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Title: The Newcomes

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7467]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 5, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEWCOMES ***




Produced by Tapio Riikonen.




THE NEWCOMES

Memoirs of a most Respectable Family

Edited by Arthur Pendennis, Esq.


by William Makepeace Thackeray



CONTENTS

  CHAPTER
     I  The Overture--After which the Curtain rises upon a Drinking
           Chorus
    II  Colonel Newcome's Wild Oats
   III  Colonel Newcome's Letter-box
    IV  In which the Author and the Hero resume their Acquaintance
     V  Clive's Uncles
    VI  Newcome Brothers
   VII  In which Mr. Clive's School-days are over
  VIII  Mrs. Newcome at Home (a Small Early Party)
    IX  Miss Honeyman's
     X  Ethel and her Relations
    XI  At Mrs. Ridley's
   XII  In which Everybody is asked to Dinner
  XIII  In which Thomas Newcome sings his last Song
   XIV  Park Lane
    XV  The Old Ladies
   XVI  In which Mr. Sherrick lets his House in Fitzroy Square
  XVII  A School of Art
 XVIII  New Companions
   XIX  The colonel at Home
    XX  Contains more Particulars of the Colonel and his Brethren
   XXI  Is Sentimental, but Short
  XXII  Describes a Visit to Paris; with Accidents and Incidents
          in London
 XXIII  In which we hear a Soprano and a Contralto
  XXIV  In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity
   XXV  Is passed in a Public-house
  XXVI  In which Colonel Newcome's Horses are sold
 XXVII  Youth and Sunshine
XXVIII  In which Clive begins to see the World
  XXIX  In which Barnes comes a-Wooing
   XXX  A Retreat
  XXXI  Madame la Duchesse
 XXXII  Barnes's Courtship
XXXIII  Lady Kew at the Congress
 XXXIV  The End of the Congress of Baden
  XXXV  Across the Alps
 XXXVI  In which M. de Florac is promoted
XXXVII  Returns to Lord Kew
XXXVIII  In which Lady Kew leaves his Lordship quite Convalescent
 XXXIX  Amongst the Painters
    XL  Returns from Rome to Pall Mall
   XLI  An Old Story
  XLII  Injured Innocence
 XLIII  Returns to some Old Friends
  XLIV  In which Mr. Charles Honeyman appears in an amiable light
   XLV  A Stag of Ten
  XLVI  The Hotel de Florac
 XLVII  Contains two or three Acts of a little Comedy
XLVIII  In which Benedick is a Married Man
  XLIX  Contains at least Six more Courses and Two Desserts
     L  Clive in New Quarters
    LI  An Old Friend
   LII  Family Secrets
  LIII  In which Kinsmen fall out
   LIV  Has a Tragical Ending
    LV  Barnes's Skeleton Closet
   LVI  Rosa quo locorum sera moratur
  LVII  Rosebury and Newcome
 LVIII  "One more Unfortunate"
   LIX  In which Achilles loses Briseis
    LX  In which we write to the Colonel
   LXI  In which we are introduced to a new Newcome
  LXII  Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome
 LXIII  Mrs. Clive at Home
  LXIV  Absit Omen
   LXV  In which Mrs. Clive comes into her Fortune
  LXVI  In which the Colonel and the Newcome Athenaeum are both Lectured
 LXVII  Newcome and Liberty
LXVIII  A Letter and a Reconciliation
  LXIX  The Election
   LXX  Chiltern Hundreds
  LXXI  In which Mrs. Clive Newcome's Carriage is ordered
 LXXII  Belisarius
LXXIII  In which Belisarius returns from Exile
 LXXIV  In which Clive begins the World
  LXXV  Founder's Day at Grey Friars
 LXXVI  Christmas at Rosebury
LXXVII  The Shortest and Happiest in the whole History
LXXVIII  In which the Author goes on a Pleasant Errand
  LXII  In which Old Friends come together
  LXXX  In which the Colonel says "Adsum" when his Name is called



THE NEWCOMES




CHAPTER I

The Overture--After which the Curtain rises upon a Drinking Chorus


A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy-window, sate
perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath
him. The frog's hideous large eyes were goggling out of his head in a
manner which appeared quite ridiculous to the old blackamoor, who watched
the splay-footed slimy wretch with that peculiar grim humour belonging to
crows. Not far from the frog a fat ox was browsing; whilst a few lambs
frisked about the meadow, or nibbled the grass and buttercups there.

Who should come in to the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so
cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing, that the very lambs did not
know Master Wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten,
after which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently
towards the devouring monster, mistaking him for her mamma.

