The last words about himself excited Major Pendennis so much, that his compassion for Mrs. Brixham’s misfortunes was quite forgotten in the consideration of his own case.
“Me on my knees?” thought he, as he got into bed: “confound his impudence! Who ever saw me on my knees? What the devil does the fellow know? Gad, I’ve not had an affair these twenty years. I defy him.” And the old compaigner turned round and slept pretty sound, being rather excited and amused by the events of the day—the last day in Bury Street, he was determined it should be. “For it’s impossible to stay on with a valet over me, and a bankrupt landlady. What good can I do this poor devil of a woman? I’ll give her twenty pound—there’s Warrington’s twenty pound, which he has just paid—but what’s the use? She’ll want more, and more, and more, and that cormorant Morgan will swallow all. No, dammy, I can’t afford to know poor people; and to-morrow I’ll say Good-bye—to Mrs. Brixham and Mr. Morgan.”
CHAPTER LXIX.
In which the Major neither yields his Money nor his Life
Early next morning Pendennis’s shutters were opened by Morgan, who appeared as usual, with a face perfectly grave and respectful, bearing with him the old gentleman’s clothes, cans of water, and elaborate toilet requisites.
“It’s you, is it?” said the old fellow from his bed. “I shan’t take you back again, you understand.”
“I ave not the least wish to be took back agin, Major Pendennis,” Mr. Morgan said, with grave dignity, “nor to serve you nor hany man. But as I wish you to be comftable as long as you stay in my house, I came up to do what’s nessary.” And once more, and for the last time, Mr. James Morgan laid out the silver dressing-case, and strapped the shining razor.
These offices concluded, he addressed himself to the Major with an indescribable solemnity, and said: “Thinkin’ that you would most likely be in want of a respectable pusson, until you suited yourself, I spoke to a young man last night, who is ’ere.”
“Indeed,” said the warrior in the tent-bed.
“He ave lived in the fust famlies, and I can wouch for his respectability.”
“You are monstrous polite,” grinned the old Major. And the truth is, that after the occurrences of the previous evening, Morgan had gone out to his own Club at the Wheel of Fortune, and there finding Frosch, a courier and valet just returned from a foreign tour with young Lord Cubley, and for the present disposable, had represented to Mr. Frosch, that he, Morgan, had “a devil of a blow hup with his own Gov’nor, and was goin’ to retire from the business haltogether, and that if Frosch wanted a tempory job, he might probbly have it by applying in Bury Street.”