A History of Pendennis Volume I Part 50

"--In a chamber of old horrors by themselves," Pen said, laughing.

"--In the chamber of horrors! Gad, doosid good!" Pop cried. "They _are_ old rogues, most of 'em, and no mistake. There's old Blondel; there's my Uncle Colchic.u.m, the most confounded old sinner in Europe; there's--hullo! there's somebody rapping the window, and nodding at us."

"It's my uncle, the major," said Pen. "Is he an old sinner, too?"

"Notorious old rogue," Pop said, wagging his head. ("Notowious old wogue," he p.r.o.nounced the words, thereby rendering them much more emphatic.) "He's beckoning you in; he wants to speak to you."

"Come in too," Pen said.

"--Can't," replied the other. "Cut uncle Col. two years ago, about Mademoiselle Frangipane--Ta, ta," and the young sinner took leave of Pen, and the club of the elder criminals, and sauntered into Blacquiere's, an adjacent establishment, frequented by reprobates of his own age.

Colchic.u.m, Blondel, and the senior bucks had just been conversing about the Clavering family, whose appearance in London had formed the subject of Major Pendennis's morning conversation with his valet. Mr. Blondel's house was next to that of Sir Francis Clavering, in Grosvenor-place: giving very good dinners himself, he had remarked some activity in his neighbor's kitchen. Sir Francis, indeed, had a new chef, who had come in more than once, and dressed Mr. Blondel's dinner for him; that gentleman having only a remarkably expert female artist permanently engaged in his establishment, and employing such chiefs of note as happened to be free on the occasion of his grand banquets. "They go to a devilish expense and see devilish bad company as yet, I hear," Mr. Blondel said; "they scour the streets, by gad, to get people to dine with 'em. Champignon says it breaks his heart to serve up a dinner to their society. What a shame it is that those low people should have money at all," cried Mr.

Blondel, whose grandfather had been a reputable leather-breeches maker, and whose father had lent money to the princes.

"I wish I had fallen in with the widow myself," sighed Lord Colchic.u.m, "and not been laid up with that confounded gout at Leghorn. I would have married the woman myself. I'm told she has six hundred thousand pounds in the Threes."

"Not _quite_ so much as that. I knew her family in India," Major Pendennis said. "I knew her family in India; her father was an enormously rich old indigo-planter; know all about her: Clavering has the next estate to ours in the country. Ha! there's my nephew walking with--"

"With mine: the infernal young scamp!" said Lord Colchic.u.m, glowering at Popjoy out of his heavy eyebrows; and he turned away from the window as Major Pendennis tapped upon it.

The major was in high good-humor. The sun was bright, the air brisk and invigorating. He had determined upon a visit to Lady Clavering on that day, and bethought him that Arthur would be a good companion for the walk across the Green Park to her ladys.h.i.+p's door. Master Pen was not displeased to accompany his ill.u.s.trious relative, who pointed out a dozen great men in their brief transit through St. James's-street, and got bows from a duke, at a crossing, a bishop (on a cob), and a cabinet minister with an umbrella. The duke gave the elder Pendennis the finger of a pipe-clayed glove to shake, which the major embraced with great veneration; and all Pen's blood tingled, as he found himself in actual communication, as it were, with this famous man (for Pen had possession of the major's left arm, while that gentleman's other wing was engaged with his grace's right), and he wished all Gray Friar's School, all Oxbridge University, all Paternoster Row and the temple, and Laura and his mother at Fairoaks, could be standing on each side of the street, to see the meeting between him and his uncle and the most famous duke in Christendom.

"How do, Pendennis? fine day," were his grace's remarkable words, and with a nod of his august head he pa.s.sed on--in a blue frock coat and spotless white duck trowsers, in a white stock, with a s.h.i.+ning buckle behind.

Old Pendennis, whose likeness to his grace has been remarked, began to imitate him unconsciously, after they had parted, speaking with curt sentences, after the manner of the great man. We have all of us, no doubt, met with more than one military officer who has so imitated the manner of a certain great captain of the age; and has, perhaps, changed his own natural character and disposition, because Fate had endowed him with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not seen many another man pride himself on having a tall forehead and a supposed likeness to Mr.

Canning? many another go through life swelling with self-gratification on account of an imagined resemblance (we say "imagined," because that any body should be _really_ like that most beautiful and perfect of men is impossible) to the great and revered George IV.: many third parties, who wore low necks to their dresses because they fancied that Lord Byron and themselves were similar in appearance: and has not the grave closed lately upon poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination than Mr. Joseph Hume, looked in the gla.s.s and fancied himself like Shakspeare? shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble the immortal bard, wrote tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly crazy--actually perished of his forehead! These or similar freaks of vanity most people who have frequented the world must have seen in their experience. Pen laughed in his roguish sleeve at the manner in which his uncle began to imitate the great man from whom they had just parted: but Mr. Pen was as vain in his own way, perhaps, as the elder gentleman, and strutted, with a very consequential air of his own, by the major's side.