"He, he!" says a fox, sneaking round the hedge-paling, over which the
tree grew, whereupon the crow was perched looking down on the frog, who
was staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst with envy, and croaking
abuse at the ox. "How absurd those lambs are! Yonder silly little
knock-kneed baah-ling does not know the old wolf dressed in the sheep's
fleece. He is the same old rogue who gobbled up little Red Riding Hood's
grandmother for lunch, and swallowed little Red Riding Hood for supper.
Tirez la bobinette et la chevillette cherra. He, he!"

An owl that was hidden in the hollow of the tree woke up. "Oho, Master
Fox," says she, "I cannot see you, but I smell you! If some folks like
lambs, other folks like geese," says the owl.

"And your ladyship is fond of mice," says the fox.

"The Chinese eat them," says the owl, "and I have read that they are very
fond of dogs," continued the old lady.

"I wish they would exterminate every cur of them off the face of the
earth," said the fox.

"And I have also read, in works of travel, that the French eat frogs,"
continued the owl. "Aha, my friend Crapaud! are you there? That was a
very pretty concert we sang together last night!"

"If the French devour my brethren, the English eat beef," croaked out the
frog,--"great, big, brutal, bellowing oxen."

"Ho, whoo!" says the owl, "I have heard that the English are toad-eaters
too!"

"But who ever heard of them eating an owl or a fox, madam?" says
Reynard, "or their sitting down and taking a crow to pick?" adds the
polite rogue, with a bow to the old crow who was perched above them with
the cheese in his mouth. "We are privileged animals, all of us; at least,
we never furnish dishes for the odious orgies of man."

"I am the bird of wisdom," says the owl; "I was the companion of Pallas
Minerva: I am frequently represented in the Egyptian monuments."

"I have seen you over the British barn-doors," said the fox, with a grin.
"You have a deal of scholarship, Mrs. Owl. I know a thing or two myself;
but am, I confess it, no scholar--a mere man of the world--a fellow that
lives by his wits--a mere country gentleman."

"You sneer at scholarship," continues the owl, with a sneer on her
venerable face. "I read a good deal of a night."

"When I am engaged deciphering the cocks and hens at roost," says the
fox.

"It's a pity for all that you can't read; that board nailed over my head
would give you some information."

"What does it say?" says the fox.

"I can't spell in the daylight," answered the owl; and, giving a yawn,
went back to sleep till evening in the hollow of her tree.

"A fig for her hieroglyphics!" said the fox, looking up at the crow in
the tree. "What airs our slow neighbour gives herself! She pretends to
all the wisdom; whereas, your reverences, the crows, are endowed with
gifts far superior to these benighted old big-wigs of owls, who blink in
the darkness, and call their hooting singing. How noble it is to hear a
chorus of crows! There are twenty-four brethren of the Order of St.
Corvinus, who have builded themselves a convent near a wood which I
frequent; what a droning and a chanting they keep up! I protest their
reverences' singing is nothing to yours! You sing so deliciously in
parts, do for the love of harmony favour me with a solo!"

While this conversation was going on, the ox was thumping the grass; the
frog was eyeing him in such a rage at his superior proportions, that he
would have spurted venom at him if he could, and that he would have
burst, only that is impossible, from sheer envy; the little lambkin was
lying unsuspiciously at the side of the wolf in fleecy hosiery, who did
not as yet molest her, being replenished with the mutton her mamma. But
now the wolf's eyes began to glare, and his sharp white teeth to show,
and he rose up with a growl, and began to think he should like lamb for
supper.

"What large eyes you have got!" bleated out the lamb, with rather a timid
look.

"The better to see you with, my dear."

"What large teeth you have got!"

"The better to----"

At this moment such a terrific yell filled the field, that all its
inhabitants started with terror. It was from a donkey, who had somehow
got a lion's skin, and now came in at the hedge, pursued by some men and
boys with sticks and guns.

When the wolf in sheep's clothing heard the bellow of the ass in the
lion's skin, fancying that the monarch of the forest was near, he ran
away as fast as his disguise would let him. When the ox heard the noise
he dashed round the meadow-ditch, and with one trample of his hoof
squashed the frog who had been abusing him. When the crow saw the people
with guns coming, he instantly dropped the cheese out of his mouth, and
took to wing. When the fox saw the cheese drop, he immediately made a
jump at it (for he knew the donkey's voice, and that his asinine bray was
not a bit like his royal master's roar), and making for the cheese, fell
into a steel trap, which snapped off his tail; without which he was
obliged to go into the world, pretending, forsooth, that it was the
fashion not to wear tails any more; and that the fox-party were better
without 'em.

Meanwhile, a boy with a stick came up, and belaboured Master Donkey until
he roared louder than ever. The wolf, with the sheep's clothing draggling
about his legs, could not run fast, and was detected and shot by one of
the men. The blind old owl, whirring out of the hollow tree, quite amazed
at the disturbance, flounced into the face of a ploughboy, who knocked
her down with a pitchfork. The butcher came and quietly led off the ox
and the lamb; and the farmer, finding the fox's brush in the trap, hung
it up over his mantelpiece, and always bragged that he had been in at his
death.

