The History of Pendennis

oker's lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which we

latter had driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teachi

little features of Foker's chum; the latter remarked it. "Who's that man?" he thought,

times a week. Of what college was Pen? Would he have anything? There was a very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Pendennis's name,

o 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 Chatteris road, just to see if I can meet him," Pen thought. Rebecca was saddled in another hal

n, and wanting to fight Tom the postboy: which I'm thinking he'd have had the worst of it," the man added, with a grin. "Have you carried up your master's 'ot water to shave with?" he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker's domestic, w

ound Mr. Foker, so that you could hardly see

!" sai

"What! Pendennis again? Is your Mamma acquainted with your absence? Did yo

sir, and Mr. Costigan, sir," the man answered, who

. We chanted and I remember I wanted to fi

ift of a fond mother, without which the young fellow never travelled. It contained a prodigious apparatus in plate; a silver dish, a silve

r his head. "No, there was no fight; but there was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, the Ge

y," said Pen, all in a t

,-the very man. Ain

ou asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir; but wouldn't

ch is i

e,

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

account of his trade, his uncomely countenance, his inaptitude 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 F

ness 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 h

issed 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

as her father. The Captain was perfumed with the recollections of the last night's

e-she gave me greater pleasure, than-than I-I-I ever enjoyed at a play. I

sir, and the O'Nale-they were great, but what were they compared to Miss Fotheringay? I do not wish she should ashume her own name while on the stage. Me family, sir, are proud people; and the C

more honourable dut

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

d pasture. If Captain Costigan, whom I had the honour 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,

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 som

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 her

ch 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 shillings by her venture; but was

to offer more lest he should offend the latter's delicacy. Costigan scrawled him an order for a box, lightly slipped th

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 clar

otheringay as she was on her kyar in the Phaynix; and then he described how the Captain apologised, gave a dinner at the Kildare Street, where six of them drank twinty-one bottles of claret, etc. He announced that to sit with two such noble and generous young fellows was the happiness and pride of an old soldier's existence; and having had a second glass 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 w

er, 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, "coul

disbelieve any statement that was made to him; and being of a candid nature himself, he took naturally for truth what other people t

him an invitation, which he very seldom accorded to young men, and asked Pen if he would do him the fever to enter his humble abode,

ew 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.

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 passage of the house; and they jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lod

before him, and waving as if making a curtsey, 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

eringay said, in an Irish accent, an

r conversation began; and he found himself seated on

. If she sate down on a cane-bottomed chair, her arm rounded itself over the back of the seat, her hand seemed as if it ought to have a sceptre put into it, the folds of her dress fell naturally round her in order, like ladies of honour round a throne, and she looked like an empress. All her movements were graceful and imperial. In the morning you could see her hair was

ntinued this empres

an whether he had had a pleasant evening at the George, and he recounted the supper and

Ophalia. It's for the twenty-fourth, when I hop

he should say 'Ophalia,' and speak with an Irish inflection of vo

tapping his waistcoat pocket, wherein lay Pen's sovereigns,

's very obleging,"

l-you'll remember it." His heart thumped so as he made this

ght, so clear, so bright, so killing, with a voice so sweet, so round, so low, that the wo

name was so pretty

ss Rancy, the Columbine; they're both engaged in London now, at the Queen's, and get five pounds a week. Pentweazle wasn't his real name. 'Twas Judkin gave it him, I don't know why. His name w

woman of fifty, and a mother of ten children. 'Tis you

en," Miss Fotheringay said modestly; "

in the empire could touch me with the foil once, but Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff now, sir), and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and 'twas there that m

ly said, with perfect simpli

allantly. "That girl, sir, makes the best veal and ham pie in England

ood humour, which enchanted her guest more and more. The "poy" arrived from the baker's in the hands of one of the little choir-boy's brothers at the proper hour: and at four o'clock Pen found himself at dinner-actually at dinner with the greatest tragic actress in the world, and her father-with the handsomest woman in all creation-with his first and only love, whom he had adored ever since when?-ever since yester

y?" She bristled with indignation at the thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke, but of Ophelia of the play. "Oh, indeed; if no offence was meant, none was taken: but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value him-not that glass of punch." Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. "Kotzebue? who was he?"-"The author of the play in which she had been performing so admirably." "She did not know

self, passed away only too quickly; and he had taken leave, he was gone, and away on his rapid road homewards

of Hamlet, and the theory of the great German c

y dear," answered the Captain.

retty young man," the lady said: "h

uineas, Milly," the Captain said. "I suppos

he, what a droll name indeed, now; and the poor fellow killed by Sand,

ul theme. "'Tis an elegant mare the young gentleman rides," Costigan went o

tickets, I should say," cried the daughter, a prudent

our of departure soon came, too; for at half-past six Miss Fotheringay was to appear at the theatre again, whither her father always accomp

and how well she turned the conversation! By the way, she talked about professional matters herself; but then with what fun and humour she told the story of her comrade, Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humour like Irish humour. Her father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how fine of him, giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the pet of th

and must certainly own, against my friend Pen's opinion, that his adored Emily is not a clever woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue, but she had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in whose plays she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born at Algiers: and asked her,-which Dr. Johnson wrote first, 'Irene,' or 'Every Man in his Humour.' But she

t a stone? He had found her; he had found what his soul thirsted after. He flung himself into the stream and drank with all his might. Let those say who have been thirsty once how delicious that first draught is. As he rode down the avenue towards home-Pen shrieked with laughter as he saw the Reverend Mr. Smirke once more coming demurely away

out laughing. "Come along back, old fellow, and eat my dinner-I have had m

id he had forced the curate back to dine. He gave a most ludicrous account of the play of the night before, and of the acting of Bingley the Manager, in his rickety Hessians, and t

ler?" said Mr

d, laughing, and using the words

thur?" aske

Arthur?" cried Laura

s at school: and how he was now exceedingly rich, and a Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface. But gay and communicative as he w

es, filled up two great bumpers of Madeira, and lo

lifting the glass and emptying it, so that h

ortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the Downs like mad. Again Love had roused him-and said, "Awake, Pendennis, I am here." That