In or near the Temple Garden
Fashion has long deserted the green and pretty Temple Garden, which in
Shakespeare makes York and Lancaster to pluck the innocent white and
red roses which became the badges of their bloody wars; and the learned
and pleasant writer of the Handbook of London tells us that “the
commonest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth a bud”
in that smoky air. Not many of the present occupiers of the buildings
round about the quarter know or care, very likely, whether or not roses
grow there, or pass the old gate, except on their way to chambers. The
attorneys’ clerks don’t carry flowers in their bags, or posies under
their arms, as they run to the counsel’s chambers—the few lawyers who
take constitutional walks think very little about York and Lancaster,
especially since the railroad business is over. Only antiquarians and
literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with much interest, and
fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. Spectator with his short face
pacing up and down the road; or dear Oliver Goldsmith in the
summer-house, perhaps meditating about the next ‘Citizen of the World,’
or the new suit that Mr. Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or
the dunning letter that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the
gravel, and rolling majestically along in a snuff-coloured suit, and a
wig that sadly wants the barber’s powder and irons, one sees the Great
Doctor step up to him (his Scotch lackey following at the
lexicographer’s heels, a little the worse for port wine that they have
been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. Goldsmith to come
home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams. Kind faith of Fancy!
Sir Roger and Mr. Spectator are as real to us now as the two doctors
and the boozy and faithful Scotchman. The poetical figures live in our
memory just as much as the real personages,—and as Mr. Arthur Pendennis
was of a romantic and literary turn, by no means addicted to the legal
pursuits common in the neighbourhood of the place, we may presume that
he was cherishing some such poetical reflections as these, when, upon
the evening after the events recorded in the last chapter, the young
gentleman chose the Temple Gardens as a place for exercise and
meditation.
On the Sunday evening the Temple is commonly calm. The chambers are for
the most part vacant: the great lawyers are giving grand dinner-parties
at their houses in the Belgravian or Tyburnian districts; the agreeable
young barristers are absent, attending those parties, and paying their
respects to Mr. Kewsy’s excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine’s
accomplished daughters: the uninvited are partaking of the economic
joint and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining
themselves, and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with Circuit
jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in chambers at all, except
poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laundress is making him gruel;
or Mr. Toodle, who is an amateur of the flute, and whom you may hear
piping solitary from his chambers in the second floor; or young Tiger,
the student, from whose open windows comes a great gush of cigar smoke,
and at whose door are a quantity of dishes and covers, bearing the
insignia of Dicks’ or the Cock. But stop! Whither does Fancy lead us?
It is vacation time; and with the exception of Pendennis, nobody is in
Chambers at all.
Perhaps it was solitude, then, which drove Pen into the garden; for
although he had never before passed the gate, and had looked rather
carelessly at the pretty flower-beds, and the groups of pleased
citizens sauntering over the trim lawn and the broad gravel-walks by
the river, on this evening it happened, as we have said, that the young
gentleman, who had dined alone at a tavern in the neighbourhood of the
Temple, took a fancy, as he was returning home to his chambers, to take
a little walk in the gardens, and enjoy the fresh evening air, and the
sight of the shining Thames. After walking for a brief space, and
looking at the many peaceful and happy groups round about him, he grew
tired of the exercise, and betook himself to one of the summer-houses
which flank either end of the main walk, and there modestly seated
himself. What were his cogitations? The evening was delightfully bright
and calm; the sky was cloudless; the chimneys on the opposite bank were
not smoking; the wharfs warehouses looked rosy in the sunshine, and as
clear as if they, too, had washed for the holiday. The steamers rushed
rapidly up and down the stream, laden with holiday passengers. The
bells of the multitudinous city churches were ringing to evening
prayers—such peaceful Sabbath evenings as this Pen may have remembered
in his early days, as he paced, with his arm round his mother’s waist,
on the terrace before the lawn at home. The sun was lighting up the
little Brawl, too, as well as the broad Thames, and sinking downwards
majestically behind the Clavering elms, and the tower of the familiar
village church. Was it thoughts of these, or the sunset merely, that
caused the blush in the young man’s face? He beat time on the bench, to
the chorus of the bells without; flicked the dust off his shining boots
with his pocket-handkerchief, and starting up, stamped with his foot
and said, “No, by Jove, I’ll go home.” And with this resolution, which
indicated that some struggle as to the propriety of remaining where he
was, or of quitting the garden, had been going on in his mind, he
stepped out of the summer-house.
He nearly knocked down two little children, who did not indeed reach
much higher than his knee, and were trotting along the gravel-walk,
with their long blue shadows slanting towards the east.
One cried out “Oh!” the other began to laugh; and with a knowing little
infantile chuckle, said, “Missa Pendennis!” And Arthur, looking down,
saw his two little friends of the day before, Mesdemoiselles
Ameliar-Ann and Betsy-Jane. He blushed more than ever at seeing them,
and seizing the one whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the
air, and kissed her: at which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry
in great alarm.