"What a farrago of old fables is this! What a dressing up in old
clothes!" says the critic. (I think I see such a one--a Solomon that sits
in judgment over us authors and chops up our children.) "As sure as I am
just and wise, modest, learned, and religious, so surely I have read
something very like this stuff and nonsense about jackasses and foxes
before. That wolf in sheep's clothing?--do I not know him? That fox
discoursing with the crow?--have I not previously heard of him? Yes, in
Lafontaine's fables: let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the
Biographie Universelle, article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor."

"Then in what a contemptuous way," may Solomon go on to remark, "does
this author speak of human nature! There is scarce one of these
characters he represents but is a villain. The fox is a flatterer; the
frog is an emblem of impotence and envy; the wolf in sheep's clothing a
bloodthirsty hypocrite, wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the
lion's skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a
forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation, mean
to sneer at critics in this character? We laugh at the impertinent
comparison); the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in the
writer's (stolen) apologue is a fool--the idiotic lamb, who does not know
his own mother!" And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may indulge
in some fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of maternal
affection.

Why not? If authors sneer, it is the critic's business to sneer at them
for sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care
about his opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault. Besides, he is
right sometimes; and the stories he reads, and the characters drawn in
them, are old, sure enough. What stories are new? All types of all
characters march through all fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and
bullies; dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine
airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their
blindness, their folly and constancy. With the very first page of the
human story do not love and lies too begin? So the tales were told ages
before Aesop; and asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew; and sly
foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed their
teeth in Sanskrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when he
first began shining; and the birds in the tree overhead, while I am
writing, sing very much the same note they have sung ever since there
were finches. Nay, since last he besought good-natured friends to listen
once a month to his talking, a friend of the writer has seen the New
World, and found the (featherless) birds there exceedingly like their
brethren of Europe. There may be nothing new under and including the sun;
but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope,
scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet.
And then will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it; and so da capo.

This, then, is to be a story, may it please you, in which jackdaws will
wear peacocks' feathers, and awaken the just ridicule of the peacocks; in
which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the
splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and
the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the
absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert
squeaking; in which lions in love will have their claws pared by sly
virgins; in which rogues will sometimes triumph, and honest folks, let us
hope, come by their own; in which there will be black crape and white
favours; in which there will be tears under orange-flower wreaths, and
jokes in mourning-coaches; in which there will be dinners of herbs with
contentment and without, and banquets of stalled oxen where there is care
and hatred--ay, and kindness and friendship too, along with the feast. It
does not follow that all men are honest because they are poor; and I have
known some who were friendly and generous, although they had plenty of
money. There are some great landlords who do not grind down their
tenants; there are actually bishops who are not hypocrites; there are
liberal men even among the Whigs, and the Radicals themselves are not all
aristocrats at heart. But who ever heard of giving the Moral before the
Fable? Children are only led to accept the one after their delectation
over the other: let us take care lest our readers skip both; and so let
us bring them on quickly--our wolves and lambs, our foxes and lions, our
roaring donkeys, our billing ringdoves, our motherly partlets, and
crowing chanticleers.


There was once a time when the sun used to shine brighter than it appears
to do in this latter half of the nineteenth century; when the zest of
life was certainly keener; when tavern wines seemed to be delicious, and
tavern dinners the perfection of cookery; when the perusal of novels was
productive of immense delight, and the monthly advent of magazine-day was
hailed as an exciting holiday; when to know Thompson, who had written a
magazine-article, was an honour and a privilege; and to see Brown, the
author of the last romance, in the flesh, and actually walking in the
Park with his umbrella and Mrs. Brown, was an event remarkable, and to
the end of life to be perfectly well remembered; when the women of this
world were a thousand times more beautiful than those of the present
time; and the houris of the theatres especially so ravishing and angelic,
that to see them was to set the heart in motion, and to see them again
was to struggle for half an hour previously at the door of the pit; when
tailors called at a man's lodgings to dazzle him with cards of fancy
waistcoats; when it seemed necessary to purchase a grand silver
dressing-case, so as to be ready for the beard which was not yet born (as
yearling brides provide lace caps, and work rich clothes, for the
expected darling); when to ride in the Park on a ten-shilling hack seemed
to be the height of fashionable enjoyment, and to splash your college
tutor as you were driving down Regent Street in a hired cab the triumph
of satire; when the acme of pleasure seemed to be to meet Jones of
Trinity at the Bedford, and to make an arrangement with him, and with
King of Corpus (who was staying at the Colonnade), and Martin of Trinity
Hall (who was with his family in Bloomsbury Square), to dine at the
Piazza, go to the play and see Braham in Fra Diavolo, and end the frolic
evening by partaking of supper and a song at the "Cave of Harmony."--It
was in the days of my own youth, then, that I met one or two of the
characters who are to figure in this history, and whom I must ask leave
to accompany for a short while, and until, familiarised with the public,
they can make their own way. As I recall them the roses bloom again, and
the nightingales sing by the calm Bendemeer.

