A History of Pendennis Volume I Part 5

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth, where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr.

Foker's lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were over a chemist's shop whose stock of cigars and soda-water went off rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr.

Spavin, Foker's friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter had driven into Chatteries, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog, a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.

Pen's healthy red face fresh from the gallop, compared oddly, with the waxy, debauched little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it.

"Who's that man?" he thought, "he looks as fresh as a bean, _His_ hand don't shake of a morning, I'd bet five to one."

Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!--

Mr. Spavin could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day, sometimes a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have any thing? There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Pendennis's name, on the card which the latter took out and laid down (perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)--and so the young men took leave.

Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his nails by the sh.o.r.e of the much sounding sea. It stretched before him bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay, foaming and roaring hoa.r.s.ely: Pen looked them in the face, with blank eyes, hardly regarding them. What a tide there was pouring into the lad's own mind at the time, and what a little power had he to check it!

Pen flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was in a rage at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He must see Foker.

"Suppose I go on--on the Chatteries road, just to see if I can meet him," Pen thought. Rebecca was saddled in another half hour, and galloping on the gra.s.s by the Chatteries road. About four miles from Baymouth, the Clavering road branches off, as every body knows, and the mare naturally was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the shoulder, Pen pa.s.sed the turning, and rode on to the turnpike without seeing any sign of the black tandem and red wheels.

As he was at the turnpike, he might as well go on: that was quite clear.

So Pen rode to the George, and the hostler told him that Mr Foker was there sure enough, and that "he'd been a making a tremendous row the night afore, a drinkin and a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the post-boy: which I'm thinking he'd have the worst of it," the man added, with a grin.--"Have you carried up your master's hot water to shave with?" he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker's domestic, who here came down the yard bearing his master's clothes, most beautifully brushed and arranged. "Show Mr. Pendennis up to 'un," and Pen followed the man at last to the apartment, where, in the midst of an immense bed, Mr. Harry Foker lay reposing.

The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. Foker, so that you could hardly see his little sallow face and red silk night-cap.

"Hullo!" said Pen.

"Who goes there? brother, quickly tell!" sang out the voice from the bed. "What! Pendennis again? Is your mamma acquainted with your absence?

Did you sup with us last night? No--stop--who supped with us last night, Stoopid?"

"There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and Mr.

Costigan, sir," the man answered, who received all Mr. Foker's remarks with perfect gravity.

"Ah yes: the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted: and I remember I wanted to fight a post-boy. Did I thrash him, Stoopid?"

"No, sir. Fight didn't come off, sir," said Stoopid, still with perfect gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker's dressing-case--a trunk, the gift of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never traveled. It contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silver mug, silver boxes and bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of razors ready against the time when Mr. Foker's beard should come.

"Do it some other day," said the young fellow, yawning and throwing up his little lean arms over his head. "No, there was no fight; but there was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the general chanted--Costigan I mean.--Did you ever hear him sing 'The Little Pig under the Bed,'

Pen?"

"The man we met yesterday," said Pen, all in a tremor, "the father of--"

"Of the Fotheringay--the very man. Ain't she a Venus, Pen?"

"Please sir, Mr. Costigan's in the sittin-room, sir, and says, sir, you asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't wake you on no account; and has been year since eleven o'clock, sir--"

"How much is it now?"

"One, sir."

"What would the best of mothers say," cried the little sluggard, "if she saw me in bed at this hour? She sent me down here with a grinder. She wants me to cultivate my neglected genus.--He he! I say, Pen, this isn't quite like seven o'clock school--is it, old boy?"--and the young fellow burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added--"Go in and talk to the general whilst I dress. And I say, Pendennis, ask him to sing you 'The Little Pig under the Bed;' it's capital." Pen went off in great perturbation, to meet Mr. Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his toilet.

Of Mr. Foker's two grandfathers, the one from whom he inherited a fortune, was a brewer; the other was an earl, who endowed him with the most doting mother in the world. The Fokers had been at the Cistercian school, from father to son; at which place, our friend whose name could be seen over the play-ground wall, on a public-house sign, under which "Foker's Entire" was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of his trade, his uncomely countenance, his inapt.i.tude for learning and cleanliness, his gluttony and other weak points. But those who know how a susceptible youth, under the tyranny of his schoolfellows becomes silent and a sneak, may understand how, in a very few months after his liberation from bondage, he developed himself as he had done; and became the humorous, the sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we have made acquaintance. A dunce he always was, it is true; for learning can not be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as a fellow commoner; but he was now (in his own peculiar manner) as great a dandy as he before had been a slattern, and when he entered his sitting-room to join his two guests, arrived scented and arrayed in fine linen, and perfectly splendid in appearance.

