IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED.
[Illustration]
Early mention has been made in this history of Mr. Garbetts, Principal
Tragedian, a promising and athletic young actor, of jovial habits
and irregular inclinations, with whom and Mr. Costigan there was a
considerable intimacy. They were the chief ornaments of the convivial
club held at the Magpie Hotel; they helped each other in various bill
transactions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of
each other's valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine: although
Mr. Garbetts seldom called at Costigan's house, being disliked by Miss
Fotheringay, of whom in her turn Mrs. Garbetts was considerably jealous.
The truth is, that Garbetts had paid his court to Miss Fotheringay
and been refused by her, before he offered his hand to Mrs. G. Their
history, however, forms no part of our present scheme--suffice it,
Mr. Garbetts was called in by Captain Costigan immediately after his
daughter and Mr. Bows had quitted the house, as a friend proper to be
consulted at the actual juncture. He was a large man, with a loud voice
and fierce aspect, who had the finest legs of the whole company, and
could break a poker in mere sport across his stalwart arm.
"Run, Tommy," said Mr. Costigan to the little messenger, "and fetch Mr.
Garbetts from his lodgings over the tripe shop, ye know, and tell 'em to
send two glasses of whisky-and-water, hot, from the Grapes." So Tommy
went his way; and presently Mr. Garbetts and the whisky came.
Captain Costigan did not disclose to him the whole of the previous
events, of which the reader is in possession; but, with the aid of the
spirits-and-water, he composed a letter of a threatening nature to Major
Pendennis's address, in which he called upon that gentleman to offer no
hindrance to the marriage projected between Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his
daughter, Miss Fotheringay, and to fix an early day for its celebration:
or, in any other case, to give him the satisfaction which was usual
between gentlemen of honor. And should Major Pendennis be disinclined to
this alternative, the captain hinted, that he would force him to accept
by the use of a horsewhip, which he should employ upon the major's
person. The precise terms of this letter we can not give, for reasons
which shall be specified presently; but it was, no doubt, couched in the
captain's finest style, and sealed elaborately with the great silver
seal of the Costigans--the only bit of the family plate which the
captain possessed.
Garbetts was dispatched then with this message and letter; and bidding
Heaven bless 'um, the general squeezed his embassador's hand, and saw
him depart. Then he took down his venerable and murderous dueling
pistols, with flint locks, that had done the business of many a pretty
fellow in Dublin: and having examined these, and seen that they were in
a satisfactory condition, he brought from the drawer all Pen's letters
and poems which he kept there, and which he always read before he
permitted his Emily to enjoy their perusal.
In a score of minutes Garbetts came back, with an anxious and
crestfallen countenance.
"Ye've seen 'um?" the captain said.
"Why, yes," said Garbetts.
"And when is it for?" asked Costigan, trying the lock of one of the
ancient pistols, and bringing it to a level with his oi--as he called
that blood-shot orb.
"When is what for?" asked Mr. Garbetts.
"The meeting, my dear fellow?"
"You don't mean to say, you mean mortal combat, captain," Garbetts said,
aghast.
"What the devil else do I mean, Garbetts?--I want to shoot that man that
has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim on the sod."
"D---- if I carry challenges," Mr. Garbetts replied. "I'm a family man,
captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols--take back your
letter;" and, to the surprise and indignation of Captain Costigan, his
emissary flung the letter down with its great sprawling superscription
and blotched seal.
"Ye don't mean to say ye saw 'um and didn't give 'um the letter?" cried
out the captain, in a fury.
"I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, captain," said Mr.
Garbetts.
"And why the devil not?" asked the other.
"There was one there I cared not to meet, nor would you," the
tragedian answered, in a sepulchral voice. "The minion Tatham was
there, captain."
"The cowardly scoundthrel!" roared Costigan. "He's frightened, already
going to swear the peace against me."
