In which Fanny engages a new Medical Man
Could Helen have suspected that, with Pen’s returning strength, his
unhappy partiality for little Fanny would also reawaken? Though she
never spoke a word regarding that young person, after her conversation
with the Major, and though, to all appearances, she utterly ignored
Fanny’s existence, yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch
upon all Master Arthur’s actions; on the plea of ill-health would
scarcely let him out of her sight; and was especially anxious that he
should be spared the trouble of all correspondence for the present at
least. Very likely Arthur looked at his own letters with some tremor;
very likely, as he received them at the family table, feeling his
mother’s watch upon him (though the good soul’s eye seemed fixed upon
her teacup or her book), he expected daily to see a little handwriting,
which he would have known, though he had never seen it yet, and his
heart beat as he received the letters to his address. Was he more
pleased or annoyed, that, day after day, his expectations were not
realised; and was his mind relieved, that there came no letter from
Fanny? Though, no doubt, in these matters, when Lovelace is tired of
Clarissa (or the contrary) it is best for both parties to break at
once, and each, after the failure of the attempt at union, to go his
own way, and pursue his course through life solitary; yet our
self-love, or our pity, or our sense of decency, does not like that
sudden bankruptcy. Before we announce to the world that our firm of
Lovelace and Co. can’t meet its engagements, we try to make
compromises: we have mournful meetings of partners: we delay the
putting up of the shutters, and the dreary announcement of the failure.
It must come: but we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little
longer. On the whole, I dare say, Pen was rather annoyed that he had no
remonstrances from Fanny. What! could she part from him, and never so
much as once look round? could she sink, and never once hold a little
hand out, or cry, “Help, Arthur?” Well, well: they don’t all go down
who venture on that voyage. Some few drown when the vessel founders;
but most are only ducked, and scramble to shore. And the reader’s
experience of A. Pendennis, Esquire, of the Upper Temple, will enable
him to state whether that gentleman belonged to the class of persons
who were likely to sink or to swim.
Though Pen was as yet too weak to walk half a mile; and might not, on
account of his precious health, be trusted to take a drive in a
carriage by himself, and without a nurse in attendance; yet Helen could
not keep watch over Mr. Warrington too, and had no authority to prevent
that gentleman from going to London if business called him thither.
Indeed, if he had gone and stayed, perhaps the widow, from reasons of
her own, would have been glad; but she checked these selfish wishes as
soon as she ascertained or owned them; and, remembering Warrington’s
great regard and services, and constant friendship for her boy,
received him as a member of her family almost, with her usual
melancholy kindness and submissive acquiescence. Yet somehow, one
morning when his affairs called him to town, she divined what
Warrington’s errand was, and that he was gone to London to get news
about Fanny for Pen.
Indeed, Arthur had had some talk with his friend, and told him more at
large what his adventures had been with Fanny (adventures which the
reader knows already), and what were his feelings respecting her. He
was very thankful that he had escaped the great danger, to which
Warrington said Amen heartily: that he had no great fault wherewith to
reproach himself in regard of his behaviour to her, but that if they
parted, as they must, he would be glad to say a God bless her, and to
hope that she would remember him kindly. In his discourse with
Warrington he spoke upon these matters with so much gravity, and so
much emotion, that George, who had pronounced himself most strongly for
the separation too, began to fear that his friend was not so well cured
as he boasted of being; and that, if the two were to come together
again, all the danger and the temptation might have to be fought once
more. And with what result? “It is hard to struggle, Arthur, and it is
easy to fall,” Warrington said: “and the best courage for us poor
wretches is to fly from danger. I would not have been what I am now,
had I practised what I preach.”
“And what did you practise, George?” Pen asked, eagerly. “I knew there
was something. Tell us about it, Warrington.”
“There was something that can’t be mended, and that shattered my whole
fortunes early,” Warrington answered. “I said I would tell you about it
some day, Pen: and will, but not now. Take the moral without the fable
now, Pen, my boy; and if you want to see a man whose whole life has
been wrecked, by an unlucky rock against which he struck as a boy—here
he is, Arthur: and so I warn you.”
