became the humorous, the sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we
have made acquaintance. A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning
cannot be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a
fellow-commoner; but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a
dandy as he before had been a slattern, and when he entered his
sitting-room to join his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in
fine linen, and perfectly splendid in appearance.
General or Captain Costigan—for the latter was the rank which he
preferred to assume—was seated in the window with the newspaper held
before him at arm’s length. The Captain’s eyes were somewhat dim; and
he was spelling the paper, with the help of his lips, as well as of
those bloodshot eyes of his, as you see gentlemen do to whom reading is
a rare and difficult occupation. His hat was cocked very much on one
ear; and as one of his feet lay up in the window-seat, the observer of
such matters might remark, by the size and shabbiness of the boots
which the Captain wore, that times did not go very well with him.
Poverty seems as if it were disposed, before it takes possession of a
man entirely, to attack his extremities first: the coverings of his
head, feet, and hands are its first prey. All these parts of the
Captain’s person were particularly rakish and shabby. As soon as he saw
Pen he descended from the window-seat and saluted the new-comer, first
in a military manner, by conveying a couple of his fingers (covered
with a broken black glove) to his hat, and then removing that ornament
altogether. The Captain was inclined to be bald, but he brought a
quantity of lank iron-grey hair over his pate, and had a couple of
whisps of the same falling down on each side of his face. Much whisky
had spoiled what complexion Mr. Costigan may have possessed in his
youth. His once handsome face had now a copper tinge. He wore a very
high stock, scarred and stained in many places; and a dress-coat
tightly buttoned up in those parts where the buttons had not parted
company from the garment.
“The young gentleman to whom I had the honour to be introjuiced
yesterday in the Cathadral Yard,” said the Captain, with a splendid bow
and wave of his hat. “I hope I see you well, sir. I marked ye in the
thayatre last night during me daughter’s perfawrumance; and missed ye
on my return. I did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan,
though poor, is a gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me
respects to me joyous young friend, Mr. Foker—ye were gone. We had a
jolly night of ut, sir—Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and
your ’umble servant. Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old
nights when I bore His Majesty’s commission in the Foighting Hundtherd
and Third.” And he pulled out an old snuff box, which he presented with
a stately air to his new acquaintance.
Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking
buck was—was her father. The Captain was perfumed with the
recollections of the last night’s cigars, and pulled and twisted the
tuft on his chin as jauntily as any young dandy.
“I hope, Miss F—, Miss Costigan is well, sir,” Pen said, flushing up.
“She—she gave me greater pleasure, than—than I—I—I ever enjoyed at a
play. I think, sir—I think she’s the finest actress in the world,” he
gasped out.
“Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart,” cried the
Captain. “Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye.
She is the finest actress in the world. I’ve seen the Siddons, sir, and
the O’Nale—they were great, but what were they compared to Miss
Fotheringay? I do not wish she should ashume her own name while on the
stage. Me family, sir, are proud people; and the Costigans of
Costiganstown think that an honest man, who has borne Her Majesty’s
colours in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting
his daughter to earn her old father’s bread.”
“There cannot be a more honourable duty, surely,” Pen said.
“Honourable! Bedad, sir, I’d like to see the man who said Jack Costigan
would consent to anything dishonourable. I have a heart, sir, though I
am poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have: I read it in your
honest face and steady eye. And would you believe it”? he added, after
a pause, and with a pathetic whisper, “that that Bingley who has made
his fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week: out of which
she finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means,
makes our all?”
Now the Captain’s means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite
invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish
lambs, and in what marvellous places they find pasture. If Captain
Costigan, whom I had the honour to know, would but have told his
history, it would have been a great moral story. But he neither would
have told it if he could, nor could if he would; for the Captain was
not only unaccustomed to tell the truth,—he was unable even to think
it—and fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.
He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colours, a fine person
and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. To his
latest day he sang with admirable pathos and humour those wonderful
Irish ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always
the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once
brave and maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and
sometimes almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would
drink with any man, and back any man’s bill: and his end was in a
spunging-house, where the sheriff’s officer, who took him, was fond of
him.
In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental
messes, and had the honour of singing his songs, bacchanalian and
sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious generals and
commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three times
as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful patrimony.