General or Captain Costigan--for the latter was the rank which he preferred to a.s.sume--was seated in the window with the newspaper held before him at arm's length. The captain's eyes were somewhat dim; and he was spelling the paper with the help of his lips as well as of those blood-shot eyes of his, as you see gentlemen do to whom reading is a rare and difficult occupation. His hat was c.o.c.ked very much on one ear; and as one of his feet lay up in the window-seat, the observer of such matters might remark, by the size and shabbiness of the boots which the captain wore that times did not go very well with him. Poverty seems as if it were disposed, before it takes possession of a man entirely, to attack his extremities first: the coverings of his head, feet, and hands, are its first prey. All these parts of the captain's person were particularly rakish and shabby. As soon as he saw Pen he descended from the window-seat and saluted the new comer, first in a military manner, by conveying a couple of his fingers (covered with a broken black glove) to his hat, and then removing that ornament altogether. The captain was inclined to be bald, but he brought a quant.i.ty of lank iron-gray hair over his pate, and had a couple of wisps of the same falling down on each side of his face. Much whisky had spoiled what complexion Mr.

Costigan may have possessed in his youth. His once handsome face had now a copper tinge. He wore a very high stock, scarred and stained in many places; and a dress-coat tightly b.u.t.toned up in those parts where the b.u.t.tons had not parted company from the garment.

"The young gentleman to whom I had the honor to be introjuiced yesterday in the Cathadral Yard," said the captain, with a splendid bow and wave of his hat. "I hope I see you well, sir. I marked ye in the thayater last night during me daughter's perfawrumance; and missed ye on my return. I did but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though poor, is a gentleman; and when I reintered the house to pay me respects to me joyous young friend Mr. Foker--ye were gone. We had a jolly night of ut, sir--Mr. Foker, the three gallant young dragoons, and your 'umble servant. Gad, sir, it put me in mind of one of our old nights when I bore His Majesty's commission in the Foighting Hundtherd and Third."

And he pulled out an old snuff-box, which he presented with a stately air to his new acquaintance.

Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This shabby-looking buck was--was her father. The captain was perfumed with the recollections of the last night's cigars, and pulled and twisted the tuft on his chin as jauntily as any young dandy.

"I hope, Miss F----, Miss Costigan is well sir," Pen said, flus.h.i.+ng up.

"She--she gave me greater pleasure, than--than I--I--I ever enjoyed at a play. I think, sir--I think she's the finest actress in the world,"

he gasped out.

"Your hand, young man! for ye speak from your heart," cried the captain. "Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond father thanks ye.

She _is_ the finest actress in the world. I've seen the Siddons, sir, and the O'Nale.--They were great, but what were they compared to Miss Fotheringay? I do not wish that she should ashume her own name while on the stage. Me family, sir, are proud people; and the Costigans of Costiganstown think that an honest man who has borne Her Majesty's colors in the Hundred and Third, would demean himself, by permitting his daughter to earn her old father's bread."

"There can not be a more honorable duty, surely," Pen said.

"Honorable! Bedad, sir, I'd like to see the man who said Jack Costigan would consent to any thing dishonorable. I have a heart, sir, though I am poor; I like a man who has a heart. You have; I read it in your honest face and steady eye. And would you believe it?" he added, after a pause, and with a pathetic whisper, "that that Bingley, who has made his fortune by me child, gives her but two guineas a week, out of which she finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small means makes our all?"

Now the captain's means were so small as to be, it may be said, quite invisible. But n.o.body knows how the wind is tempered to shorn Irish lambs, and in what marvelous places they find pasture. If Captain Costigan, whom I had the honor to know, would but have told his history, it would have been a great moral story. But he neither would have told it if he could, nor could if he would; for the captain was not only unaccustomed to tell the truth--he was unable even to think it--and fact and fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain.

He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colors, a fine person and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the world. To his latest day he sang, with admirable pathos and humor, those wonderful Irish ballads which are so mirthful and so melancholy: and was always the first himself to cry at their pathos. Poor Cos! he was at once brave and maudlin, humorous and an idiot; always good-natured, and sometimes almost trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with any man, and back any man's bill: and his end was in a spunging-house, where the sheriff's officer who took him, was fond of him.

In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regimental messes, and had the honor of singing his songs, baccha.n.a.lian and sentimental, at the tables of the most ill.u.s.trious generals and commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period he drank three times as much claret as was good for him, and spent his doubtful patrimony. What became of him subsequently to his retirement from the army, is no affair of ours. I take it, no foreigner understands the life of an Irish gentleman without money, the way in which he manages to keep afloat--the wind-raising conspiracies, in which he engages with heroes as unfortunate as himself--the means by which he contrives, during most days of the week, to get his portion of whisky-and-water: all these are mysteries to us inconceivable: but suffice it to say, that through all the storms of life Jack had floated somehow, and the lamp of his nose had never gone out.

