The History of Pendennis

by William Makepeace Thackeray

The Pendennises, the elder and the younger, waited with Lady Clavering and her daughter until her ladyship’s carriage was announced, when the elder’s martyrdom may be said to have come to an end, for the good-natured Begum insisted upon leaving him at his door in Bury Street; so he took the back seat of the carriage after a feeble bow or two, and speech of thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing his duty. The Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to Arthur and Foker, and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green under her rose-coloured hood, and whether it was the mirrors at Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes, which made her fancy herself so pale.

Arthur, perhaps, saw quite well how yellow Blanche looked, but did not attribute that peculiarity of her complexion to the effect of the looking-glasses, or to any error in his sight or her own. Our young man of the world could use his eyes very keenly, and could see Blanche’s face pretty much as nature had made it. But for poor Foker it had a radiance which dazzled and blinded him: he could see no more faults in it than in the sun, which was now flaring over the house-tops.

Amongst other wicked London habits which Pen had acquired, the moralist will remark that he had got to keep very bad hours; and often was going to bed at the time when sober country-people were thinking of leaving it. Men get used to one hour as to another. Editors of newspapers, Covent Garden market-people, night cabmen and coffee-sellers, chimney-sweeps, and gentlemen and ladies of fashion who frequent balls, are often quite lively at three or four o’clock of a morning, when ordinary mortals are snoring. We have shown in the last chapter how Pen was in a brisk condition of mind at this period, inclined to smoke his cigar at ease, and to speak freely.

Foker and Pen walked away from Gaunt House, then, indulging in both the above amusements: or rather Pen talked, and Foker looked as if he wanted to say something. Pen was sarcastic and dandified when he had been in the company of great folks; he could not help imitating some of their airs and tones, and having a most lively imagination, mistook himself for a person of importance very easily. He rattled away, and attacked this person and that; sneered at Lady John Turnbull’s bad French, which her ladyship will introduce into all conversations in spite of the sneers of everybody; at Mrs. Slack Roper’s extraordinary costume and sham jewels; at the old dandies and the young ones;—at whom didn’t he sneer and laugh?

“You fire at everybody, Pen—you’re grown awful, that you are,” Foker said. “Now you’ve pulled about Blondel’s yellow wig, and Colchicum’s black one, why don’t you have a shy at a brown one, hay? you know whose I mean. It got into Lady Clavering’s carriage.”

“Under my uncle’s hat? My uncle is a martyr, Foker, my boy. My uncle has been doing excruciating duties all night. He likes to go to bed rather early. He has a dreadful headache if he sits up and touches supper. He always has the gout if he walks or stands much at a ball. He has been sitting up, and standing up, and supping. He has gone home to the gout and the headache, and for my sake. Shall I make fun of the old boy? no, not for Venice!”

“How do you mean that he has been doing it for your sake?” Foker asked, looking rather alarmed.

“Boy! canst thou keep a secret if I impart it to thee?” Pen cried out, in high spirits. “Art thou of good counsel? Wilt thou swear? Wilt thou be mum, or wilt thou preach? Wilt thou be silent and hear, or wilt thou speak and die?” And as he spoke, flinging himself into an absurd theatrical attitude, the men in the cabstand in Piccadilly wondered and grinned at the antics of the two young swells.

“What the doose are you driving at?” Foker asked, looking very much agitated.

Pen, however, did not remark this agitation much, but continued in the same bantering and excited vein. “Henry, friend of my youth,” he said, “and witness of my early follies, though dull at thy books, yet thou art not altogether deprived of sense,—nay, blush not, Henrico, thou hast a good portion of that, and of courage and kindness too, at the service of thy friends. Were I in a strait of poverty, I would come to my Foker’s purse. Were I in grief, I would discharge my grief upon his sympathising bosom——”