What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the army, is no
affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life of an
Irish gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep
afloat—the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes
as unfortunate as himself—the means by which he contrives, during most
days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are
mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all
the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose
had never gone out.
Before he and Pen had had a half-hour’s conversation, the Captain
managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for
tickets for his daughter’s benefit, which was to take place speedily;
and was not a bona fide transaction such as that of the last year, when
poor Miss Fotheringay had lost fifteen shillings by her venture; but
was an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have the
sale of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large
portion of the sum for which they were sold.
Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the
Captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more lest
he should offend the latter’s delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order
for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and
slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his
old sides.
“Faith, sir,” said he, “the bullion’s scarcer with me than it used to
be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundthred of ’em
in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, His Royal Highness the
Duke of Kent, was in Gibralther.” And he straightway poured out to Pen
a series of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the
races ridden by the garrison there, with which he kept the young
gentleman amused until the arrival of their host and his breakfast.
Then it was good to see the Captain’s behaviour before the devilled
turkey and the mutton chops! His stories poured forth unceasingly, and
his spirits rose as he chatted to the young men. When he got a bit of
sunshine, the old lazzarone basked in it; he prated about his own
affairs and past splendour, and all the lords, generals, and
Lord-Lieutenants he had ever known. He described the death of his
darling Bessie, the late Mrs. Costigan, and the challenge he had sent
to Captain Shanty Clancy, of the Slashers, for looking rude at Miss
Fotheringay as she was on her kyar in the Phaynix; and then he
described how the Captain apologised, gave a dinner at the Kildare
Street, where six of them drank twinty-one bottles of claret, etc. He
announced that to sit with two such noble and generous young fellows
was the happiness and pride of an old soldier’s existence; and having
had a second glass of Curacoa, was so happy that he began to cry.
Altogether we should say that the Captain was not a man of much
strength of mind, or a very eligible companion for youth; but there are
worse men, holding much better places in life, and more dishonest, who
have never committed half so many rogueries as he. They walked out, the
Captain holding an arm of each of his dear young friends, and in a
maudlin state of contentment. He winked at one or two tradesmen’s shops
where, possibly, he owed a bill, as much as to say, “See the company
I’m in—sure I’ll pay you, my boy,”—and they parted finally with Mr.
Foker at a billiard-room, where the latter had a particular engagement
with some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail’s regiment.
Pen and the shabby Captain still walked the street together; the
Captain, in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker’s fortune and
station in life. Pen told him how Foker’s father was a celebrated
brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosherville’s
daughter. The Captain broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment
and panegyric about Mr. Foker, whose “native aristocracie,” he said,
“could be seen with the twinkling of an oi—and only served to adawrun
other qualities which he possessed, a foin intellect and a generous
heart,”—in not one word of which speech did the Captain accurately
believe.
Pen walked on, listening to his companion’s prate, wondering, amused,
and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy’s head to
disbelieve any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid
nature himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him.
Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by
the attentiveness and modest bearing of the young man.
So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest,
and cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the Captain finally made him an
invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen
if he would do him the fever to enter his humble abode, which was near
at hand, where the Captain would have the honour of inthrojuicing his
young friend to his daughther, Miss Fotheringay?
Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken
down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he
should have dropped from the Captain’s arm at first, and trembled lest
the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent
words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being
presented to the lady for whose—for whose talents he had conceived such
an admiration—such an extreme admiration; and followed the Captain,
scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was going to see
her! He was going to see her! In her was the centre of the universe.
She was the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her,
seemed a period ever so long ago—a revolution was between him and that
time, and a new world about to begin.
The Captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in
Chatteris, which is called Prior’s Lane, which lies in the
ecclesiastical quarter of the town, close by Dean’s Green and the
canons’ houses, and is overlooked by the enormous towers of the
cathedral; there the Captain dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low
gabled house, on the door of which was the brass plate of ‘Creed,
Tailor and Robe-maker.’ Creed was dead, however. His widow was a
pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his eldest son was a little scamp
of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little brothers into
mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. A couple of the latter
were sitting on the door-step, down which you went into the passage of
the house; and they jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lodger,
and plunged wildly, and rather to Pen’s surprise, at the swallow-tails
of the Captain’s dress-coat; for the truth is, that the good-natured
gentleman, when he was in cash, generally brought home an apple or a
piece of gingerbread for these children. “Whereby the widdy never
pressed me for rint when not convanient,” as he remarked afterwards to
Pen, winking knowingly, and laying a finger on his nose.
Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the
creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see
when he entered, following the Captain, and stood in the room—in her
room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a
curtsey, and heard, but quite indistinctly, Costigan making a speech
over him, in which the Captain, with his usual magniloquence, expressed
to “me child” his wish to make her known to “his dear and admirable
young friend, Mr. Awther Pindinnis, a young gentleman of property in
the neighbourhood, a person of refoined moind, and enviable manners, a
sincare lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and
affectionate heart.”
“It is very fine weather,” Miss Fotheringay said, in an Irish accent,
and with a deep rich melancholy voice.
“Very,” said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way their conversation
began; and he found himself seated on a chair, and having leisure to
look at the young lady.
She looked still handsomer off the stage, than before the lamps. All
her attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. If she went and
stood up against the mantelpiece her robe draped itself classically
round her; her chin supported itself on her hand, the other lines of
her form arranged themselves in full harmonious undulations—she looked
like a Muse in contemplation. If she sate down on a cane-bottomed
chair, her arm rounded itself over the back of the seat, her hand
seemed as if it ought to have a sceptre put into it, the folds of her
dress fell naturally round her in order, like ladies of honour round a
throne, and she looked like an empress. All her movements were graceful
and imperial. In the morning you could see her hair was blue-black, her
complexion of dazzling fairness, with the faintest possible blush
flickering, as it were, in her cheek. Her eyes were grey, with
prodigious long lashes; and as for her mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given
me subsequently to understand, that it was of a staring red colour,
with which the most brilliant geranium, sealing-wax, or Guardsman’s
coat, could not vie.
“And very warm,” continued this empress and Queen of Sheba.
Mr. Pen again assented, and the conversation rolled on in this manner.
She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George,
and he recounted the supper and the tumblers of punch. Then the father
asked her how she had been employing the morning.
“Bows came,” said she, “at ten, and we studied Ophalia. It’s for the
twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the honour of seeing
ye.”
“Indeed, indeed, you will,” Mr. Pendennis cried; wondering that she
should say ‘Ophalia,’ and speak with an Irish inflection of voice
naturally, who had not the least Hibernian accent on the stage.
“I’ve secured ’um for your benefit, dear,” said the Captain, tapping
his waistcoat pocket, wherein lay Pen’s sovereigns, and winking at Pen,
with one eye, at which the boy blushed.
“Mr—-the gentleman’s very obleging,” said Mrs. Haller.
“My name is Pendennis,” said Pen, blushing. “I—I—hope you’ll—you’ll
remember it.” His heart thumped so as he made this audacious
declaration, that he almost choked in uttering it.
“Pendennis”—she answered slowly, and looking him full in the eyes, with
a glance, so straight, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so
sweet, so round, so low, that the word and the glance shot Pen through
and through, and perfectly transfixed him with pleasure.
“I never knew the name was so pretty before,” Pen said.
“’Tis a very pretty name,” Ophelia said. “Pentweazle’s not a pretty
name. Remember, papa, when we were on the Norwich Circuit, Young
Pentweazle, who used to play second old men, and married Miss Rancy,
the Columbine; they’re both engaged in London now, at the Queen’s, and
get five pounds a week. Pentweazle wasn’t his real name. ’Twas Judkin
gave it him, I don’t know why. His name was Harrington; that is, his
real name was Potts; fawther a clergyman, very respectable. Harrington
was in London, and got in debt. Ye remember; he came out in Falkland,
to Mrs. Bunce’s Julia.”
“And a pretty Julia she was,” the Captain interposed; “a woman of
fifty, and a mother of ten children. ’Tis you ought to have been Julia,
or my name’s not Jack Costigan.”
“I didn’t take the leading business then,” Miss Fotheringay said
modestly; “I wasn’t fit for’t till Bows taught me.”