Going to the play, then, and to the pit, as was the fashion in those
honest days, with some young fellows of my own age, having listened
delighted to the most cheerful and brilliant of operas, and laughed
enthusiastically at the farce, we became naturally hungry at twelve
o'clock at night, and a desire for welsh-rabbits and good old
glee-singing led us to the "Cave of Harmony," then kept by the celebrated
Hoskins, among whose friends we were proud to count.

We enjoyed such intimacy with Mr. Hoskins that he never failed to greet
us with a kind nod; and John the waiter made room for us near the
President of the convivial meeting. We knew the three admirable
glee-singers, and many a time they partook of brandy-and-water at our
expense. One of us gave his call dinner at Hoskins's, and a merry time we
had of it. Where are you, O Hoskins, bird of the night? Do you warble
your songs by Acheron, or troll your choruses by the banks of black
Avernus?

The goes of stout, the "Chough and Crow," the welsh-rabbit, the
"Red-Cross Knight," the hot brandy-and-water (the brown, the strong!),
the "Bloom is on the Rye" (the bloom isn't on the rye any more!)--the
song and the cup, in a word, passed round merrily; and, I daresay, the
songs and bumpers were encored. It happened that there was a very small
attendance at the "Cave" that night, and we were all more sociable and
friendly because the company was select. The songs were chiefly of the
sentimental class; such ditties were much in vogue at the time of which I
speak.

There came into the "Cave" a gentleman with a lean brown face and long
black mustachios, dressed in very loose clothes, and evidently a stranger
to the place. At least he had not visited it for a long time. He was
pointing out changes to a lad who was in his company; and, calling for
sherry-and-water, he listened to the music, and twirled his mustachios
with great enthusiasm.

At the very first glimpse of me the boy jumped up from the table, bounded
across the room, ran to me with his hands out, and, blushing, said,
"Don't you know me?"

It was little Newcome, my school-fellow, whom I had not seen for six
years, grown a fine tall young stripling now, with the same bright blue
eyes which I remembered when he was quite a little boy.

"What the deuce brings you here?" said I.

He laughed and looked roguish. "My father--that's my father--would come.
He's just come back from India. He says all the wits used to come here,--
Mr. Sheridan, Captain Morris, Colonel Hanger, Professor Porson. I told
him your name, and that you used to be very kind to me when I first went
to Smithfield. I've left now; I'm to have a private tutor. I say, I've
got such a jolly pony. It's better fun than old Smile."

Here the whiskered gentleman, Newcome's father, pointing to a waiter to
follow him with his glass of sherry-and-water, strode across the room
twirling his mustachios, and came up to the table where we sate, making a
salutation with his hat in a very stately and polite manner, so that
Hoskins himself was, as it were, obliged to bow; the glee-singers
murmured among themselves (their eyes rolling over their glasses towards
one another as they sucked brandy-and water), and that mischievous little
wag, little Nadab the Improvisatore (who had just come in), began to
mimic him, feeling his imaginary whiskers, after the manner of the
stranger, and flapping about his pocket-handkerchief in the most
ludicrous manner. Hoskins checked this ribaldry by sternly looking
towards Nadab, and at the same time called upon the gents to give their
orders, the waiter being in the room, and Mr. Bellew about to sing a
song.

Newcome's father came up and held out his hand to me. I dare say I
blushed, for I had been comparing him to the admirable Harley in the
Critic, and had christened him Don Ferolo Whiskerandos.

He spoke in a voice exceedingly soft and pleasant, and with a cordiality
so simple and sincere, that my laughter shrank away ashamed, and gave
place to a feeling much more respectful and friendly. In youth, you see,
one is touched by kindness. A man of the world may, of course, be
grateful or not as he chooses.

"I have heard of your kindness, sir," says he, "to my boy. And whoever is
kind to him is kind to me. Will you allow me to sit down by you? and may
I beg you to try my cheroots?" We were friends in a minute--young Newcome
snuggling by my side, his father opposite, to whom, after a minute or two
of conversation, I presented my three college friends.

"You have come here, gentlemen, to see the wits," says the Colonel. "Are
there any celebrated persons in the room? I have been five-and-thirty
years from home, and want to see all that is to be seen."

King of Corpus (who was an incorrigible wag) was on the point of pulling
some dreadful long-bow, and pointing out a halfdozen of people in the
room, as R. and H. and L., etc., the most celebrated wits of that day;
but I cut King's shins under the table, and got the fellow to hold his
tongue.

