Pen saw his condition and laughed, although, perhaps, he was somewhat mortified. “Don’t you remember me, Captain?” he said. “I am Pendennis—Arthur Pendennis, of Chatteris.”
The sound of the young man’s friendly voice recalled and steadied Cos’s tipsy remembrance, and he saluted Arthur, as soon as he knew him, with a loud volley of friendly greetings. Pen was his dearest boy, his gallant young friend, his noble collagian, whom he had held in his inmost heart ever since they had parted—how was his fawther, no, his mother, and his guardian, the General, the Major? “I preshoom, from your apparance, you’ve come into your prawpertee; and, bedad, yee’ll spend it like a man of spirit—I’ll go bail for that. No? not yet come into your estete? If ye want any thrifle, heark ye, there’s poor old Jack Costigan has got a guinea or two in his pocket—and, be heavens! you shall never want, Awthur, me dear boy. What’ll ye have? John, come hither, and look aloive; give this gentleman a glass of punch, and I’ll pay for’t.—Your friend? I’ve seen him before. Permit me to have the honour of making meself known to ye, sir, and requesting ye’ll take a glass of punch.”
“I don’t envy Sir Charles Mirabel his father-in-law,” thought Pendennis. “And how is my old friend, Mr. Bows, Captain? Have you any news of him, and do you see him still?”
“No doubt he’s very well,” said the Captain, jingling his money, and whistling the air of a song—‘The Little Doodeen’—for the singing of which he was celebrated at the Fielding’s Head. “Me dear boy—I’ve forgot your name again—but my name’s Costigan, Jack Costigan, and I’d loike ye to take as many tumblers of punch in my name as ever ye loike. Ye know my name; I’m not ashamed of it.” And so the captain went maundering on.
“It’s pay-day with the General,” said Mr. Hodgen, the bass singer, with whom Warrington was in deep conversation: “and he’s a precious deal more than half seas over. He has already tried that ‘Little Doodeen’ of his, and broke it, too, just before I sang ‘King Death.’ Have you heard my new song, ‘The Body Snatcher,’ Mr. Warrington?—angcored at Saint Bartholomew’s the other night—composed expressly for me. Per’aps you or your friend would like a copy of the song, sir? John, just ’ave the kyndness to ’and over a ‘Body Snatcher’ ’ere, will yer?—There’s a portrait of me, sir, as I sing it—as the Snatcher—considered rather like.”
“Thank you,” said Warrington; “heard it nine times—know it by heart, Hodgen.”
Here the gentleman who presided at the pianoforte began to play upon his instrument, and Pen, looking in the direction of the music, beheld that very Mr. Bows, for whom he had been asking but now, and whose existence Costigan had momentarily forgotten. The little old man sate before the battered piano (which had injured its constitution wofully by sitting up so many nights, and spoke with a voice, as it were, at once hoarse and faint), and accompanied the singers, or played with taste and grace in the intervals of the songs.
Bows had seen and recollected Pen at once when the latter came into the room, and had remarked the eager warmth of the young man’s recognition of Costigan. He now began to play an air, which Pen instantly remembered as one which used to be sung by the chorus of villagers in ‘The Stranger,’ just before Mrs. Haller came in. It shook Pen as he heard it. He remembered how his heart used to beat as that air was played, and before the divine Emily made her entry. Nobody, save Arthur, took any notice of old Bows’s playing: it was scarcely heard amidst the clatter of knives and forks, the calls for poached eggs and kidneys, and the tramp of guests and waiters.
Pen went up and kindly shook the player by the hand at the end of his performance; and Bows greeted Arthur with great respect and cordiality. “What, you haven’t forgot the old tune, Mr. Pendennis?” he said; “I thought you’d remember it. I take it, it was the first tune of that sort you ever heard played—wasn’t it, sir? You were quite a young chap then. I fear the Captain’s very bad to-night. He breaks out on a pay-day; and I shall have the deuce’s own trouble in getting home. We live together. We still hang on, sir, in partnership, though Miss Em—though my lady Mirabel has left the firm.—And so you remember old times, do you? Wasn’t she a beauty, sir?—Your health and my service to you,”—and he took a sip at the pewter measure of porter which stood by his side as he played.
Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaintance afterwards, and of renewing his relations with Costigan and the old musician.