IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS.
[Illustration]
Better folks than Morgan, the valet, were not so well instructed
as that gentleman, regarding the amount of Lady Clavering's riches;
and the legend in London, upon her ladyship's arrival in the polite
metropolis, was, that her fortune was enormous. Indigo factories, opium
clippers, banks overflowing with rupees, diamonds and jewels of native
princes, and vast sums of interest paid by them for loans contracted
by themselves or their predecessors to Lady Clavering's father, were
mentioned as sources of her wealth. Her account at her London banker's
was positively known, and the sum embraced so many ciphers as to create
as many O s of admiration in the wondering hearer. It was a known fact
that an envoy from an Indian prince, a Colonel Altamont, the Nawaub of
Lucknow's prime favorite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said,
embraced Mohammedanism, and undergone a thousand wild and perilous
adventures, was at present in this country, trying to negotiate with the
Begum Clavering, the sale of the Nawaub's celebrated nose-ring diamond,
"the light of the Dewan."
Under the title of the Begum, Lady Clavering's fame began to spread in
London before she herself descended upon the capital, and as it has
been the boast of De Lolme, and Blackstone, and all panegyrists of the
British Constitution, that we admit into our aristocracy merit of every
kind, and that the lowliest-born man, if he but deserve it, may wear
the robes of a peer, and sit alongside of a Cavendish or a Stanley: so
it ought to be the boast of our good society, that haughty though it be,
naturally jealous of its privileges, and careful who shall be admitted
into its circle, yet, if an individual be but rich enough, all barriers
are instantly removed, and he or she is welcomed, as from her wealth
he merits to be. This fact shows our British independence and honest
feeling--our higher orders are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the
ignorant represent them: on the contrary, if a man have money they will
hold out their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry
his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons, as affably as
your commonest roturier would do.
As he had superintended the arrangements of the country mansion, our
friend, the Chevalier Strong, gave the benefit of his taste and advice
to the fashionable London upholsterers, who prepared the town house
for the reception of the Clavering family. In the decoration of this
elegant abode, honest Strong's soul rejoiced as much as if he had been
himself its proprietor. He hung and re-hung the pictures, he studied the
positions of sofas, he had interviews with wine merchants and purveyors
who were to supply the new establishment; and at the same time the
baronet's factotum and confidential friend took the opportunity of
furnishing his own chambers, and stocking his snug little cellar: his
friends complimented him upon the neatness of the former; and the select
guests who came in to share Strong's cutlet now found a bottle of
excellent claret to accompany the meal. The chevalier was now, as he
said, "in clover:" he had a very comfortable set of rooms in Shepherd's
Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary and comrade of his
whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, and found at a crossing
in Tottenham-court Road, and whom he had elevated to the rank of
body-servant to himself and to the chum who, at present, shared his
lodgings. This was no other than the favorite of the Nawaub of Lucknow,
the valiant Colonel Altamont.
No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than Ned Strong,
and he did not care to inquire into the mysterious connection which,
very soon after their first meeting at Baymouth, was established between
Sir Francis Clavering and the envoy of the Nawaub. The latter knew
some secret regarding the former, which put Clavering into his power,
somehow; and Strong, who knew that his patron's early life had been
rather irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India had not
been brilliant, supposed that the colonel, who swore he knew Clavering
well at Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir Francis, to which the latter
was forced to yield. In truth, Strong had long understood Sir Francis
Clavering's character, as that of a man utterly weak in purpose, in
principle, and intellect, a moral and physical trifler and poltroon.
With poor Clavering, his excellency had had one or two interviews after
their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which conversations the baronet
did not confide to Strong: although he sent letters to Altamont by that
gentleman, who was his embassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of
these occasions the Nawaub's envoy must have been in an exceeding
ill-humor; for he crushed Clavering's letter in his hand, and said with
his own particular manner and emphasis:
"A hundred, be hanged. I'll have no more letters nor no more
shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I'll have a thousand, or by Jove I'll
split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a thousand, and
I'll go abroad, and I give you my honor as a gentleman, I'll not ask
him for no more for a year. Give him that message from me, Strong, my
boy; and tell him if the money ain't here next Friday at 12 o'clock,
as sure as my name's what it is, I'll have a paragraph in the newspaper
on Saturday, and next week I'll blow up the whole concern."
Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom their effect
was such that actually on the day and hour appointed, the chevalier made
his appearance once more at Altamont's hotel at Baymouth, with the sum
of money required. Altamont was a gentleman, he said, and behaved as
such; he paid his bill at the inn, and the Baymouth paper announced his
departure on a foreign tour. Strong saw him embark at Dover. "It must
be forgery at the very least," he thought, "that has put Clavering into
this fellow's power, and the colonel has got the bill."
Before the year was out, however, this happy country saw the colonel
once more upon its shores. A confounded run on the red had finished him,
he said, at Baden Baden: no gentleman could stand against a color
coming up fourteen times. He had been obliged to draw upon Sir Francis
Clavering for means of returning home: and Clavering, though pressed
for money (for he had election expenses, had set up his establishment in
the country, and was engaged in furnishing his London house), yet found
means to accept Colonel Altamont's bill, though evidently very much
against his will; for in Strong's hearing, Sir Francis wished to heaven,
with many curses, that the colonel could have been locked up in a
debtors' jail in Germany, for life, so that he might never be troubled
again.
These sums for the colonel, Sir Francis was obliged to raise without
the knowledge of his wife; for though perfectly liberal, nay, sumptuous
in her expenditure, the good lady had inherited a tolerable aptitude
for business along with the large fortune of her father, Snell, and gave
to her husband only such a handsome allowance as she thought befitted
a gentleman of his rank. Now and again she would give him a present,
or pay an outstanding gambling debt; but she always exacted a pretty
accurate account of the moneys so required; and respecting the subsidies
to the colonel, Clavering fairly told Strong that he _couldn't_ speak to
his wife.
Part of Mr. Strong's business in life was to procure this money and
other sums, for his patron. And in the chevalier's apartments, in
Shepherd's Inn, many negotiations took place between gentlemen of the
moneyed world and Sir Francis Clavering; and many valuable bank notes
and pieces of stamped paper were passed between them. When a man has
been in the habit of getting in debt from his early youth, and of
exchanging his promises to pay at twelve months against present sums
of money, it would seem as if no piece of good fortune ever permanently
benefited him: a little while after the advent of prosperity, the
money-lender is pretty certain to be in the house again, and the bills
with the old signature in the market. Clavering found it more convenient
to see these gentry at Strong's lodgings than at his own; and such was
the chevalier's friendship for the baronet, that although he did not
possess a shilling of his own, his name might be seen as the drawer of
almost all the bills of exchange which Sir Francis Clavering accepted.
Having drawn Clavering's bills, he got them discounted "in the city."
When they became due he parleyed with the bill-holders, and gave
them installments of their debt, or got time in exchange for fresh
acceptances. Regularly or irregularly, gentlemen must live somehow:
and as we read how, the other day, at Comorn, the troops forming that
garrison were gay and lively, acted plays, danced at balls, and consumed
their rations; though menaced with an assault from the enemy without the
walls, and with a gallows if the Austrians were successful--so there are
hundreds of gallant spirits in this town, walking about in good spirits,
dining every day in tolerable gayety and plenty, and going to sleep
comfortably; with a bailiff always more or less near, and a rope of debt
round their necks--the which trifling inconveniences, Ned Strong, the
old soldier, bore very easily.
But we shall have another opportunity of making acquaintance with these
and some other interesting inhabitants of Shepherd's Inn, and in the
mean while are keeping Lady Clavering and her friends too long waiting
on the door steps of Grosvenor-place.
First they went into the gorgeous dining-room, fitted up, Lady Clavering
couldn't for goodness gracious tell why, in the middle-aged style,
"unless," said her good-natured ladyship, laughing, "because me and
Clavering are middle-aged people;" and here they were offered the
copious remains of the luncheon of which Lady Clavering and Blanche had
just partaken. When nobody was near, our little Sylphide, who scarcely
ate at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina, the friend of
the Ghouls in the Arabian Nights, was most active with her knife and
fork, and consumed a very substantial portion of mutton cutlets: in
which piece of hypocrisy it is believed she resembled other young ladies
of fashion. Pen and his uncle declined the refection, but they admired
the dining-room with fitting compliments, and pronounced it "very
chaste," that being the proper phrase. There were, indeed, high-backed
Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved
buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved
work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral
lamp over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from
Wardour-street and tapestry from France, bits of armor, double-handed
swords and battle-axes made of _carton-pierre_, looking-glasses,
statuettes of saints, and Dresden china--nothing, in a word, could be
chaster. Behind the dining-room was the library, fitted with busts and
books all of a size, and wonderful easy chairs, and solemn bronzes in
the severe classic style. Here it was that, guarded by double doors, Sir
Francis smoked cigars, and read "Bell's Life in London," and went to
sleep after dinner, when he was not smoking over the billiard-table at
his clubs, or punting at the gambling-houses in Saint James's.