"Maxima debetur pueris," says Jones (a fellow of very kind feeling, who
has gone into the Church since), and, writing on his card to Hoskins,
hinted to him that a boy was in the room, and a gentleman, who was quite
a greenhorn: hence that the songs had better be carefully selected.

And so they were. A ladies' school might have come in, and, but for the
smell of the cigars and brandy-and-water, have taken no harm by what
happened. Why should it not always be so? If there are any "Caves of
Harmony" now, I warrant Messieurs the landlords, their interests would be
better consulted by keeping their singers within bounds. The very
greatest scamps like pretty songs, and are melted by them; so are honest
people. It was worth a guinea to see the simple Colonel, and his delight
at the music. He forgot all about the distinguished wits whom he had
expected to see in his ravishment over the glees.

"I say, Clive, this is delightful. This is better than your aunt's
concert with all the Squallinis, hey? I shall come here often. Landlord,
may I venture to ask those gentlemen if they will take any refreshment?
What are their names?" (to one of his neighbours). "I was scarcely
allowed to hear any singing before I went out, except an oratorio, where
I fell asleep; but this, by George, is as fine as Incledon!" He became
quite excited over his sherry-and-water-("I'm sorry to see you,
gentlemen, drinking brandy-pawnee," says he; "it plays the deuce with our
young men in India.") He joined in all the choruses with an exceedingly
sweet voice. He laughed at "The Derby Ram" so that it did you good to
hear him; and when Hoskins sang (as he did admirably) "The Old English
Gentleman," and described, in measured cadence, the death of that
venerable aristocrat, tears trickled down the honest warrior's cheek,
while he held out his hand to Hoskins and said, "Thank you, sir, for that
song; it is an honour to human nature." On which Hoskins began to cry
too.

And now young Nadab, having been cautioned, commenced one of those
surprising feats of improvisation with which he used to charm audiences.
He took us all off, and had rhymes pat about all the principal persons in
the room: King's pins (which he wore very splendid), Martin's red
waistcoat, etc. The Colonel was charmed with each feat, and joined
delighted with the chorus--"Ritolderol ritolderol ritolderolderay" (bis).
And when, coming to the Colonel himself, he burst out--

   "A military gent I see--And while his face I scan,
    I think you'll all agree with me--He came from Hindostan.
    And by his side sits laughing free--A youth with curly head,
    I think you'll all agree with me--That he was best in bed.
         Ritolderol," etc.

--the Colonel laughed immensely at this sally, and clapped his son, young
Clive, on the shoulder. "Hear what he says of you, sir? Clive, best be
off to bed, my boy--ho, ho! No, no. We know a trick worth two of that.
'We won't go home till morning, till daylight does appear.' Why should
we? Why shouldn't my boy have innocent pleasure? I was allowed none when
I was a young chap, and the severity was nearly the ruin of me. I must go
and speak with that young man--the most astonishing thing I ever heard in
my life. What's his name? Mr. Nadab? Mr. Nadab, sir, you have delighted
me. May I make so free as to ask you to come and dine with me to-morrow
at six? Colonel Newcome, if you please, Nerot's Hotel, Clifford Street. I
am always proud to make the acquaintance of men of genius, and you are
one, or my name is not Newcome!"

"Sir, you do me hhonour," says Mr. Nadab, pulling up his shirt-collar,
"and perhaps the day will come when the world will do me justice,--may I
put down your hhonoured name for my book of poems?"

"Of course, my dear sir," says the enthusiastic Colonel; "I'll send them
all over India. Put me down for six copies, and do me the favour to bring
them to-morrow when you come to dinner."

And now Mr. Hoskins asking if any gentleman would volunteer a song, what
was our amazement when the simple Colonel offered to sing himself, at
which the room applauded vociferously; whilst methought poor Clive
Newcome hung down his head, and blushed as red as a peony. I felt for the
young lad, and thought what my own sensations would have been if, in that
place, my own uncle, Major Pendennis, had suddenly proposed to exert his
lyrical powers.

The Colonel selected the ditty of "Wapping Old Stairs" (a ballad so sweet
and touching that surely any English poet might be proud to be the father
of it), and he sang this quaint and charming old song in an exceedingly
pleasant voice, with flourishes and roulades in the old Incledon manner,
which has pretty nearly passed away. The singer gave his heart and soul
to the simple ballad, and delivered Molly's gentle appeal so pathetically
that even the professional gentlemen hummed and buzzed--a sincere
applause; and some wags who were inclined to jeer at the beginning of the
performance, clinked their glasses and rapped their sticks with quite a
respectful enthusiasm. When the song was over, Clive held up his head
too; after the shock of the first verse, looked round with surprise and
pleasure in his eyes; and we, I need not say, backed our friend,
delighted to see him come out of his queer scrape so triumphantly. The
Colonel bowed and smiled with very pleasant good-nature at our plaudits.
It was like Dr. Primrose preaching his sermon in the prison. There was
something touching in the naivete and kindness of the placid and simple
gentleman.