Before he and Pen had had a half hour's conversation, the captain managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the young gentleman for tickets for his daughter's benefit, which was to take place speedily, and was not a _bona fide_ transaction such as that of the last year, when poor Miss Fotheringay had lost fifteen s.h.i.+llings by her venture, but was an arrangement with the manager, by which the lady was to have the sale of a certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large portion of the sum for which they were sold.

Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them over to the captain for the tickets; he would have been afraid to offer more, lest he should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order for a box, lightly slipped the sovereigns into his waistcoat, and slapped his hand over the place where they lay. They seemed to warm his old sides.

"Faith, sir," said he, "the bullion's scarcer with me than it used to be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won six hundthred of 'em in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, was in Gibralther." And he straightway poured out to Pen a series of stories regarding the claret drunk, the bets made, the races ridden by the garrison there, with which he kept the young gentleman amused until the arrival of their host and his breakfast.

Then it was good to see the captain's behavior before the deviled turkey and the mutton-chops! His stories poured forth unceasingly, and his spirits rose as he chatted to the young men. When he got a bit of suns.h.i.+ne, the old lazarone basked in it; he prated about his own affairs and past splendor, and all the lords, generals, and lord-lieutenants he had ever known. He described the death of his darling Bessie, the late Mrs. Costigan, and the challenge he had sent to Captain Shanty Clancy, of the Slashers, for looking rude at Miss Fotheringay as she was on her kyar in the Phaynix; and then he described how the captain apologized, gave a dinner at the Kildare-street, where six of them drank twinty-one bottles of claret, &c. He announced that to sit with two such n.o.ble and generous young fellows was the happiness and pride of an old soldier's existence; and having had a second gla.s.s of Curacoa, was so happy that he began to cry. Altogether we should say that the captain was not a man of much strength of mind, or a very eligible companion for youth; but there are worse men, holding much better places in life, and more dishonest, who have never committed half so many rogueries as he.

They walked out, the captain holding an arm of each of his dear young friends, and in a maudlin state of contentment. He winked at one or two tradesmen's shops, where, possibly, he owed a bill, as much as to say--"See the company I am in--sure I'll pay you, my boy"--and they parted finally with Mr. Foker at a billiard-room, where the latter had a particular engagement with some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail's regiment.

Pen and the shabby captain still walked the streets together; the captain, in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker's fortune and station in life. Pen told him how Foker's father was a celebrated brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes Milton, Lord Rosherville's daughter. The captain broke out into a strain of exaggerated compliment and panegyric about Mr. Foker, whose "native aristocracie," he said, "could be seen with the twinkling of an oi--and only served to adawrun other qualities which he possessed--a foin intellect and a generous heart"--in not one word of which speech did the captain accurately believe.

Pen walked on, listening to his companion's prate, wondering, amused, and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the boy's head to disbelieve any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid nature himself, he took naturally for truth what other people told him.

Costigan had never had a better listener, and was highly flattered by the attentiveness and modest bearing of the young man.

So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so artless, honest, and cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the captain finally made him an invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen if he would do him the fevor to enter his humble abode, which was near at hand, where the captain would have the honor of inthrojuicing his young friend to his daughther, Miss Fotheringay?

Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he should have dropped from the captain's arm at first, and trembled lest the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being presented to the lady for whose--for whose talents he had conceived such an admiration--such an extreme admiration, and followed the captain, scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was going to see her! He was going to see her! In her was the center of the universe.

She was the kernel of the world for Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her, seemed a period ever so long ago--a revolution was between him and that time, and a new world about to begin.

The captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in Chatteries, which is called Prior's Lane, which lies in the ecclesiastical quarter of the town, close by Dean's Green and the canons' houses, and is overlooked by the enormous towers of the cathedral; there the captain dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low gabled house, on the door of which was the bra.s.s-plate of "Creed, Tailor and Robe-maker." Creed was dead, however. His widow was a pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his eldest son was a little scamp of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. A couple of the latter were sitting on the door-step, down which you went into the pa.s.sage of the house; and they jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lodger, and plunged wildly, and rather to Pen's surprise, at the swallow-tails of the captain's dress-coat; for the truth is, that the good-natured gentleman, when he was in cash, generally brought home an apple or a piece of gingerbread for these children--"Whereby the widdy never pressed me for rint when not convanient," as he remarked afterward to Pen, winking knowingly, and laying a finger on his nose.

Pen tumbled down the step, and as he followed his companion up the creaking old stair, his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see when he entered, following the captain, and stood in the room--in her room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if making a courtesy, and heard, but quite indistinctly, Costigan making a speech over him, in which the captain, with his usual magniloquence, expressed to "me child" his wish to make her known to "his dear and admirable young friend, Mr. Awther Pindinnis, a young gentleman of property in the neighborhood, a person of refoined moind, and emiable manners, a sincare lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and affectionate heart."