But what could equal the chaste splendor of the drawing-rooms? the
carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your feet made no more noise
on them than your shadow: on their white ground bloomed roses and tulips
as big as warming-pans: about the room were high chairs and low chairs,
bandy-legged chairs, chairs so attenuated that it was a wonder any but
a sylph could sit upon them, marqueterie-tables covered with marvelous
gimcracks, china ornaments of all ages and countries, bronzes, gilt
daggers, Books of Beauty, yataghans, Turkish papooshes and boxes of
Parisian bonbons. Wherever you sate down there were Dresden shepherds
and shepherdesses convenient at your elbow; there were, moreover, light
blue poodles and ducks and cocks and hens in porcelain; there were
nymphs by Boucher, and shepherdesses by Greuze, very chaste indeed;
there were muslin curtains and brocade curtains, gilt cages with
parroquets and love birds, two squealing cockatoos, each out-squealing
and out-chattering the other; a clock singing tunes on a console-table,
and another booming the hours like Great Tom, on the mantle-piece--there
was, in a word, every thing that comfort could desire, and the most
elegant taste devise. A London drawing-room, fitted up without regard
to expense, is surely one of the noblest and most curious sights of the
present day. The Romans of the Lower Empire, the dear marchionesses
and countesses of Louis XV., could scarcely have had a finer taste
than our modern folks exhibit; and every body who saw Lady Clavering's
reception-rooms, was forced to confess that they were most elegant; and
that the prettiest rooms in London--Lady Harley Quin's, Lady Hanway
Wardour's, or Mrs. Hodge-Podgson's own, the great Railroad Croesus'
wife, were not fitted up with a more consummate "chastity."
Poor Lady Clavering, meanwhile, knew little regarding these things, and
had a sad want of respect for the splendors around her. "I only know
they cost a precious deal of money, major," she said to her guest, "and
that I don't advise you to try one of them gossamer gilt chairs: I came
down on one the night we gave our second dinner party. Why didn't you
come and see us before? We'd have asked you to it."
"You would have liked to see mamma break a chair, wouldn't you, Mr.
Pendennis?" dear Blanche said, with a sneer. She was angry because Pen
was talking and laughing with mamma, because mamma had made a number of
blunders in describing the house--for a hundred other good reasons.
"I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my arm if she had
need of it," Pen answered, with a bow and a blush.
"_Quel preux chevalier!_" cried the Sylphide, tossing up her little
head.
"I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember," Pen said. "I
suffered myself very much from doing so once."
"And you went home to Laura to console you," said Miss Amory.
Pen winced. He did not like the remembrance of the consolation which
Laura had given to him, nor was he very well pleased to find that his
rebuff in that quarter was known to the world; so as he had nothing to
say in reply, he began to be immensely interested in the furniture round
about him, and to praise Lady Clavering's taste with all his might.
"Me, don't praise me," said honest Lady Clavering, "it's all the
upholsterer's doings and Captain Strong's, they did it all while we was
at the Park--and--and--Lady Rockminster has been here and says the
salongs are very well," said Lady Clavering, with an air and tone of
great deference.
"My cousin Laura has been staying with her," Pen said.
"It's not the dowager: it is _the_ Lady Rockminster."
"Indeed!" cried Major Pendennis, when he heard this great name of
fashion "if you have her ladyship's approval, Lady Clavering, you can
not be far wrong. No, no, you can not be far wrong. Lady Rockminster,
I should say, Arthur, is the very center of the circle of fashion and
taste. The rooms _are_ beautiful, indeed!" and the major's voice hushed
as he spoke of this great lady, and he looked round and surveyed the
apartments awfully and respectfully, as if he had been at church.
"Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up," said Lady Clavering.
"Taken us up, mamma," cried Blanche, in a shrill voice.