"I'll have nothing to do with the fighting, mark that," the tragedian
doggedly said, "and I wish I'd not seen Tatham neither, nor that bit
of--"
"Hold your tongue, Bob Acres. It's my belief ye're no better than a
coward," said Captain Costigan, quoting Sir Lucius O'Trigger, which
character he had performed with credit, both off and on the stage, and
after some more parley between the couple they separated in not very
good humor.
Their colloquy has been here condensed, as the reader knows the main
point upon which it turned. But the latter will now see how it is
impossible to give a correct account of the letter which the captain
wrote to Major Pendennis, as it was never opened at all by that
gentleman.
When Miss Costigan came home from rehearsal, which she did in the
company of the faithful Mr. Bows, she found her father pacing up and
down their apartment in a great state of agitation, and in the midst of
a powerful odor of spirits-and-water, which, as it appeared, had not
succeeded in pacifying his disordered mind. The Pendennis papers were on
the table surrounding the empty goblets and now useless teaspoon which
had served to hold and mix the captain's liquor and his friend's. As
Emily entered he seized her in his arms, and cried out "Prepare yourself
me child, me blessed child," in a voice of agony, and with eyes brimful
of tears.
"Ye're tipsy again, papa," Miss Fotheringay said, pushing back her sire.
"Ye promised me ye wouldn't take spirits before dinner."
"It's to forget me sorrows, me poor girl, that I've taken just a drop,"
cried the bereaved father--"it's to drown me care that I drain the
bowl."
"Your care takes a deal of drowning, captain dear," said Bows, mimicking
his friend's accent; "what has happened? Has the soft-spoken gentleman
in the wig been vexing you?"
"The oily miscreant! I'll have his blood!" roared Cos. Miss Milly, it
must be premised, had fled to her room out of his embrace, and was
taking off her bonnet and shawl there.
"I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil," the other said.
"What has he come to say?"
"O Bows! He has overwhellum'd me," the captain said. "There's a hellish
conspiracy on foot against me poor girl; and it's me opinion that both
them Pendennises, nephew and uncle, is two infernal thrators and
scoundthrels, who should be conshumed from off the face of the earth."
"What is it? What has happened?" said Mr. Bows, growing rather excited.
Costigan then told him the major's statement that the young Pendennis
had not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a year; and expressed his
fury that he should have permitted such an impostor to coax and wheedle
his innocent girl, and that he should have nourished such a viper in his
own personal bosom. "I have shaken the reptile from me, however," said
Costigan; "and as for his uncle, I'll have such a revenge on that old
man, as shall make 'um rue the day he ever insulted a Costigan."
"What do you mean, general?" said Bows.
"I mean to have his life, Bows--his villainous skulking life, my boy;"
and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and savage
manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death, with which
he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the captain did not tell him
that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis,
and Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present
instance.
At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was in
a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought in
a pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as
clean as might be with bread-crumb; intending to go mad with them upon
next Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to reappear
on that night.
She looked at the papers on the table; stopped, as if she was going to
ask a question, but thought better of it, and going to the cupboard,
selected an eligible piece of bread wherewith she might operate on the
satin slippers: and afterward coming back to the table, seated herself
there commodiously with the shoes, and then asked her father, in her
honest, Irish brogue, "What, have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and
stuff, of Master Arthur's out for, pa? Sure ye don't want to be reading
over that nonsense."
"O Emilee!" cried the captain, "that boy whom I loved as the boy of mee
bosom is only a scoundthrel, and a deceiver, mee poor girl;" and he
looked in the most tragical way at Mr. Bows, opposite: who, in his turn,
gazed somewhat anxiously at Miss Costigan.
"He! pooh! Sure the poor lad's as simple as a school-boy," she said.
"All them children write verses and nonsense."
"He's been acting the part of a viper to this fire-side, and a traitor
in this familee," cried the captain. "I tell ye he's no better than an
impostor."
"What has the poor fellow done, papa?" asked Emily.
"Done? He has deceived us in the most athrocious manner," Miss Emily's
papa said. "He has thrifled with your affections, and outraged my own
fine feelings. He has represented himself as a man of property, and it
turruns out that he is no betther than a beggar. Haven't I often told ye
he had two thousand a year? He's a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan; a
depindent upon the bountee of his mother; a good woman, who may marry
again, who's likely to live forever, and who has but five hundred a year.