"Yes, my dear boy," said the old bachelor, as they sauntered through the Green Park, where many poor children were disporting happily, and errand boys were playing at toss-halfpenny, and black sheep were grazing in the suns.h.i.+ne, and an actor was learning his part on a bench, and nursery maids and their charges sauntered here and there, and several couples were walking in a leisurely manner; "yes, depend on it, my boy, for a poor man, there is nothing like having good acquaintances.

Who were those men, with whom you saw me in the bay-window at Bays's?

Two were peers of the realm. Hobanan.o.b _will_ be a peer as soon as his grand-uncle dies, and he has had his third seizure; and of the other four, not one has less than his seven thousand a year. Did you see that dark blue brougham, with that tremendous stepping horse, waiting at the door of the club? You'll know it again. It is Sir Hugh Trumpington's; he was never known to walk in his life; never appears in the streets on foot--never; and if he is going two doors off, to see his mother, the old dowager (to whom I shall certainly introduce you, for she receives some of the best company in London), gad, sir, he mounts his horse at No. 23, and dismounts again at No. 25 A. He is now up-stairs, at Bays's, playing piquet with Count Punter: he is the second-best player in England: as well he may be; for he plays every day of his life, except Sundays (for Sir Hugh is an uncommonly religious man), from half-past three to half-past seven, when he dresses for dinner."

"A very pious manner of spending his time," Pen said, laughing, and thinking that his uncle was falling into the twaddling state.

"Gad, sir, that is not the question. A man of his estate may employ his time as he chooses. When you are a baronet, a county member, with ten thousand acres of the best land in Ches.h.i.+re, and such a place as Trumpington (though he never goes there), you may do as you like."

"And so that was his brougham, sir, was it?" the nephew said, with almost a sneer.

"His brougham--O ay, yes!--and that brings me back to my point--revenons a nos moutons. Yes, begad! revenons a nos moutons. Well, that brougham is mine, if I choose, between four and seven. Just as much mine as if I jobbed it from Tilbury's, begad, for thirty pound a month. Sir Hugh is the best-natured fellow in the world; and if it hadn't been so fine an afternoon as it is, you and I would have been in that brougham at this very minute, on our way to Grosvenor-place. That is the benefit of knowing rich men: I dine for nothing, sir; I go into the country, and I'm mounted for nothing. Other fellows keep hounds and gamekeepers for me. _Sic vos non vobis_, as we used to say at Gray Friars, hey? I'm of the opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-fourth; and a devilish good shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotchmen are. Gad, sir, Leech used to say, 'He was so poor that he couldn't afford to know a poor man.'"

"You don't act up to your principles, uncle," Pen said, good-naturedly.

"Up to my principles; how, sir?" the major asked, rather testily.

"You would have cut me in Saint James's-street, sir," Pen said, "were your practice not more benevolent than your theory; you who live with dukes and magnates of the land, and would take no notice of a poor devil like me." By which speech we may see that Mr. Pen was getting on in the world, and could flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve.

Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much pleased. He tapped affectionately his nephew's arm on which he was leaning, and said, "You, sir, you are my flesh and blood! Hang it, sir, I've been very proud of you and very fond of you, but for your confounded follies and extravagancies, and wild oats, sir, which I hope you've sown. Yes, begad! I hope you've sown 'em; I hope you've sown 'em, begad! My object, Arthur, is to make a man of you, to see you well placed in the world, as becomes one of your name and my own, sir. You have got yourself a little reputation by your literary talents, which I am very far from undervaluing, though in my time, begad, poetry and genius and that sort of thing were devilish disreputable. There was poor Byron, for instance, who ruined himself, and contracted the worst habits by living with poets and newspaper-writers, and people of that kind. But the times are changed now--there's a run upon literature--clever fellows get into the best houses in town, begad! _Tempora mutantur_, sir; and by Jove, I suppose whatever is is right, as Shakspeare says."

Pen did not think fit to tell his uncle who was the author who had made use of that remarkable phrase, and here descending from the Green Park, the pair made their way into Grosvenor-place, and to the door of the mansion occupied there by Sir Francis and Lady Clavering.