We have shown how Mr. Huxter, in writing home to his Clavering friends,
mentioned that there was a fashionable club in London of which he was
an attendant, and that he was there in the habit of meeting an Irish
officer of distinction, who, amongst other news, had given that
intelligence regarding Pendennis, which the young surgeon had
transmitted to Clavering. This club was no other than the Back Kitchen,
where the disciple of Saint Bartholomew was accustomed to meet the
General, the peculiarities of whose brogue, appearance, disposition,
and general conversation, greatly diverted many young gentlemen who
used the Back Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment and
refreshment. Huxter, who had a fine natural genius for mimicking
everything, whether it was a favourite tragic or comic actor, or a cock
on a dunghill, a corkscrew going into a bottle and a cork issuing
thence, or an Irish officer of genteel connexions who offered himself
as an object of imitation with only too much readiness, talked his
talk, and twanged his poor old long bow whenever drink, a hearer, and
an opportunity occurred, studied our friend the General with peculiar
gusto, and drew the honest fellow out many a night. A bait, consisting
of sixpennyworth of brandy-and-water, the worthy old man was sure to
swallow: and under the influence of this liquor, who was more happy
than he to tell his stories of his daughter’s triumphs and his own, in
love, war, drink, and polite society? Thus Huxter was enabled to
present to his friends many pictures of Costigan: of Costigan fighting
a jewel in the Phaynix—of Costigan and his interview with the Juke of
York—of Costigan at his sonunlaw’s teeble, surrounded by the nobilitee
of his countree—of Costigan, when crying drunk, at which time he was in
the habit of confidentially lamenting his daughter’s ingratichewd, and
stating that his grey hairs were hastening to a praymachure greeve. And
thus our friend was the means of bringing a number of young fellows to
the Back Kitchen, who consumed the landlord’s liquors whilst they
relished the General’s peculiarities, so that mine host pardoned many
of the latter’s foibles, in consideration of the good which they
brought to his house. Not the highest position in life was
this—certainly, or one which, if we had a reverence for an old man, we
would be anxious that he should occupy: but of this aged buffoon it may
be mentioned that he had no particular idea that his condition of life
was not a high one, and that in his whiskied blood there was not a
black drop, nor in his muddled brains a bitter feeling, against any
mortal being. Even his child, his cruel Emily, he would have taken to
his heart and forgiven with tears; and what more can one say of the
Christian charity of a man than that he is actually ready to forgive
those who have done him every kindness, and with whom he is wrong in a
dispute!
There was some idea amongst the young men who frequented the Back
Kitchen, and made themselves merry with the society of Captain
Costigan, that the Captain made a mystery regarding his lodgings for
fear of duns, or from a desire of privacy, and lived in some wonderful
place. Nor would the landlord of the premises, when questioned upon
this subject, answer any inquiries; his maxim being that he only knew
gentlemen who frequented that room, in that room; that when they
quitted that room, having paid their scores as gentlemen, and behaved
as gentlemen, his communication with them ceased; and that, as a
gentleman himself, he thought it was only impertinent curiosity to ask
where any other gentleman lived. Costigan, in his most intoxicated and
confidential moments, also evaded any replies to questions or hints
addressed to him on this subject: there was no particular secret about
it, as we have seen, who have had more than once the honour of entering
his apartments, but in the vicissitudes of a long life he had been
pretty often in the habit of residing in houses where privacy was
necessary to his comfort, and where the appearance of some visitors
would have brought him anything but pleasure. Hence all sorts of
legends were formed by wags or credulous persons respecting his place
of abode. It was stated that he slept habitually in a watch-box in the
city: in a cab at a mews, where a cab-proprietor gave him a shelter: in
the Duke of York’s Column etc, the wildest of these theories being put
abroad by the facetious and imaginative Huxter. For Huxey, when not
silenced by the company of “swells,” and when in the society of his own
friends, was a very different fellow to the youth whom we have seen
cowed by Pen’s impertinent airs, and, adored by his family at home, was
the life and soul of the circle whom he met, either round the festive
board or the dissecting table. On one brilliant September morning, as
Huxter was regaling himself with a cup of coffee at a stall in Covent
Garden, having spent a delicious night dancing at Vauxhall, he spied
the General reeling down Henrietta Street, with a crowd of hooting
blackguard boys at his heels, who had left their beds under the arches
of the river betimes, and were prowling about already for breakfast,
and the strange livelihood of the day. The poor old General was not in
that condition when the sneers and jokes of these young beggars had
much effect upon him: the cabmen and watermen at the cabstand knew him
and passed their comments upon him: the policemen gazed after him and
warned the boys off him, with looks of scorn and pity; what did the
scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, matter to the
General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense
enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat
homewards. He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often
as any man in London. He woke and found himself there, and asked no
questions, and he was tacking about on this daily though perilous
voyage, when, from his station at the coffee-stall, Huxter spied him.
