In three or four minutes—Fanny did not know how long, but she looked furiously at him when he came into the lodge—Bows returned alone, and entered into the porter’s room.
“Where’s your Ma, dear?” he said to Fanny.
“I don’t know,” Fanny said, with an angry toss. “I don’t follow Ma’s steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows.”
“Am I my mother’s keeper?” Bows said, with his usual melancholy bitterness. “Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia-Ann; I’ve brought a cake for the one who can read her letters best, and a cake for the other who can read them the next best.”
When the young ladies had undergone the examination through which Bows put them, they were rewarded with their gingerbread medals, and went off to discuss them in the court. Meanwhile Fanny took out some work, and pretended to busy herself with it, her mind being in great excitement and anger, as she plied her needle. Bows sate so that he could command the entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person whom, perhaps, he expected to see, never made his appearance again. And Mrs. Bolton came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in place of the person whom she had expected to see. The reader perhaps can guess what was his name?
The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two mounted to the apartment occupied by the former in common with the descendant of the Milesian kings, was not particularly satisfactory to either party. Pen was sulky. If Bows had anything on his mind, he did not care to deliver himself of his thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan, who remained in the apartment during the whole of Pen’s visit; having quitted his bedchamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the arrival of that gentleman. We have witnessed the deshabille of Major Pendennis: will any man wish to be valet-de-chambre to our other hero, Costigan? It would seem that the Captain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto-of-whisky. A rich odour of that delicious perfume breathed from out him, as he held out the grasp of cordiality to his visitor. The hand which performed that grasp shook wofully: it was a wonder how it could hold the razor with which the poor gentleman daily operated on his chin.
Bows’s room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade’s was disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. His books and manuscript music were trimly arranged upon shelves. A lithographed portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. Haller, with the actress’s sprawling signature at the corner, hung faithfully over the old gentleman’s bed. Lady Mirabel wrote much better than Miss Fotheringay had been able to do. Her Ladyship had laboured assiduously to acquire the art of penmanship since her marriage; and, in a common note of invitation or acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows loved the old handwriting best, though; the fair artist’s earlier manner. He had but one specimen of the new style, a note in reply to a song composed and dedicated to Lady Mirabel, by her most humble servant Robert Bows; and which document was treasured in his desk amongst his other state papers. He was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg; or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy in the caresses, or agitated by the illness of a poodle. But it was hard upon Bows, and grating to his feelings as a man and a sentimentalist, that he should find Pen again upon his track, and in pursuit of this little Fanny.
Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his company was perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and Bows, and that the visit of the former was intended for himself. He expressed himself greatly pleased with that mark of poloightness and promised, in his own mind, that he would repay that obligation at least—which was not the only debt which the Captain owed in life—by several visits to his young friend. He entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of ten days previous; for Pen, in his quality of Journalist, remembered to have seen some of the Captain’s opinions in the Sporting and Theatrical Newspaper, which was Costigan’s oracle. He stated that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were gone to Baden-Baden, and were most pressing in their invitations that he should join them there. Pen replied with great gravity, that he had heard that Baden was very pleasant, and the Grand Duke exceedingly hospitable to English. Costigan answered, that the laws of hospitalitee bekeam a Grand Juke; that he sariously would think about visiting him; and made some remarks upon the splendid festivities at Dublin Castle, when his Excellency the Earl of Portansherry held the Viceraygal Coort there, and of which he, Costigan, had been a humble but pleased spectator. And Pen—as he heard these oft-told well-remembered legends—recollected the time when he had given a sort of credence to them, and had a certain respect for the Captain. Emily and first love, and the little room at Chatteris, and the kind talk with Bows on the bridge, came back to him. He felt quite kindly disposed towards his two old friends; and cordially shook the hands of both of them when he rose to go away.
He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton whilst the Captain was talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other selfish meditations. He only remembered her again as Bows came hobbling down the stairs after him, bent evidently upon following him out of Shepherd’s Inn.
Mr. Bows’s precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of Mr. Arthur Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow’s feeble persecution. Confound him, what does he mean by dogging me? thought Pen. And he burst out laughing when he was in the Strand and by himself, as he thought of the elder’s stratagem. It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps the thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own sense of humour.