This cry brought up instantly two ladies in clean collars and new
ribbons, and grand shawls, namely: Mrs. Bolton in a rich scarlet
Caledonian Cashmere, and a black silk dress, and Miss F. Bolton with a
yellow scarf and a sweet sprigged muslin, and a parasol—quite the lady.
Fanny did not say one single word: though; her eyes flashed a welcome,
and shone as bright—as bright as the most blazing windows in Paper
Buildings. But Mrs. Bolton, after admonishing Betsy-Jane, said, “Lor
sir—how very odd that we should meet you year! I ope you ave your ealth
well, sir.—Ain’t it odd, Fanny, that we should meet Mr. Pendennis?”
What do you mean by sniggering, Mesdames? When young Croesus has been
staying at a country-house, have you never, by any singular
coincidence, been walking with your Fanny in the shrubberies? Have you
and your Fanny never happened to be listening to the band of the
Heavies at Brighton, when young De Boots and Captain Padmore came
clinking down the Pier? Have you and your darling Frances never chanced
to be visiting old widow Wheezy at the cottage on the common, when the
young curate has stepped in with a tract adapted to the rheumatism? Do
you suppose that, if singular coincidences occur at the Hall, they
don’t also happen at the Lodge?
It was a coincidence, no doubt: that was all. In the course of the
conversation on the day previous, Mr. Pendennis had merely said, in the
simplest way imaginable, and in reply to a question of Miss Bolton,
that although some of the courts were gloomy, parts of the Temple were
very cheerful and agreeable, especially the chambers looking on the
river and around the gardens, and that the gardens were a very pleasant
walk on Sunday evenings and frequented by a great number of people—and
here, by the merest chance, all our acquaintances met together, just
like so many people in genteel life. What could be more artless,
good-natured, or natural?
Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was unusually smart
and brilliant in his costume. His white duck trousers and white hat,
his neckcloth of many colours, his light waistcoat, gold chains, and
shirt-studs, gave him the air of a prince of the blood at least. How
his splendour became his figure! Was anybody ever like him? some one
thought. He blushed—how his blushes became him! the same individual
said to herself. The children, on seeing him the day before, had been
so struck with him, that after he had gone away they had been playing
at him. And Ameliar-Ann, sticking her little chubby fingers into the
arm-holes of her pinafore, as Pen was wont to do with his waistcoat,
had said, “Now, Bessy-Jane, I’ll be Missa Pendennis.” Fanny had laughed
till she cried, and smothered her sister with kisses for that feat. How
happy, too, she was to see Arthur embracing the child!
If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn and pale.
Arthur remarked it, and asked kindly why she looked so fatigued.
“I was awake all night,” said Fanny, and began to blush a little.
“I put out her candle, and hordered her to go to sleep and leave off
readin,” interposed the fond mother.
“You were reading! And what was it that interested you so?” asked Pen,
amused.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” said Fanny.
“What?”
“‘Walter Lorraine,’” Fanny sighed out. “How I do hate that
Neaera—Neaera—I don’t know the pronunciation. And I love Leonora, and
Walter, oh, how dear he is!”
How had Fanny discovered the novel of ‘Walter Lorraine,’ and that Pen
was the author? This little person remembered every single word which
Mr. Pendennis had spoken on the night previous, and how he wrote in
books and newspapers. What books? She was so eager to know, that she
had almost a mind to be civil to old Bows, who was suffering under her
displeasure since yesterday, but she determined first to make
application to Costigan. She began by coaxing the Captain and smiling
upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to arrange his dinner
and set his humble apartment in order. She was sure his linen wanted
mending (and indeed the Captain’s linen-closet contained some curious
specimens of manufactured flax and cotton). She would mend his
shirts—all his shirts. What horrid holes—what funny holes! She put her
little face through one of them, and laughed at the old warrior in the
most winning manner. She would have made a funny little picture looking
through the holes. Then she daintily removed Costigan’s dinner things,
tripping about the room as she had seen the dancers do at the play; and
she danced to the Captain’s cupboard, and produced his whisky-bottle,
and mixed him a tumbler, and must taste a drop of it—a little drop; and
the Captain must sing her one of his songs, his dear songs, and teach
it to her. And when he had sung an Irish melody in his rich quavering
voice, fancying it was he who was fascinating the little siren, she put
her little question about Arthur Pendennis and his novel, and having
got an answer, cared for nothing more, but left the Captain at the
piano about to sing her another song, and the dinner-tray on the
passage, and the shirts on the chair, and ran downstairs quickening her
pace as she sped.