To note his friend, to pay his twopence (indeed, he had but eightpence
left, or he would have had a cab from Vauxhall to take him home), was
with the eager Huxter the work of an instant—Costigan dived down the
alleys by Drury Lane Theatre, where gin-shops, oyster-shops, and
theatrical wardrobes abound, the proprietors of which were now asleep
behind their shutters, as the pink morning lighted up their chimneys;
and through these courts Huxter followed the General, until he reached
Oldcastle Street, in which is the gate of Shepherd’s Inn.
Here, just as he was within sight of home, a luckless slice of
orange-peel came between the General’s heel and the pavement, and
caused the poor old fellow to fall backwards.
Huxter ran up to him instantly, and after a pause, during which the
veteran, giddy with his fall and his previous whisky, gathered, as he
best might, his dizzy brains together, the young surgeon lifted up the
limping General, and very kindly and good-naturedly offered to conduct
him to his home. For some time, and in reply to the queries which the
student of medicine put to him, the muzzy General refused to say where
his lodgings were and declared that they were hard by, and that he
could reach them without difficulty; and he disengaged himself from
Huxter’s arm, and made a rush as if to get to his own home unattended:
but he reeled and lurched so, that the young surgeon insisted upon
accompanying him, and, with many soothing expressions and cheering and
consolatory phrases, succeeded in getting the General’s dirty old hand
under what he called his own fin, and led the old fellow, moaning
piteously, across the street. He stopped when he came to the ancient
gate, ornamented with the armorial bearings of the venerable Shepherd.
“Here ’tis,” said he, drawing up at the portal, and he made a
successful pull at the gate bell, which presently brought out old Mr.
Bolton, the porter, scowling fiercely, and grumbling as he was used to
do every morning when it became his turn to let in that early bird.
Costigan tried to hold Bolton for a moment in genteel conversation, but
the other surlily would not. “Don’t bother me,” said he; “go to your
hown bed Capting, and don’t keep honest men out of theirs.” So the
Captain tacked across the square and reached his own staircase, up
which he stumbled with the worthy Huxter at his heels. Costigan had a
key of his own, which Huxter inserted into the keyhole for him, so that
there was no need to call up little Mr. Bows from the sleep into which
the old musician had not long since fallen, and Huxter having aided to
disrobe his tipsy patient, and ascertained that no bones were broken,
helped him to bed and applied compresses and water to one of his knees
and shins, which, with the pair of trousers which encased them,
Costigan had severely torn in his fall. At the General’s age, and with
his habit of body, such wounds as he had inflicted on himself are slow
to heal: a good deal of inflammation ensued, and the old fellow lay ill
for some days, suffering both pain and fever.
Mr. Huxter undertook the case of his interesting patient with great
confidence and alacrity, and conducted it with becoming skill. He
visited his friend day after day, and consoled him with lively rattle
and conversation for the absence of the society which Costigan needed,
and of which he was an ornament; and he gave special instructions to
the invalid’s nurse about the quantity of whisky which the patient was
to take—instructions which, as the poor old fellow could not for many
days get out of his bed or sofa himself, he could not by any means
infringe. Bows, Mrs. Bolton, and our little friend Fanny, when able to
do so, officiated at the General’s bedside, and the old warrior was
made as comfortable as possible under his calamity.
Thus Huxter, whose affable manners and social turn made him quickly
intimate with persons in whose society he fell, and whose
over-refinement did not lead them to repulse the familiarities of this
young gentleman, became pretty soon intimate in Shepherd’s Inn, both
with our acquaintances in the garrets and those in the porter’s lodge.
