IN OR NEAR THE TEMPLE GARDEN.
Fashion has long deserted the green and pretty Temple Garden, in which
Shakspeare 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. Newberry has sent.
Treading heavily on the gravel, and rolling majestically along in a
snuff-colored 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 Miter), and Mr. Johnson asks
Mr. Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss Williams.
Kind faith of Fancy! Sir Hoger 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 neighborhood 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 come 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 neighborhood
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 wharves and 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 downward 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 toward the east.
One cried out, "Oh!" the other began to laugh; and with a knowing
little infantine 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?
[Illustration]
Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was unusually smart
and brilliant in his costume. His white duck trowsers and white hat,
his neckcloth of many colors, his light waistcoat, gold chains, and
shirt studs, gave him the air of a prince of the blood at least. How
his splendor became his figure! Was any body 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 won't 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!
[Illustration]
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 Neara
--Neara--I don't know the pronunciation. And how 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 down
stairs 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, &c.) 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 hout, 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-by, good-by." 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 center 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 book-case 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 any body
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 afterward, 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 fire-side; 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 tyrannizing 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. And I 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 thread-bare coat, and gets his
bread by playing tunes at an alehouse? 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 every thing has 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 make her
mock my deformity and old age?"