The History of Pendennis Part 46

"Devilish hard on Towler, by gad!" said the Major, amused, "and not pleasant for Lord Levant--he, he!"

"Always knew it was coming, sir. I spoke to you of it Michaelmas was four years: when her Ladyship put the diamonds in p.a.w.n. It was Towler, sir, took 'em in two cabs to Dobree's--and a good deal of the plate went the same way. Don't you remember seeing of it at Blackwall, with the Levant arms and coronick, and Lord Levant settn oppsit to it at the Marquis of Steyne's dinner? Beg your pardon; did I cut you, sir?"

Morgan was now operating upon the Major's chin--he continued the theme while strapping the skilful razor. "They've took a house in Grosvenor Place, and are coming out strong, sir. Her Ladyship's going to give three parties, besides a dinner a week, sir. Her fortune won't stand it--can't stand it."

"Gad, she had a devilish good cook when I was at Fairoaks," the Major said, with very little compa.s.sion for the widow Amory's fortune.

"Marobblan was his name, sir; Marobblan's gone away, sir," Morgan said,--and the Major, this time, with hearty sympathy, said, "he was devilish sorry to lose him."

"There's been a tremenjuous row about that Mosseer Marobblan,"

Morgan continued "At a ball at Baymouth, sir, bless his impadence, he challenged Mr. Harthur to fight a jewel, sir, which Mr. Arthur was very near knocking him down, and pitchin' him outawinder, and serve him right; but Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy--I beg pardon, the holtercation, sir--them French cooks has as much pride and hinsolence as if they was real gentlemen."

"I heard something of that quarrel," said the Major; "but Mirobolant was not turned off for that?"

"No, sir--that affair, sir, which Mr. Harthur forgave it him and beayved most handsome, was hushed hup: it was about Miss Hamory, sir, that he ad is dismissial. Those French fellers, they fancy everybody is in love with 'em; and he climbed up the large grape vine to her winder, sir, and was a trying to get in, when he was caught, sir; and Mr. Strong came out, and they got the garden-engine and played on him, and there was no end of a row, sir."

"Confound his impudence! You don't mean to say Miss Amory encouraged him," cried the Major, amazed at a peculiar expression in Mr. Morgan's countenance.

Morgan resumed his imperturbable demeanour. "Know nothing about it, sir.

Servants don't know them kind of things the least. Most probbly there was nothing in it--so many lies is told about families--Marobblan went away, bag and baggage, saucepans, and pianna, and all--the feller ad a pianna, and wrote potry in French, and he took a lodging at Clavering, and he hankered about the primises, and it was said that Madam Fribsy, the milliner, brought letters to Miss Hamory, though I don't believe a word about it; nor that he tried to pison hisself with charcoal, which it was all a humbug betwigst him and Madam Fribsy; and he was nearly shot by the keeper in the park."

In the course of that very day, it chanced that the Major had stationed himself in the great window of Bays's Club in Saint James's Street, at the hour in the afternoon when you see a half-score of respectable old bucks similarly recreating themselves (Bays's is rather an old-fashioned place of resort now, and many of its members more than middle-aged; but in the time of the Prince Regent, these old fellows occupied the same window, and were some of the very greatest dandies in this empire)--Major Pendennis was looking from the great window, and spied his nephew Arthur walking down the street in company with his friend Mr.

Popjoy.

"Look!" said Popjoy to Pen, as they pa.s.sed, "did you ever pa.s.s Bays's at four o'clock, without seeing that collection of old fogies? It's a regular museum. They ought to be cast in wax, and set up at Madame Tussaud's--"

"--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 neighbour'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-humour. 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 ladyship's door. Master Pen was not displeased to accompany his ill.u.s.trious relative, who pointed out a dozen great men in that 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 a 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, whilst the gentleman's other wing was engaged with his Grace's right) and he wished all Grey Friars' 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 trousers, in a white stock, with a shining 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 anybody 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 but 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 sunshine, 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 bow-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 upstairs, at Bays's, playing picquet 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 till 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 Cheshire, 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 nous 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 Grey 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 extravagances--and wild oats, sir, which 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 bedroom 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, shining plate-gla.s.s, newly cleaned bricks, and spotless mortar, could offer to the beholder.

"How Strong must have rejoiced in organising all this splendour,"

thought Pen. He recognised 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 colour, drawn by wonderful grey 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 shields contained a prodigious number of quarterings, betokening the antiquity and splendour 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 greys--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 ladyship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the which to tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a practised 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, the two ladies, attired in the highest style of fashion, 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 ladyship 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 ladyship 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 the pair,--she was on the first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another second, but she gave a start backwards (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-coloured 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 towards the chimneys, descended from the carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, 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 greys, was left unoccupied, save by the coachman in the silver wig.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII. In which the Sylph reappears