He thought he had seen Fanny somewhere: he felt certain that he had:
but it is no wonder that he should not accurately remember her, for the
poor little thing never chose to tell him where she had met him: he
himself had seen her at a period, when his own views both of persons
and of right and wrong were clouded by the excitement of drinking and
dancing, and also little Fanny was very much changed and worn by the
fever and agitation, and passion and despair, which the past three
weeks had poured upon the head of that little victim. Borne down was
the head now, and very pale and wan the face; and many and many a time
the sad eyes had looked into the postman’s, as he came to the Inn, and
the sickened heart had sunk as he passed away. When Mr. Costigan’s
accident occurred, Fanny was rather glad to have an opportunity of
being useful and doing something kind—something that would make her
forget her own little sorrows perhaps: she felt she bore them better
whilst she did her duty, though I dare say many a tear dropped into the
old Irishman’s gruel. Ah, me! stir the gruel well, and have courage,
little Fanny! If everybody who has suffered from your complaint were to
die of it straightway, what a fine year the undertakers would have!
Whether from compassion for his only patient, or delight in his
society, Mr. Huxter found now occasion to visit Costigan two or three
times in the day at least, and if any of the members of the porter’s
lodge family were not in attendance on the General, the young doctor
was sure to have some particular directions to address to those at
their own place of habitation. He was a kind fellow; he made or
purchased toys for the children; he brought them apples and
brandy-balls; he brought a mask and frightened them with it, and caused
a smile upon the face of pale Fanny. He called Mrs. Bolton Mrs. B., and
was very intimate, familiar, and facetious with that lady, quite
different from that “aughty, artless beast,” as Mrs. Bolton now
denominated a certain young gentleman of our acquaintance, and whom she
now vowed she never could abear.
It was from this lady, who was very free in her conversation, that
Huxter presently learnt what was the illness which was evidently
preying upon little Fan, and what had been Pen’s behaviour regarding
her. Mrs. Bolton’s account of the transaction was not, it may be
imagined, entirely an impartial narrative. One would have thought from
her story that the young gentleman had employed a course of the most
persevering and flagitious artifices to win the girl’s heart, had
broken the most solemn promises made to her and was a wretch to be
hated and chastised by every champion of woman. Huxter, in his present
frame of mind respecting Arthur, and suffering under the latter’s
contumely, was ready, of course, to take all for granted that was said
in the disfavour of this unfortunate convalescent. But why did he not
write home to Clavering, as he had done previously, giving an account
of Pen’s misconduct, and of the particulars regarding it, which had now
come to his knowledge? He soon, in a letter to his brother-in-law,
announced that that nice young man, Mr. Pendennis, had escaped narrowly
from a fever, and that no doubt all Clavering, where he was so popular,
would be pleased at his recovery; and he mentioned that he had an
interesting case of compound fracture, an officer of distinction, which
kept him in town; but as for Fanny Bolton, he made no more mention of
her in his letters—no more than Pen himself had made mention of her. O
you mothers at home, how much do you think you know about your lads?
How much do you think you know?
But with Bows, there was no reason why Huxter should not speak his
mind, and so, a very short time after his conversation with Mrs.
Bolton, Mr. Sam talked to the musician about his early acquaintance
with Pendennis; described him as a confounded conceited blackguard, and
expressed a determination to punch his impudent head as soon as ever he
should be well enough to stand up like a man.
Then it was that Bows on his part spoke and told his version of the
story, whereof Arthur and little Fan were the hero and heroine; how
they had met by no contrivance of the former, but by a blunder of the
old Irishman, now in bed with a broken shin—how Pen had acted with
manliness and self-control in the business—how Mrs Bolton was an idiot;
and he related the conversation which he, Bows, had had with Pen, and
the sentiments uttered by the young man. Perhaps Bow’s story caused
some twinges of conscience in the breast of Pen’s accuser, and that
gentleman frankly owned that he had been wrong with regard to Arthur,
and withdrew his project for punching Mr. Pendennis’s head.
But the cessation of his hostility for Pen did not diminish Huxter’s
attentions to Fanny, which unlucky Mr Bows marked with his usual
jealousy and bitterness of spirit, “I have but to like anybody” the old
fellow thought, “and somebody is sure to come and be preferred to me.