The dining-room shutters of this handsome mansion were freshly gilded; the knockers shone gorgeous upon the newly-painted door; the balcony before the drawing-room bloomed with a portable garden of the most beautiful plants, and with flowers, white, and pink, and scarlet; the windows of the upper room (the sacred chamber and dressing-room of my lady, doubtless), and even a pretty little cas.e.m.e.nt of the third story, which keen-sighted Mr. Pen presumed to belong to the virgin bed-room of Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with floral ornaments, and the whole exterior face of the house presented the most brilliant aspect which fresh new paint, s.h.i.+ning plate gla.s.s, newly cleaned bricks, and spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder.

"How Strong must have rejoiced in organizing all this splendor," thought Pen. He recognized the chevalier's genius in the magnificence before him.

"Lady Clavering is going out for her drive," the major said. "We shall only have to leave our pasteboards, Arthur." He used the word "pasteboards," having heard it from some of the ingenuous youth of the n.o.bility about town, and as a modern phrase suited to Pen's tender years. Indeed, as the two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove up, a magnificent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a faint cream color, drawn by wonderful gray horses, with flaming ribbons, and harness blazing all over with crests: no less than three of these heraldic emblems surmounted the coats of arms on the panels, and these s.h.i.+elds contained a prodigious number of quarterings, betokening the antiquity and splendor of the house of Clavering and Snell. A coachman in a tight silver wig surmounted the magnificent hammer-cloth (whereon the same arms were worked in bullion), and controlled the prancing grays--a young man still, but of a solemn countenance, with a laced waistcoat and buckles in his shoes--little buckles, unlike those which John and Jeames, the footmen, wear, and which we know are large, and spread elegantly over the foot.

One of the leaves of the hall door was opened, and John--one of the largest of his race--was leaning against the door pillar, with his ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged; in his hand his cane, gold-headed, _dolichoskion_. Jeames was invisible, but near at hand, waiting in the hall, with the gentleman who does not wear livery, and ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which her ladys.h.i.+p was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the which to tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a practiced eye: and, in fact, the major and Pen had scarcely crossed the street, when the second _battant_ of the door flew open; the horse-hair carpet tumbled down the door-steps to those of the carriage; John was opening it on one side of the emblazoned door, and Jeames on the other, and two ladies, attired in the highest style of fas.h.i.+on, and accompanied by a third, who carried a Blenheim spaniel, yelping in a light blue ribbon, came forth to ascend the carriage.

Miss Amory was the first to enter, which she did with aerial lightness, and took the place which she liked best. Lady Clavering next followed, but her ladys.h.i.+p was more mature of age and heavy of foot, and one of those feet, attired in a green satin boot, with some part of a stocking, which was very fine, whatever the ankle might be which it encircled, might be seen swaying on the carriage-step, as her ladys.h.i.+p leaned for support on the arm of the unbending Jeames, by the enraptured observer of female beauty who happened to be pa.s.sing at the time of this imposing ceremonial.

The Pendennises, senior and junior, beheld those charms as they came up to the door--the major looking grave and courtly, and Pen somewhat abashed at the carriage and its owners; for he thought of sundry little pa.s.sages at Clavering, which made his heart beat rather quick.

At that moment Lady Clavering, looking round, saw the pair--she was on the first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another second, but she gave a start backward (which caused some of the powder to fly from the hair of ambrosial Jeames), and crying out, "Lor, if it isn't Arthur Pendennis and the old major!" jumped back to terra firma directly, and holding out two fat hands, encased in tight orange-colored gloves, the good-natured woman warmly greeted the major and his nephew.

"Come in both of you. Why haven't you been before? Get out, Blanche, and come and see your old friends. O, I'm so glad to see you. We've been waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain't gone down," cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen's hand in both hers (she had dropped the major's after a brief wrench of recognition), and Blanche, casting up her eyes toward the chimneys, descended from the carriage presently, with a timid, blus.h.i.+ng, appealing look, and gave a little hand to Major Pendennis.

The companion with the spaniel looked about irresolute, and doubting whether she should not take Fido his airing; but she too turned right about face and entered the house, after Lady Clavering, her daughter, and the two gentlemen. And the carriage, with the prancing grays, was left unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 ladys.h.i.+p'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 t.i.tle 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 Const.i.tution, 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 emba.s.sador 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 s.h.i.+lly-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 Sat.u.r.day, and next week I'll blow up the whole concern."

Strong carried back these words to his princ.i.p.al, 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 apt.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 friends.h.i.+p for the baronet, that although he did not possess a s.h.i.+lling 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 b.a.l.l.s, and consumed their rations; though menaced with an a.s.sault 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.