Captain Costigan, as he said, was not a litherary cyarkter, nor had he
as yet found time to peruse his young friend’s ellygant perfaurumance,
though he intended to teak an early opporchunitee of purchasing a
cawpee of his work. But he knew the name of Pen’s novel from the fact
that Messrs. Finucane, Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back
Kitchen, spoke of Mr. Pendennis (and not all of them with great
friendship; for Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan
wondered that Doolan did not kick him etc.) by the sobriquet of Walter
Lorraine,—and was hence enabled to give Fanny the information which she
required.
“And she went and ast for it at the libery,” Mrs. Bolton said,
“—several liberies—and some ad it and it was bout, and some adn’t it.
And one of the liberies as ad it wouldn’t let er ave it without a
sovering: and she adn’t one, and she came back a-cryin to me—didn’t
you, Fanny?—and I gave her a sovering.”
“And, oh, I was in such a fright lest any one should have come to the
libery and took it while I was away,” Fanny said, her cheeks and eyes
glowing. “And, oh, I do like it so!”
Arthur was touched by this artless sympathy, immensely flattered and
moved by it. “Do you like it?” he said. “If you will come up to my
chambers I will—No, I will bring you one—no, I will send you one. Good
night. Thank you, Fanny. God bless you. I mustn’t stay with you.
Good-bye, good-bye.” And, pressing her hand once, and nodding to her
mother and the other children, he strode out of the gardens.
He quickened his pace as he went from them, and ran out of the gate
talking to himself. “Dear, dear little thing,” he said,—“darling little
Fanny! You are worth them all. I wish to heaven Shandon was back. I’d
go home to my mother. I mustn’t see her. I won’t. I won’t, so help
me——”
As he was talking thus, and running, the passers-by turning to look at
him, he ran against a little old man, and perceived it was Mr. Bows.
“Your very umble servant, sir,” said Mr. Bows, making a sarcastic bow,
and lifting his old hat from his forehead.
“I wish you a good day,” Arthur answered sulkily. “Don’t let me detain
you, or give you the trouble to follow me again. I am in a hurry, sir.
Good evening.”
Bows thought Pen had some reason for hurrying to his rooms. “Where are
they?” exclaimed the old gentleman. “You know whom I mean. They’re not
in your rooms, sir, are they? They told Bolton they were going to
church at the Temple, they weren’t there. They are in your chambers:
they mustn’t stay in your chambers, Mr. Pendennis.”
“Damn it, sir!” cried out Pendennis, fiercely. “Come and see if they
are in my chambers: here’s the court and the door—come in and see.” And
Bows, taking off his hat and bowing first, followed the young man.
They were not in Pen’s chambers, as we know. But when the gardens were
closed, the two women, who had had but a melancholy evening’s
amusement, walked away sadly with the children, and they entered into
Lamb Court, and stood under the lamp-post which cheerfully ornaments
the centre of that quadrangle, and looked up to the third floor of the
house where Pendennis’s chambers were, and where they saw a light
presently kindled. Then this couple of fools went away, the children
dragging wearily after them, and returned to Mr. Bolton, who was
immersed in rum-and-water at his lodge in Shepherd’s Inn.
Mr. Bows looked round the blank room which the young man occupied, and
which had received but very few ornaments or additions since the last
time we saw them. Warrington’s old bookcase and battered library, Pen’s
writing-table with its litter of papers, presented an aspect cheerless
enough. “Will you like to look in the bedrooms, Mr. Bows, and see if my
victims are there?” he said bitterly; “or whether I have made away with
the little girls, and hid them in the coal-hole?”
“Your word is sufficient, Mr. Pendennis,” the other said in his sad
tone. “You say they are not here, and I know they are not. And I hope
they never have been here, and never will come.”
“Upon my word, sir, you are very good, to choose my acquaintances for
me,” Arthur said, in a haughty tone; “and to suppose that anybody would
be the worse for my society. I remember you, and owe you kindness from
old times, Mr. Bows; or I should speak more angrily than I do, about a
very intolerable sort of persecution to which you seem inclined to
subject me. You followed me out of your Inn yesterday, as if you wanted
to watch that I shouldn’t steal something.” Here Pen stammered and
turned red, directly he had said the words; he felt he had given the
other an opening, which Bows instantly took.
“I do think you came to steal something, as you say the words, sir,”
Bows said. “Do you mean to say that you came to pay a visit to poor old
Bows, the fiddler; or to Mrs. Bolton, at the porter’s lodge? O fie!
Such a fine gentleman as Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, doesn’t condescend
to walk up to my garret, or to sit in a laundress’s kitchen, but for
reasons of his own. And my belief is that you came to steal a pretty
girl’s heart away, and to ruin it, and to spurn it afterwards, Mr.