Great Hoskins, placed on high, amidst the tuneful choir, was pleased to
signify his approbation, and gave his guest's health in his usual
dignified manner. "I am much obliged to you, sir," says Mr. Hoskins; "the
room ought to be much obliged to you: I drink your 'ealth and song, sir;"
and he bowed to the Colonel politely over his glass of brandy-and-water,
of which he absorbed a little in his customer's honour. "I have not heard
that song," he was kind enough to say, "better performed since Mr.
Incledon sung it. He was a great singer, sir, and I may say, in the words
of our immortal Shakspeare, that, take him for all in all, we shall not
look upon his like again."

The Colonel blushed in his turn, and turning round to his boy with an
arch smile, said, "I learnt it from Incledon. I used to slip out from
Grey Friars to hear him, Heaven bless me, forty years ago; and I used to
be flogged afterwards, and serve me right too. Lord! Lord! how the time
passes!" He drank off his sherry-and-water, and fell back in his chair;
we could see he was thinking about his youth--the golden time--the happy,
the bright, the unforgotten. I was myself nearly two-and-twenty years of
age at that period, and felt as old as, ay, older than the Colonel.

Whilst he was singing his ballad, there had walked, or rather reeled,
into the room, a gentleman in a military frock-coat and duck trousers of
dubious hue, with whose name and person some of my readers are perhaps
already acquainted. In fact it was my friend Captain Costigan, in his
usual condition at this hour of the night.

Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled up, without accident
to himself or any of the jugs and glasses round about him, to the table
where we sat, and had taken his place near the writer, his old
acquaintance. He warbled the refrain of the Colonel's song, not
inharmoniously; and saluted its pathetic conclusion with a subdued hiccup
and a plentiful effusion of tears. "Bedad, it is a beautiful song," says
he, "and many a time I heard poor Harry Incledon sing it."

"He's a great character," whispered that unlucky King of Corpus to his
neighbour the Colonel; "was a Captain in the army. We call him the
General. Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink?"

"Bedad, I will," says the Captain, "and I'll sing ye a song tu."

And, having procured a glass of whisky-and-water from the passing waiter,
the poor old man, settling his face into a horrid grin, and leering, as
he was wont when he gave what he called one of his prime songs, began his
music.

The unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was doing or saying,
selected one of the most outrageous performances of his repertoire, fired
off a tipsy howl by way of overture, and away he went. At the end of the
second verse the Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing his
stick, and looking as ferocious as though he had been going to do battle
with a Pindaree.

"Silence!" he roared out.

"Hear, hear!" cried certain wags at a farther table. "Go on, Costigan!"
said others.

"Go on!" cries the Colonel, in his high voice trembling with anger. "Does
any gentleman say 'Go On?' Does any man who has a wife and sisters, or
children at home, say 'Go on' to such disgusting ribaldry as this? Do you
dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the
King's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour,
and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash?"

"Why do you bring young boys here, old boy?" cries a voice of the
malcontents.

"Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen," cried
out the indignant Colonel. "Because I never could have believed that
Englishmen could meet together and allow a man, and an old man, so to
disgrace himself. For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your bed, you
hoary old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see,
for once in his life, to what shame and degradation and dishonour,
drunkenness and whisky may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir!--
Curse the change!" says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. "Keep it
till you see me in this place again; which will be never--by George,
never!" And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company of
scared bacchanalians, the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after
him.

Clive seemed rather shamefaced; but I fear the rest of the company looked
still more foolish.

"Aussi que diable venait--il faire dans cette galere?" says King of
Corpus to Jones of Trinity; and Jones gave a shrug of his shoulders,
which were smarting, perhaps; for that uplifted cane of the Colonel's had
somehow fallen on the back of every man in the room.




CHAPTER II

Colonel Newcome's Wild Oats


As the young gentleman who has just gone to bed is to be the hero of the
following pages, we had best begin our account of him with his family
history, which luckily is not very long.

