Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the sand, biting his nails by the shore of the much sounding sea. It stretched before him bright and immeasurable. The blue waters came rolling into the bay, foaming and roaring hoarsely: 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 grass 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 passed 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—"