A History of Pendennis. Volume 1. His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy. Thackeray William Makepeace

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СКАЧАТЬ skirted the roadside. Do as he might, and ride where he would, the fairy princess that he was to rescue and win, had not yet appeared to honest Pen.

      Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He had a world of his own. What generous, ardent, imaginative soul has not a secret pleasure-place in which it disports? Let no clumsy prying or dull meddling of ours try to disturb it in our children. Actæon was a brute for wanting to push in where Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally alone, my good madame, if you have a poet for a child. Even your admirable advice may be a bore sometimes. You are faultless; but it does not follow that every body in your family is to think exactly like yourself. Yonder little child may have thoughts too deep even for your great mind, and fancies so coy and timid that they will not bare them selves when your ladyship sits by.

      Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great number of her son's secrets. But she kept these things in her heart (if we may so speak), and did not speak of them. Besides, she had made up her mind that he was to marry little Laura, who would be eighteen when Pen was six-and-twenty: and had finished his college career, and had made his grand tour, and was settled either in London, astonishing all the metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or, better still, in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks and roses, close to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, from the pulpit of which Pen would utter the most beautiful sermons ever preached.

      While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chatteries, for the purpose of carrying to the County Chronicle a tremendous and thrilling poem for the next week's paper; and putting up his horse according to custom, at the stables of the George Hotel there, he fell in with an old acquaintance. A grand black tandem, with scarlet wheels came rattling into the inn yard, as Pen stood there in converse with the hostler about Rebecca; and the voice of the driver called out, "Hallo, Pendennis, is that you?" in a loud, patronizing manner. Pen had some difficulty in recognizing under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast great coats and neckcloths, with which the new comer was habited, the person and figure of his quondam schoolfellow, Mr. Foker.

      A year's absence had made no small difference in that gentleman. A youth who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who spent his pocket-money on tarts and hardbake, now appeared before Pen in one of those costumes to which the public consent, that I take to be quite as influential in this respect as "Johnson's Dictionary," has awarded the title of "Swell." He had a bull-dog between his legs, and in his scarlet shawl neckcloth was a pin representing another bull-dog in gold: he wore a fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains; a green cut-away coat with basket-buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented with cheese-plate buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring incident of the road or the chase; all which ornaments set off this young fellow's figure to such advantage, that you would hesitate to say which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a boxer en goguette, or a coachman in his gala suit.

      "Left that place for good, Pendennis?" Mr. Foker said, descending from his landau, and giving Pendennis a finger.

      "Yes, this year or more," Pen said.

      "Beastly old hole," Mr. Foker remarked. "Hate it. Hate the doctor: hate Towzer, the second master; hate every body there. Not a fit place for a gentleman."

      "Not at all," said Pen with an air of the utmost consequence.

      "By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the doctor's walking into me," Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had likewise fearful dreams of this nature). "When I think of the diet there, by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef, pudding on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look at my leader – did you ever see a prettier animal? Drove over from Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going, sir."

      "Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker?" Pendennis asked.

      "I'm coaching there," said the other, with a nod.

      "What?" asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder, that Foker burst out laughing, and said, "He was blowed if he didn't think Pen was such a flat as not to know what coaching meant."

      "I'm come down with a coach from Oxford. A tutor, don't you see, old boy? He's coaching me, and some other men, for the little go. Me and Spavin have the drag between us. And I thought I'd just tool over, and go to the play. Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe?" and Mr. Foker began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn yard, looking round for the sympathy of his groom and the stable men.

      Pen thought he would like to go to the play too: and could ride home afterward, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted Foker's invitation to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr. Foker stopped at the bar, and called upon Miss Rincer, the landlady's fair daughter, who presided there, to give him a glass of "his mixture."

      Pen and his family had been known at the George ever since they came into the country; and Mr. Pendennis's carriages and horses always put up there when he paid a visit to the county town. The landlady dropped the heir of Fairoaks a respectful courtesy, and complimented him upon his growth and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at Fairoaks, and of Doctor Portman and the Clavering people, to all of which questions the young gentleman answered with much affability. But he spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Rincer with that sort of good nature with which a young prince addresses his father's subjects; never dreaming that those "bonnes gens" were his equals in life.

      Mr. Foker's behavior was quite different. He inquired for Rincer and the cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when she would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett, the other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle; and he gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction as he tossed off his mixture which Miss Rincer prepared and handed to him.

      "Have a drop," said he to Pen, "it's recommended to me by the faculty as a what-do-you-call-'em – a stomatic, old boy. Give the young one a glass, R, and score it up to yours truly."

      Poor Pen took a glass, and every body laughed at the face which he made as he put it down. – Gin, bitters, and some other cordial, was the compound with which Mr. Foker was so delighted as to call it by the name of Foker's own. As Pen choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took occasion to remark to Mr. Rincer that the young fellow was green, very green, but that he would soon form him; and then they proceeded to order dinner – which Mr. Foker determined should consist of turtle and venison; cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the wine.

      Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High-street together – the former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had drawn out of a case almost as big as a portmanteau. He went in to replenish it at Mr. Lewis's, and talked to that gentleman for a while, sitting down on the counter; he then looked in at the fruiterer's, to see the pretty girl there, to whom he paid compliments similar to those before addressed to the bar at the George; then they passed the County Chronicle office, for which Pen had his packet ready, in the shape of "Lines to Thyrza," but poor Pen did not like to put the letter into the editor's box while walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteries; and stopped and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a pretty girl was Miss Brown, and what a dem fine woman Mrs. Jones was. It was in vain that Pen recalled to his own mind what a stupid ass Foker used to be at school – how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his person, and notorious for his blunders and dullness. Mr. Foker was no more like a gentleman now than in his school days; and yet Pen felt a secret pride in strutting down High-street with a young fellow who owned tandems, talked to officers, and ordered turtle and champagne for dinner. He listened, and with respect too, to Mr. Foker's accounts of what the men did at the University of which Mr. F. was an ornament, and encountered a long series of stories about boat-racing, bumping, СКАЧАТЬ