“Your word is sufficient, Mr. Pendennis,” the other said in his sad tone. “You say they are not here, and I know they are not. And I hope they never have been here, and never will come.”
“Upon my word, sir, you are very good, to choose my acquaintances for me,” Arthur said, in a haughty tone; “and to suppose that anybody would be the worse for my society. I remember you, and owe you kindness from old times, Mr. Bows; or I should speak more angrily than I do, about a very intolerable sort of persecution to which you seem inclined to subject me. You followed me out of your Inn yesterday, as if you wanted to watch that I shouldn’t steal something.” Here Pen stammered and turned red, directly he had said the words; he felt he had given the other an opening, which Bows instantly took.
“I do think you came to steal something, as you say the words, sir,” Bows said. “Do you mean to say that you came to pay a visit to poor old Bows, the fiddler; or to Mrs. Bolton, at the porter’s lodge? O fie! Such a fine gentleman as Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, doesn’t condescend to walk up to my garret, or to sit in a laundress’s kitchen, but for reasons of his own. And my belief is that you came to steal a pretty girl’s heart away, and to ruin it, and to spurn it afterwards, Mr. Arthur Pendennis. That’s what the world makes of you young dandies, you gentlemen of fashion, you high and mighty aristocrats that trample upon the people. It’s sport to you, but what is it to the poor, think you; the toys of your pleasures, whom you play with and whom you fling into the streets when you are tired? I know your order, sir. I know your selfishness, and your arrogance, and your pride. What does it matter to my lord, that the poor man’s daughter is made miserable, and her family brought to shame? You must have your pleasures, and the people of course must pay for them. What are we made for, but for that? It’s the way with you all—the way with you all, sir.”
Bows was speaking beside the question, and Pen had his advantage here, which he was not sorry to take—not sorry to put off the debate from the point upon which his adversary had first engaged it. Arthur broke out with a sort of laugh, for which he asked Bows’s pardon. “Yes, I am an aristocrat,” he said, “in a palace up three pair of stairs, with a carpet nearly as handsome as yours, Mr. Bows. My life is passed in grinding the people, is it?—in ruining virgins and robbing the poor? My good sir, this is very well in a comedy, where Job Thornberry slaps his breast, and asks my Lord how dare he trample on an honest man and poke out an Englishman’s fireside; but in real life, Mr. Bows, to a man who has to work for his bread as much as you do—how can you talk about aristocrats tyrannising over the people? Have I ever done you a wrong? or assumed airs of superiority over you? Did you not have an early regard for me—in days when we were both of us romantic young fellows, Mr. Bows? Come, don’t be angry with me now, and let us be as good friends as we were before.”
“Those days were very different,” Mr. Bows answered; “and Mr. Arthur Pendennis was an honest, impetuous young fellow then; rather selfish and conceited, perhaps, but honest. He liked you then, because you were ready to ruin yourself for a woman.”
“And now, sir?” Arthur asked.
“And now times are changed, and you want a woman to ruin herself for you,” Bows answered. “I know this child, sir. I’ve always said this lot was hanging over her. She has heated her little brain with novels, until her whole thoughts are about love and lovers, and she scarcely sees that she treads on a kitchen floor. I have taught the little thing. She is full of many talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am fond of the girl, sir. I’m a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don’t like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have but this child that I care for. Have pity upon me, and don’t take her away from me, Mr. Pendennis—don’t take her away.”
The old man’s voice broke as he spoke. Its accents touched Pen, much more than the menacing or sarcastic tone which Bows had commenced by adopting.
“Indeed,” said he, kindly, “you do me a wrong if you fancy I intend one to poor little Fanny. I never saw her till Friday night. It was the merest chance that our friend Costigan threw her into my way. I have no intentions regarding her—that is——”
“That is, you know very well that she is a foolish girl, and her mother a foolish woman,—that is, you meet her in the Temple Gardens, and of course without previous concert,—that is, that when I found her yesterday reading the book you’ve wrote, she scorned me,” Bows said. “What am I good for but to be laughed at? a deformed old fellow like me; an old fiddler, that wears a threadbare coat, and gets his bread by playing tunes at an ale-house? You are a fine gentleman, you are. You wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your finger. You go to dine with great people. Who ever gives a crust to old Bows? And yet I might have been as good a man as the best of you. I might have been a man of genius, if I had had the chance; ay, and have lived with the master-spirits of the land. But everything had failed with me. I’d ambition once, and wrote plays, poems, music—nobody would give me a hearing. I never loved a woman, but she laughed at me; and here I am in my old age alone—alone! Don’t take this girl from me, Mr. Pendennis, I say again. Leave her with me a little longer. She was like a child to me till yesterday. Why did you step in, and made her to mock my deformity and old age?”