When pigtails still grew on the backs of the British gentry, and their
wives wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair,
and disguised it with powder and pomatum: when Ministers went in their
stars and orders to the House of Commons, and the orators of the
Opposition attacked nightly the noble lord in the blue ribbon: when Mr.
Washington was heading the American rebels with a courage, it must be
confessed, worthy of a better cause: there came up to London, out of a
northern county, Mr. Thomas Newcome, afterwards Thomas Newcome, Esq., and
sheriff of London, afterwards Mr. Alderman Newcome, the founder of the
family whose name has given the title to this history. It was but in the
reign of George III. that Mr. Newcome first made his appearance in
Cheapside; having made his entry into London on a waggon, which landed
him and some bales of cloth, all his fortune, in Bishopsgate Street;
though if it could be proved that the Normans wore pigtails under William
the Conqueror, and Mr. Washington fought against the English under King
Richard in Palestine, I am sure some of the present Newcomes would pay
the Heralds' Office handsomely, living, as they do, amongst the noblest
of the land, and giving entertainments to none but the very highest
nobility and elite of the fashionable and diplomatic world, as you may
read any day in the newspapers. For though these Newcomes have got a
pedigree from the College, which is printed in Budge's Landed Aristocracy
of Great Britain, and which proves that the Newcome of Cromwell's army,
the Newcome who was among the last six who were hanged by Queen Mary for
Protestantism, were ancestors of this house; of which a member
distinguished himself at Bosworth Field; and the founder, slain by King
Harold's side at Hastings, had been surgeon-barber to King Edward the
Confessor; yet, between ourselves, I think that Sir Brian Newcome, of
Newcome, does not believe a word of the story, any more than the rest of
the world does, although a number of his children bear names out of the
Saxon Calendar.

Was Thomas Newcome a foundling--a workhouse child out of that village
which has now become a great manufacturing town, and which bears his
name? Such was the report set about at the last election, when Sir Brian,
in the Conservative interest contested the borough; and Mr. Yapp, the
out-and-out Liberal candidate, had a picture of the old workhouse
placarded over the town as the birthplace of the Newcomes; with placards
ironically exciting freemen to vote for Newcome and union--Newcome and
the parish interests, etc. Who cares for these local scandals? It matters
very little to those who have the good fortune to be invited to Lady Ann
Newcome's parties whether her beautiful daughters can trace their
pedigrees no higher than to the alderman their grandfather; or whether,
through the mythic ancestral barber-surgeon, they hang on to the chin of
Edward, Confessor and King.

Thomas Newcome, who had been a weaver in his native village, brought the
very best character for honesty, thrift, and ingenuity with him to
London, where he was taken into the house of Hobson Brothers,
cloth-factors; afterwards Hobson and Newcome. This fact may suffice to
indicate Thomas Newcome's story. Like Whittington and many other London
apprentices, he began poor and ended by marrying his master's daughter,
and becoming sheriff and alderman of the City of London.

But it was only en secondes noces that he espoused the wealthy, and
religious, and eminent (such was the word applied to certain professing
Christians in those days) Sophia Alethea Hobson--a woman who,
considerably older than Mr. Newcome, had the advantage of surviving him
many years. Her mansion at Clapham was long the resort of the most
favoured amongst the religious world. The most eloquent expounders; the
most gifted missionaries, the most interesting converts from foreign
islands, were to be found at her sumptuous table, spread with the produce
of her magnificent gardens. Heaven indeed blessed those gardens with
plenty, as many reverend gentlemen remarked; there were no finer grapes,
peaches, or pineapples in all England. Mr. Whitfield himself christened
her; and it was said generally in the City, and by her friends, that Miss
Hobson's two Christian names, Sophia and Alethea, were two Greek words,
which, being interpreted, meant wisdom and truth. She, her villa and
gardens, are now no more; but Sophia Terrace, Upper and Lower Alethea
Road, and Hobson's Buildings, Square, etc., show every quarter-day that
the ground sacred to her (and freehold) still bears plenteous fruit for
the descendants of this eminent woman.

We are, however, advancing matters. When Thomas Newcome had been some
time in London, he quitted the house of Hobson, finding an opening,
though in a much smaller way, for himself. And no sooner did his business
prosper, than he went down into the north, like a man, to a pretty girl
whom he had left there, and whom he had promised to marry. What seemed an
imprudent match (for his wife had nothing but a pale face, that had grown
older and paler with long waiting) turned out a very lucky one for
Newcome. The whole countryside was pleased to think of the prosperous
London tradesman returning to keep his promise to the penniless girl whom
he had loved in the days of his own poverty; the great country clothiers,
who knew his prudence and honesty, gave him much of their business when
he went back to London. Susan Newcome would have lived to be a rich woman
had not fate ended her career within a year after her marriage, when she
died giving birth to a son.