It has been the same ill-luck with me since I was a lad, until now that
I am sixty years old. What can such a man as I am expect better than to
be laughed at? It is for the young to succeed, and to be happy, and not
for old fools like me. I’ve played a second fiddle through life,” he
said, with a bitter laugh; “how can I suppose the luck is to change
after it has gone against me so long?” This was the selfish way in
which Bows looked at the state of affairs: though few persons would
have thought there was any cause for his jealousy, who looked at the
pale and grief-stricken countenance of the hapless little girl, its
object. Fanny received Huxter’s good-natured efforts at consolation and
kind attentions kindly. She laughed now and again at his jokes and
games with her little sisters, but relapsed quickly into a dejection
which ought to have satisfied Mr. Bows that the new-comer had no place
in her heart as yet, had jealous Mr. Bows been enabled to see with
clear eyes.
But Bows did not. Fanny attributed Pen’s silence somehow to Bows’s
interference. Fanny hated him. Fanny treated Bows with constant cruelty
and injustice. She turned from him when he spoke—she loathed his
attempts at consolation. A hard life had Mr. Bows, and a cruel return
for his regard.
When Warrington came to Shepherd’s Inn as Pen’s ambassador, it was for
Mr. Bows’s apartments he inquired (no doubt upon a previous agreement
with the principal for whom he acted in this delicate negotiation), and
he did not so much as catch a glimpse of Miss Fanny when he stopped at
the Inn-gate and made his inquiry. Warrington was, of course, directed
to the musician’s chambers, and found him tending the patient there,
from whose chamber he came out to wait upon his guest. We have said
that they had been previously known to one another, and the pair shook
hands with sufficient cordiality. After a little preliminary talk,
Warrington said that he had come from his friend Arthur Pendennis, and
from his family, to thank Bows for his attention at the commencement of
Pen’s illness, and for his kindness in hastening into the country to
fetch the Major.
Bows replied that it was but his duty: he had never thought to have
seen the young gentleman alive again when he went in search of Pen’s
relatives, and he was very glad of Mr. Pendennis’s recovery, and that
he had his friends with him. “Lucky are they who have friends, Mr.
Warrington,” said the musician. “I might be up in this garret and
nobody would care for me, or mind whether I was alive or dead.”
“What! not the General, Mr. Bows?” Warrington asked.
“The General likes his whisky-bottle more than anything in life,” the
other answered; “we live together from habit and convenience; and he
cares for me no more than you do. What is it you want to ask me, Mr.
Warrington? You ain’t come to visit me, I know very well. Nobody comes
to visit me. It is about Fanny, the porter’s daughter, you are come—I
see that—very well. Is Mr. Pendennis, now he has got well, anxious to
see her again? Does his lordship the Sultan propose to throw his
’andkerchief to her? She has been very ill, sir, ever since the day
when Mrs. Pendennis turned her out of doors—kind of a lady, wasn’t it?
The poor girl and myself found the young gentleman raving in a fever,
knowing nobody, with nobody to tend him but his drunken laundress—she
watched day and night by him. I set off to fetch his uncle. Mamma comes
and turns Fanny to the right-about. Uncle comes and leaves me to pay
the cab. Carry my compliments to the ladies and gentleman, and say we
are both very thankful, very. Why, a countess couldn’t have behaved
better, and for an apothecary’s lady, as I’m given to understand Mrs.
Pendennis was—I’m sure her behaviour is most uncommon aristocratic and
genteel. She ought to have a double-gilt pestle and mortar to her
coach.”
It was from Mr. Huxter that Bows had learned Pen’s parentage, no doubt,
and if he took Pen’s part against the young surgeon, and Fanny’s
against Mr. Pendennis, it was because the old gentleman was in so
savage a mood, that his humour was to contradict everybody.
Warrington was curious, and not ill pleased at the musician’s taunts
and irascibility. “I never heard of these transactions,” he said, “or
got but a very imperfect account of them from Major Pendennis. What was
a lady to do? I think (I have never spoken with her on the subject) she
had some notion that the young woman and my friend Pen were on—on terms
of—of an intimacy which Mrs. Pendennis could not, of course,
recognise——”
“Oh, of course not, sir. Speak out, sir; say what you mean at once,
that the young gentleman of the Temple had made a victim of the girl of
Shepherd’s Inn, eh? And so she was turned to be out of doors—or brayed
alive in the double-gilt pestle and mortar, by Jove! No, Mr.
