“She’s a dev’lish fine woman, that Mirabel,” said Tiptoff; “though Mirabel was a d——d fool to marry her.”
“A stupid old spooney,” said the peer.
“Mirabel!” cried out Pendennis.
“Ha! ha!” laughed out Harry Foker. “We’ve heard of her before, haven’t we, Pen?”
It was Pen’s first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The year before she had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, G.C.B., and formerly envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who had taken so active a part in the negotiations before the Congress of Swammerdam, and signed, on behalf of H.B.M., the Peace of Pultusk.
“Emily was always as stupid as an owl,” said Miss Blenkinsop.
“Eh! Eh! pas si bete,” the old Peer said.
“Oh, for shame!” cried the actress, who did not in the least know what he meant.
And Pen looked out and beheld his first love once again—and wondered how he ever could have loved her.
Thus on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. Arthur Pendennis found himself introduced to a Club, to an actress of genteel comedy and a heavy father of the Stage, and to a dashing society of jovial blades, old and young; for my Lord Colchicum, though stricken in years, bald of head and enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable Viscount’s boast that he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the society which he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he gave them countless dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened patron of the drama in all languages and of the Terpsichorean art, he received dramatic professors of all nations at his banquets—English from the Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French from their own pretty little theatre, or the boards of the Opera where they danced. And at his villa on the Thames, this pillar of the State gave sumptuous entertainments to scores of young men of fashion, who very affably consorted with the ladies and gentlemen of the greenroom—with the former chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred their society as more polished and gay than that of their male brethren.