CHAPTER V.
Mrs. Haller at Home
Without slackening her pace, Rebecca the mare galloped on to Baymouth, where Pen put her up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr. Foker’s lodgings, which he knew from the direction given to him by that gentleman on the previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were over a chemist’s shop whose stock of cigars and sodawater went off rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only found Mr. Spavin, Foker’s friend, and part owner of the tandem which the latter had driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, and teaching a little dog, a friend of his, tricks with a bit of biscuit.
Pen’s healthy red face, fresh from the gallop, compared oddly with the waxy debauched little features of Foker’s chum; the latter remarked it. “Who’s that man?” he thought, “he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand don’t shake of a morning, I’d bet five to one.”
Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappointment!—Mr. Spavin could not say when his friend would return. Sometimes he stopped a day, sometimes 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, on the card which the latter took out and laid down (perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a card)—and so the young men took leave.
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 Chatteris 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 Chatteris road. About four miles from Baymouth, the Clavering road branches off, as everybody 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 makin a tremendous row the night afore, a drinkin and a singin, 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, 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 nightcap.
“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.