“True for you, my dear,” said the Captain: and bending to Pendennis, he
added, “Rejuiced in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a
fencing-master in Dublin (there’s only three men in the empire could
touch me with the foil once, but Jack Costigan’s getting old and stiff
now, sir), and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and
’twas there that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is
an uncommon ’cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made
her what ye see. What have ye done since Bows went, Emily?”
“Sure, I’ve made a pie,” Emily said, with perfect simplicity. She
pronounced it “Poy.”
“If ye’ll try it at four o’clock, sir, say the word,” said Costigan
gallantly. “That girl, sir, makes the best veal and ham pie in England,
and I think I can promise ye a glass of punch of the right flavour.”
Pen had promised to be at home to dinner at six o’clock, but the rascal
thought he could accommodate pleasure and duty in this point, and was
only too eager to accept this invitation. He looked on with delight and
wonder whilst Ophelia busied herself about the room, and prepared for
the dinner. She arranged the glasses, and laid and smoothed the little
cloth, all which duties she performed with a quiet grace and good
humour, which enchanted her guest more and more. The “poy” arrived from
the baker’s in the hands of one of the little choir-boy’s brothers at
the proper hour: and at four o’clock Pen found himself at
dinner—actually at dinner with the greatest tragic actress in the
world, and her father—with the handsomest woman in all creation—with
his first and only love, whom he had adored ever since when?—ever since
yesterday, ever since for ever. He ate a crust of her making, he poured
her out a glass of beer, he saw her drink a glass of punch—just one
wine-glass full—out of the tumbler which she mixed for her papa. She
was perfectly good-natured, and offered to mix one for Pendennis too.
It was prodigiously strong; Pen had never in his life drunk so much
spirits and water. Was it the punch, or the punch-maker who intoxicated
him?
During dinner, when the Captain, whom his daughter treated most
respectfully, ceased prattling about himself and his adventures, Pen
tried to engage the Fotheringay in conversation about poetry and about
her profession. He asked her what she thought of Ophelia’s madness, and
whether she was in love with Hamlet or not? “In love with such a little
ojous wretch as that stunted manager of a Bingley?” She bristled with
indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke,
but of Ophelia of the play. “Oh, indeed; if no offence was meant, none
was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him—not that
glass of punch.” Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. “Kotzebue? who was
he?”—“The author of the play in which she had been performing so
admirably.” “She did not know that—the man’s name at the beginning of
the book was Thompson,” she said. Pen laughed at her adorable
simplicity. He told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the
play, and how Sand had killed him. It was for the first time in her
life that Miss Costigan had ever heard of Mr. Kotzebue’s existence, but
she looked as if she was very much interested, and her sympathy
sufficed for honest Pen.
And in the midst of this simple conversation, the hour and a quarter
which poor Pen could afford to allow himself, passed away only too
quickly; and he had taken leave, he was gone, and away on his rapid
road homewards on the back of Rebecca. She was called upon to show her
mettle in the three journeys which she made that day.
“What was that he was talking about, the madness of Hamlet, and the
theory of the great German critic on the subject?” Emily asked of her
father.
“’Deed then I don’t know, Milly dear,” answered the Captain. “We’ll ask
Bows when he comes.”
“Anyhow, he’s a nice, fair-spoken pretty young man,” the lady said:
“how many tickets did he take of you?”
“Faith, then, he took six, and gev me two guineas, Milly,” the Captain
said. “I suppose them young chaps is not too flush of coin.”
“He’s full of book-learning,” Miss Fotheringay continued. “Kotzebue!
He, he, what a droll name indeed, now; and the poor fellow killed by
Sand, too! Did ye ever hear such a thing? I’ll ask Bows about it, papa,
dear.”
“A queer death, sure enough,” ejaculated the Captain, and changed the
painful theme. “’Tis an elegant mare the young gentleman rides,”
Costigan went on to say; “and a grand breakfast, intirely, that young
Mister Foker gave us.”
“He’s good for two private boxes, and at leest twenty tickets, I should
say,” cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who always kept her fine eyes
on the main chance.