How dar he ask ye to marry into a family which has not the means of
providing for ye? Ye've been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly, and
it's my belief, his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot
against us."
"That soft old gentleman? What has he been doing, papa?" continued Emily
still imperturbable.
Costigan informed Milly, that when she was gone, Major Pendennis told
him, in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, that young Arthur had
no fortune at all, that the major had asked him (Costigan) to go to the
lawyers ("wherein he knew the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I
can't meet them," the captain parenthetically remarked), and see the
lad's father's will: and finally that an infernal swindle had been
practiced upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a
marriage, or on the blood of both of them.
Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white satin shoes.
"Sure, if he's no money, there's no use marrying him, papa," she said
sententiously.
"Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee?" asked Costigan.
"The poor fellow always said he was poor," answered the girl. "'Twas you
would have it he was rich, papa--and made me agree to take him."
"He should have been explicit and told us his income, Milly," answered
the father. "A young fellow who rides a blood mare, and makes presents
of shawls and bracelets, is an impostor, if he has no money:--and as for
his uncle, bedad, I'll pull off his wig whenever I see 'um. Bows, here,
shall take a message to him and tell him so. Either it's a marriage, or
he meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak 'um on the nose in front
of his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before all the
county, bedad."
"Bedad you may send somebody else with the message," said Bows,
laughing. "I'm a fiddler not a fighting man, captain."
"Pooh, you've no spirit, sir," roared the general. "I'll be my own
second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. And I'll take my
case of pistols and shoot 'um in the coffee-room of the George."
"And so poor Arthur has no money?" sighed out Miss Costigan, rather
plaintively. "Poor lad, he was a good lad too: wild and talking
nonsense, with his verses and pothry and that, but a brave, generous
boy, and indeed I liked him--and he liked me too," she added, rather
softly, and rubbing away at the shoe.
"Why don't you marry him if you like him so?" Mr. Bows said, rather
savagely. "He is not more than ten years younger than you are. His
mother may relent, and you might go and live and have enough at Fairoaks
Park. Why not go and be a lady? I could go on with the fiddle, and the
general live on his half-pay. Why don't you marry him? You know he likes
you."
"There's others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no money and
that's old enough," Miss Milly said sententiously.
"Yes, d---- it," said Bows with a bitter curse--"that are old enough
and poor enough and fools enough for any thing."
"There's old fools and young fools too. You've often said so, you silly
man," the imperious beauty said, with a conscious glance at the old
gentleman. "If Pendennis has not enough money to live upon, it's folly
to talk about marrying him; and that's the long and short of it."
"And the boy?" said Mr. Bows. "By Jove! you throw a man away like an old
glove, Miss Costigan."
"I don't know what you mean, Bows," said Miss Fotheringay, placidly,
rubbing the second shoe. "If he had had half of two thousand a year that
papa gave him, or the half of that, I would marry him. But what is the
good of taking on with a beggar? We're poor enough already. There's no
use in my going to live with an old lady that's testy and cross, maybe,
and would grudge me every morsel of meat. (Sure, it's near dinner time,
and Suky not laid the cloth yet), and then," added Miss Costigan, quite
simply, "suppose there was a family?--why, papa, we shouldn't be as well
off as we are now."
"'Deed then, you would not Milly dear," answered the father.
"And there's an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthur Pendennis
of Fairoaks Park--the member of Parliament's lady," said Milly, with a
laugh. "Pretty carriages and horses we should have to ride!--that you
were always talking about, papa! But it's always the same. If a man
looked at me, you fancied he was going to marry me; and if he had a good
coat, you fancied he was as rich as Crazes."
"--As Croesus," said Mr. Bows.