Warrington, there was no such thing: there was no victimising, or if
there was, Mr. Arthur was the victim, not the girl. He is an honest
fellow, he is, though he is conceited, and a puppy sometimes. He can
feel like a man, and run away from temptation like a man. I own it,
though I suffer by it, I own it. He has a heart, he has: but the girl
hasn’t, sir. That girl will do anything to win a man, and fling him
away without a pang, sir. If she’s flung away herself, sir, she’ll feel
it and cry. She had a fever when Mrs. Pendennis turned her out of
doors; and she made love to the Doctor, Doctor Goodenough, who came to
cure her. Now she has taken on with another chap—another sawbones, ha,
ha! d—— it, sir, she likes the pestle and mortar, and hangs round the
pill-boxes, she’s so fond of ’em, and she has got a fellow from Saint
Bartholomew’s, who grins through a horse-collar for her sisters, and
charms away her melancholy. Go and see, sir: very likely he’s in the
lodge now. If you want news about Miss Fanny, you must ask at the
Doctor’s shop, sir, not of an old fiddler like me—Good-bye, sir.
There’s my patient calling.”
And a voice was heard from the Captain’s bedroom, a well-known voice,
which said, “I’d loike a dthrop of dthrink, Bows, I’m thirstee.” And
not sorry, perhaps, to hear that such was the state of things, and that
Pen’s forsaken was consoling herself, Warrington took his leave of the
irascible musician.
As luck would have it, he passed the lodge door just as Mr. Huxter was
in the act of frightening the children with the mask whereof we have
spoken, and Fanny was smiling languidly at his farces. Warrington
laughed bitterly. “Are all women like that?” he thought. “I think
there’s one that’s not,” he added, with a sigh.
At Piccadilly, waiting for the Richmond omnibus, George fell in with
Major Pendennis, bound in the same direction, and he told the old
gentleman of what he had seen and heard respecting Fanny.
Major Pendennis was highly delighted: and as might be expected of such
a philosopher, made precisely the same observation as that which had
escaped from Warrington. “All women are the same,” he said. “La petite
se console. Daymy, when I used to read ‘Telemaque’ at school, Calypso
ne pouvait se consoler,—you know the rest, Warrington,—I used to say it
was absard. Absard, by Gad, and so it is. And so she’s got a new
soupirant, has she, the little porteress? Dayvlish nice little girl.
How mad Pen will be—eh, Warrington? But we must break it to him gently,
or he’ll be in such a rage that he will be going after her again. We
must menager the young fellow.”
“I think Mrs. Pendennis ought to know that Pen acted very well in the
business. She evidently thinks him guilty, and according to Mr. Bows,
Arthur behaved like a good fellow,” Warrington said.
“My dear Warrington,” said the Major, with a look of some alarm, “in
Mrs. Pendennis’s agitated state of health and that sort of thing, the
best way, I think, is not to say a single word about the subject—or,
stay, leave it to me: and I’ll talk to her—break it to her gently, you
know, and that sort of thing. I give you my word I will. And so
Calypso’s consoled, is she,” And he sniggered over this gratifying
truth, happy in the corner of the omnibus during the rest of the
journey.
Pen was very anxious to hear from his envoy what had been the result of
the latter’s mission; and as soon as the two young men could be alone,
the ambassador spoke in reply to Arthur’s eager queries.
“You remember your poem, Pen, of Ariadne in Naxos,” Warrington said;
“devilish bad poetry it was, to be sure.”
“Apres?” asked Pen, in a great state of excitement.
“When Theseus left Ariadne, do you remember what happened to her, young
fellow?”
“It’s a lie, it’s a lie! You don’t mean that!” cried out Pen, starting
up, his face turning red.
“Sit down, stoopid,” Warrington said, and with two fingers pushed Pen
back into his seat again. “It’s better for you as it is, young one,” he
said sadly, in reply to the savage flush in Arthur’s face.