“I’ll go bail of that,” answered the papa, and so their conversation
continued awhile, until the tumbler of punch was finished; and their
hour of departure soon came, too; for at half-past six Miss Fotheringay
was to appear at the theatre again, whither her father always
accompanied her; and stood, as we have seen, in the side-scene watching
her, and drank spirits-and-water in the green-room with the company
there.
“How beautiful she is,” thought Pen, cantering homewards. “How simple
and how tender! How charming it is to see a woman of her commanding
genius busying herself with the delightful, though humble, offices of
domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfortable, and
brewing drink for him with her delicate fingers! How rude it was of me
to begin to talk about professional matters, and how well she turned
the conversation! By the way, she talked about professional matters
herself; but then with what fun and humour she told the story of her
comrade, Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humour like Irish
humour. Her father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how
fine of him, giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where
he was the pet of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue
my fencing, or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur
always liked me to fence—he says it is the exercise of a gentleman.
Hang it. I’ll take some lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along,
Rebecca—up the hill, old lady. Pendennis, Pendennis—how she spoke the
word! Emily, Emily! how good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect,
she is!”
Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire
conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself
about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that
she has not said anything astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position
in the world as the most spotless and irreproachable lady since, and I
have had the pleasure of making her acquaintance: and must certainly
own, against my friend Pen’s opinion, that his adored Emily is not a
clever woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue,
but she had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in
whose plays she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the
part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born
at Algiers: and asked her,—which Dr. Johnson wrote first, ‘Irene,’ or
‘Every Man in his Humour.’ But she had the best of the joke, for she
had never heard of Irene or Every Man in his Humour, or Dante, or
perhaps Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bows told
her—where he told her to sob, she sobbed—where he told her to laugh,
she laughed. She gave the tirade or the repartee without the slightest
notion of its meaning. She went to church and goes every Sunday, with a
reputation perfectly intact, and was (and is) as guiltless of sense as
of any other crime.
But what did our Pen know of these things? He saw a pair of bright
eyes, and he believed in them—a beautiful image, and he fell down and
worshipped it. He supplied the meaning which her words wanted; and
created the divinity which he loved. Was Titania the first who fell in
love with an ass, or Pygmalion the only artist who has gone crazy about
a stone? He had found her; he had found what his soul thirsted after.
He flung himself into the stream and drank with all his might. Let
those say who have been thirsty once how delicious that first draught
is. As he rode down the avenue towards home—Pen shrieked with laughter
as he saw the Reverend Mr. Smirke once more coming demurely away from
Fairoaks on his pony. Smirke had dawdled and stayed at the cottages on
the way, and then dawdled with Laura over her lessons—and then looked
at Mrs. Pendennis’s gardens and improvements until he had perfectly
bored out that lady: and he had taken his leave at the very last minute
without that invitation to dinner which he fondly expected.
Pen was full of kindness and triumph. “What, picked up and sound?” he
cried out laughing. “Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner—I
have had mine: but we will have a bottle of the old wine and drink her
health, Smirke.”
Poor Smirke turned the pony’s head round, and jogged along with Arthur.
His mother was charmed to see him in such high spirits, and welcomed
Mr. Smirke for his sake, when Arthur said he had forced the curate back
to dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night
before, and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his rickety
Hessians, and the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled
green satin and a Polish cap; he mimicked them, and delighted his
mother and little Laura, who clapped her hands with pleasure.
“And Mrs. Haller?” said Mrs. Pendennis.
“She’s a stunner, ma’am,” Pen said, laughing, and using the words of
his revered friend, Mr. Foker.
“A what, Arthur?” asked the lady.
“What is a stunner, Arthur?” cried Laura, in the same voice.
So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he used to be
called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious names at school: and
how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface.
But gay and communicative as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable
about his ride to Chatteris that day, or about the new friends whom he
had made there.
When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled up two
great bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in the face said,
“Here’s to her!”
“Here’s to her,” said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass and
emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put it down.
Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. In the
morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and saddled that
unfortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad. Again
Love had roused him—and said, “Awake, Pendennis, I am here.” That
charming fever—that delicious longing—and fire, and uncertainty; he
hugged them to him—he would not have lost them for all the world.