"Well, taken us up, then," said my lady; "it's very kind of her, and
I dare say we shall like it when we git used to it, only at first one
don't fancy being took--well, taken up, at all. She is going to give our
balls for us; and wants to invite all our dinners. But I won't stand
that. I will have my old friends and I won't let her send all the cards
out, and sit mum at the head of my own table. You must come to me,
Arthur, and major--come, let me see, on the 14th. It ain't one of our
grand dinners, Blanche," she said, looking round at her daughter, who
bit her lips and frowned very savagely for a Sylphide.
The major, with a smile and a bow, said he would much rather come to a
quiet meeting than to a grand dinner. He had had enough of those large
entertainments, and preferred the simplicity of the home circle.
"I always think a dinner's the best the second day," said Lady Clavering,
thinking to mend her first speech. "On the 14th we'll be quite a snug
little party;" at which second blunder, Miss Blanche clasped her hands
in despair, and said, "O, mamma, _vous etes incorrigible_." Major
Pendennis vowed that he liked snug dinners of all things in the world,
and confounded her ladyship's impudence for daring to ask such a man as
_him_ to a second day's dinner. But he was a man of an economical turn
of mind, and bethinking himself that he could throw over these people if
any thing better should offer, he accepted with the blandest air. As for
Pen, he was not a diner-out of thirty years' standing as yet, and the
idea of a fine feast in a fine house was still perfectly welcome to him.
"What was that pretty little quarrel which engaged itself between your
worship and Miss Amory?" the major asked of Pen, as they walked away
together. "I thought you used to be _au mieux_ in that quarter."
"Used to be," answered Pen, with a dandified air, "is a vague phrase
regarding a woman. Was and is are two very different terms, sir, as
regards women's hearts especially."
"Egad, they change as we do," cried the elder. "When we took the Cape of
Good Hope, I recollect there was a lady who talked of poisoning herself
for your humble servant; and, begad, in three months, she ran away from
her husband with somebody else. Don't get yourself entangled with that
Miss Amory. She is forward, affected, and underbred; and her character
is somewhat--never mind what. But don't think of her; ten thousand pound
won't do for you. What, my good follow, is ten thousand pound? I would
scarcely pay that girl's milliner's bill with the interest of the
money."
"You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, uncle," Pen said.
"I was, sir, I was," replied the senior; "and the old war-horse, you
know, never hears the sound of a trumpet, but he begins to he, he!--you
understand;" and he gave a killing though somewhat superannuated leer
and bow to a carriage that passed them, and entered the Park.
"Lady Catherine Martingale's carriage," he said; "mons'ous fine
girls the daughters, though, gad, I remember their mother a thousand
times handsomer. No, Arthur, my dear fellow, with your person and
expectations, you ought to make a good coup in marriage some day or
other; and though I wouldn't have this repeated at Fairoaks, you rogue,
ha! ha! a reputation for a little wickedness, and for being an _homme
dangereux_, don't hurt a young fellow with the women. They like it,
sir--they hate a milksop ... young men must be young men, you know. But
for marriage," continued the veteran moralist, "that is a very different
matter. Marry a woman with money. I've told you before, it is as easy to
get a rich wife as a poor one; and a doosed deal more comfortable to sit
down to a well-cooked dinner, with your little entrees nicely served,
than to have nothing but a damned cold leg of mutton between you and
your wife. We shall have a good dinner on the 14th, when we dine with
Sir Francis Clavering: stick to that, my boy, in your relations with the
family. Cultivate 'em, but keep 'em for dining. No more of your youthful
follies and nonsense about love in a cottage."
"It must be a cottage with a double coach-house, a cottage of gentility,
sir," said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the Devil's Walk:
but his uncle did not know that poem (though, perhaps, he might be
leading Pen upon the very promenade in question), and went on with his
philosophical remarks, very much pleased with the aptness of the pupil
to whom he addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever fellow,
who took his color very readily from his neighbor, and found the
adaptation only too easy.
Warrington, the grumbler, growled out that Pen was becoming such a
puppy, that soon there would be no bearing him. But the truth is, the
young man's success and dashing manners pleased his elder companion. He
liked to see Pen gay and spirited, and brimful of health, and life, and
hope; as a man who has long since left off being amused with clown and
harlequin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime.
Mr. Pen's former sulkiness disappeared with his better fortune: and he
bloomed as the sun began to shine upon him.