"Well, call 'um what ye like. But it's a fact now that papa has married
me these eight years a score of times. Wasn't I to be my Lady Poldoody
of Oystherstown castle? Then there was the navy captain at Portsmouth,
and the old surgeon at Norwich, and the Methodist preacher here last
year, and who knows how many more? Well, I bet a penny, with all your
scheming, I shall die Milly Costigan, at last. So poor little Arthur
has no money? Stop and take dinner, Bows; we've a beautiful beefsteak
pudding."
"I wonder whether she is on with Sir Derby Oaks," thought Bows, whose
eyes and thoughts were always watching her. "The dodges of women beat
all comprehension; and I am sure she wouldn't let the lad off so easily
if she had not some other scheme on hand."
It will have been perceived that Miss Fotheringay, though silent in
general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationalist, where poetry,
literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with
good sense, too, in her own family circle. She can not justly be called
a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirements great: she never
opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed,
understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a
pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was
as good a judge as could be found; and not being misled by a strong
imagination or a passionate temper, was better enabled to keep her
judgment cool. When, over their dinner, Costigan tried to convince himself
and the company, that the major's statement regarding Pen's finances was
unworthy of credit, and a mere _ruse_ upon the old hypocrite's part, so
as to induce them, on their side, to break off the match, Miss Milly
would not, for a moment, admit the possibility of deceit on the side of
the adversary: and pointed out clearly that it was her father who had
deceived himself, and not poor little Pen, who had tried to take them
in. As for that poor lad, she said she pitied him with all her heart.
And she ate an exceedingly good dinner, to the admiration of Mr. Bows,
who had a remarkable regard and contempt for this woman, during, and
after which repast, the party devised upon the best means of bringing
this love matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the
major's nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whisky-and-water;
and he was submissive to his daughter, and ready for any plan on which
she might decide, in order to meet the crisis which she saw was at hand.
The captain, who, as long as he had a notion that he was wronged, was
eager to face and demolish both Pen and his uncle, perhaps shrank from
the idea of meeting the former, and asked "what the juice they were to
say to the lad if he remained steady to his engagement, and they broke
from theirs?" "What? don't you know how to throw a man over?" said Bows;
"ask a woman to tell you?" and Miss Fotheringay showed how this feat was
to be done simply enough--nothing was more easy. "Papa writes to Arthur
to know what settlements he proposes to make in the event of a marriage;
and asks what his means are. Arthur writes back and says what he's got,
and you'll find it's as the major says, I'll go bail. Then papa writes
and says it's not enough, and the match had best be at an end."
"And, of course, you inclose a parting line, in which you say you will
always regard him as a brother;" said Mr. Bows, eying her in his
scornful way.
"Of course, and so I shall," answered Miss Fotheringay. "He's a most
worthy young man I'm sure. I'll thank ye hand me the salt. Them filberts
is beautiful."
"And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I'm sorry you're
balked," said Mr. Bows.
"'Dad I suppose not," said Cos, rubbing his own.--"What'll ye do about
them letters, and verses and pomes, Milly, darling?--Ye must send 'em
back."
"Wigsby would give a hundred pound for 'em," Bows said, with a sneer.
"'Deed, then he would," said Captain Costigan, who was easily led.
"Papa!" said Miss Milly, "ye wouldn't be for not sending the poor boy
his letters back? Them letters and pomes is mine. They were very long
and full of all sorts of nonsense, and Latin and things I couldn't
understand the half of; indeed I've not read 'em all; but we'll send 'em
back to him when the proper time comes." And going to a drawer, Miss
Fotheringay took out from it a number of the County Chronicle and
Chatteries Champion, in which Pen had written a copy of flaming verses
celebrating her appearance in the character of Imogen, and putting
by the leaf upon which the poem appeared (for, like ladies of her
profession, she kept the favorable printed notices of her performances),
she wrapped up Pen's letters, poems, passions, and fancies, and tied
them with a piece of string neatly, as she would a parcel of sugar.
Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. What hours the
boy had passed over those papers! What love and longing: what generous
faith and manly devotion--what watchful nights and lonely fevers might
they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and
made tea afterward with a perfectly placid and contented heart; while
Pen was yearning after her, ten miles off; and hugging her image to his
soul.