Arthur Pendennis. That’s what the world makes of you young dandies, you
gentlemen of fashion, you high and mighty aristocrats that trample upon
the people. It’s sport to you, but what is it to the poor, think you;
the toys of your pleasures, whom you play with and whom you fling into
the streets when you are tired? I know your order, sir. I know your
selfishness, and your arrogance, and your pride. What does it matter to
my lord, that the poor man’s daughter is made miserable, and her family
brought to shame? You must have your pleasures, and the people of
course must pay for them. What are we made for, but for that? It’s the
way with you all—the way with you all, sir.”
Bows was speaking beside the question, and Pen had his advantage here,
which he was not sorry to take—not sorry to put off the debate from the
point upon which his adversary had first engaged it. Arthur broke out
with a sort of laugh, for which he asked Bows’s pardon. “Yes, I am an
aristocrat,” he said, “in a palace up three pair of stairs, with a
carpet nearly as handsome as yours, Mr. Bows. My life is passed in
grinding the people, is it?—in ruining virgins and robbing the poor? My
good sir, this is very well in a comedy, where Job Thornberry slaps his
breast, and asks my Lord how dare he trample on an honest man and poke
out an Englishman’s fireside; but in real life, Mr. Bows, to a man who
has to work for his bread as much as you do—how can you talk about
aristocrats tyrannising over the people? Have I ever done you a wrong?
or assumed airs of superiority over you? Did you not have an early
regard for me—in days when we were both of us romantic young fellows,
Mr. Bows? Come, don’t be angry with me now, and let us be as good
friends as we were before.”
“Those days were very different,” Mr. Bows answered; “and Mr. Arthur
Pendennis was an honest, impetuous young fellow then; rather selfish
and conceited, perhaps, but honest. He liked you then, because you were
ready to ruin yourself for a woman.”
“And now, sir?” Arthur asked.
“And now times are changed, and you want a woman to ruin herself for
you,” Bows answered. “I know this child, sir. I’ve always said this lot
was hanging over her. She has heated her little brain with novels,
until her whole thoughts are about love and lovers, and she scarcely
sees that she treads on a kitchen floor. I have taught the little
thing. She is full of many talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am
fond of the girl, sir. I’m a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don’t
like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have but this
child that I care for. Have pity upon me, and don’t take her away from
me, Mr. Pendennis—don’t take her away.”
The old man’s voice broke as he spoke. Its accents touched Pen, much
more than the menacing or sarcastic tone which Bows had commenced by
adopting.
“Indeed,” said he, kindly, “you do me a wrong if you fancy I intend one
to poor little Fanny. I never saw her till Friday night. It was the
merest chance that our friend Costigan threw her into my way. I have no
intentions regarding her—that is——”
“That is, you know very well that she is a foolish girl, and her mother
a foolish woman,—that is, you meet her in the Temple Gardens, and of
course without previous concert,—that is, that when I found her
yesterday reading the book you’ve wrote, she scorned me,” Bows said.
“What am I good for but to be laughed at? a deformed old fellow like
me; an old fiddler, that wears a threadbare coat, and gets his bread by
playing tunes at an ale-house? You are a fine gentleman, you are. You
wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your finger. You go to
dine with great people. Who ever gives a crust to old Bows? And yet I
might have been as good a man as the best of you. I might have been a
man of genius, if I had had the chance; ay, and have lived with the
master-spirits of the land. But everything had failed with me. I’d
ambition once, and wrote plays, poems, music—nobody would give me a
hearing. I never loved a woman, but she laughed at me; and here I am in
my old age alone—alone! Don’t take this girl from me, Mr. Pendennis, I
say again. Leave her with me a little longer. She was like a child to
me till yesterday. Why did you step in, and made her to mock my
deformity and old age?”
“I am guiltless of that, at least,” Arthur said, with something of a
sigh. “Upon my word of honour, I wish I had never seen the girl. My
calling is not seduction, Mr. Bows. I did not imagine that I had made
an impression on poor Fanny, until—until to-night. And then, sir, I was
sorry, and was flying from my temptation, as you came upon me. And,” he
added, with a glow upon his cheek, which, in the gathering darkness,
his companion could not see, and with an audible tremor in his voice,
“I do not mind telling you, sir, that on this Sabbath evening, as the
church bells were ringing, I thought of my own home, and of women
angelically pure and good, who dwell there; and I was running hither as
I met you, that I might avoid the danger which beset me, and ask
strength of God Almighty to do my duty.”
After these words from Arthur a silence ensued, and when the
conversation was resumed by his guest, the latter spoke in a tone which
was much more gentle and friendly. And on taking farewell of Pen, Bows
asked leave to shake hands with him, and with a very warm and
affectionate greeting on both sides, apologised to Arthur for having
mistaken him, and paid him some compliments which caused the young man
to squeeze his old friend’s hand heartily again. And as they parted at
Pen’s door, Arthur said he had given a promise, and he hoped and
trusted that Mr. Bows might rely on it?
“Amen to that prayer,” said Mr. Bows, and went slowly down the stair.