Newcome had a nurse for the child, and a cottage at Clapham, hard by Mr.
Hobson's house, where he had often walked in the garden of a Sunday, and
been invited to sit down to take a glass of wine. Since he had left their
service, the house had added a banking business, which was greatly helped
by the Quakers and their religious connection; and Newcome, keeping his
account there, and gradually increasing his business, was held in very
good esteem by his former employers, and invited sometimes to tea at the
Hermitage; for which entertainments he did not, in truth, much care at
first, being a City man, a good deal tired with his business during the
day, and apt to go to sleep over the sermons, expoundings, and hymns,
with which the gifted preachers, missionaries, etc., who were always at
the Hermitage, used to wind up the evening, before supper. Nor was he a
supping man (in which case he would have found the parties pleasanter,
for in Egypt itself there were not more savoury fleshpots than at
Clapham); he was very moderate in his meals, of a bilious temperament,
and, besides, obliged to be in town early in the morning, always setting
off to walk an hour before the first coach.

But when his poor Susan died, Miss Hobson, by her father's demise, having
now become a partner in the house, as well as heiress to the pious and
childless Zachariah Hobson, her uncle Mr. Newcome, with his little boy in
his hand, met Miss Hobson as she was coming out of meeting one Sunday;
and the child looked so pretty (Mr. N. was a very personable,
fresh-coloured man himself; he wore powder to the end, and top-boots and
brass buttons, in his later days, after he had been sheriff indeed, one
of the finest specimens of the old London merchant); Miss Hobson, I say,
invited him and little Tommy into the grounds of the Hermitage; did not
quarrel with the innocent child for frisking about in the hay on the
lawn, which lay basking in the Sabbath sunshine, and at the end of the
visit gave him a large piece of pound-cake, a quantity of the finest
hothouse grapes, and a tract in one syllable. Tommy was ill the next day;
but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting.

He became very soon after this an awakened man; and the tittling and
tattling, and the sneering and gossiping, all over Clapham, and the talk
on 'Change, and the pokes in the waistcoat administered by the wags to
Newcome,--"Newcome, give you joy, my boy;" "Newcome, new partner in
Hobson's;" "Newcome, just take in this paper to Hobson's, they'll do it,
I warrant," etc. etc.; and the groans of the Rev. Gideon Bawls, of the
Rev. Athanasius O'Grady, that eminent convert from Popery, who,
quarrelling with each other, yea, striving one against another, had yet
two sentiments in common, their love for Miss Hobson, their dread, their
hatred of the worldly Newcome; all these squabbles and jokes, and
pribbles and prabbles, look you, may be omitted. As gallantly as he had
married a woman without a penny, as gallantly as he had conquered his
poverty and achieved his own independence, so bravely he went in and won
the great City prize with a fortune of a quarter of a million. And every
one of his old friends, and every honest-hearted fellow who likes to see
shrewdness, and honesty, and courage succeed, was glad of his good
fortune, and said, "Newcome, my boy" (or "Newcome, my buck," if they were
old City cronies, and very familiar), "I give you joy."

Of course Mr. Newcome might have gone into Parliament: of course before
the close of his life he might have been made a baronet: but he eschewed
honours senatorial or blood-red hands. "It wouldn't do," with his good
sense he said; "the Quaker connection wouldn't like it." His wife never
cared about being called Lady Newcome. To manage the great house of
Hobson Brothers and Newcome; to attend to the interests of the enslaved
negro; to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of the truth; to
convert Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists; to arouse the indifferent and
often blasphemous mariner; to guide the washerwoman in the right way; to
head all the public charities of her sect, and do a thousand secret
kindnesses that none knew of; to answer myriads of letters, pension
endless ministers, and supply their teeming wives with continuous
baby-linen; to hear preachers daily bawling for hours, and listen untired
on her knees after a long day's labour, while florid rhapsodists
belaboured cushions above her with wearisome benedictions; all these
things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore years she fought her
fight womanfully: imperious but deserving to rule, hard but doing her
duty, severe but charitable, and untiring in generosity as in labour;
unforgiving in one instance--in that of her husband's eldest son, Thomas
Newcome; the little boy who had played on the hay, and whom at first she
had loved very sternly and fondly.

Mr. Thomas Newcome, the father of his wife's twin boys, the junior
partner of the house of Hobson Brothers and Co., lived several years
after winning the great prize about which all his friends so
congratulated him. But he was, after all, only the junior partner of the
house. His wife was manager in Threadneedle Street and at home--when the
clerical gentlemen prayed they importuned Heaven for that sainted woman a
long time before they thought of asking any favour for her husband. The
gardeners touched their hats, the clerks at the bank brought him the
books, but they took their orders from her, not from him. I think he grew
weary of the prayer-meetings, he yawned over the sufferings of the
negroes, and wished the converted Jews at Jericho. About the time the
French Emperor was meeting with his Russian reverses Mr. Newcome died:
his mausoleum is in Clapham Churchyard, near the modest grave where his
first wife reposes.

When his father married, Mr. Thomas Newcome, jun., and Sarah his nurse
were transported from the cottage where they had lived in great comfort
to the palace hard by, surrounded by lawns and gardens, pineries,
graperies, aviaries, luxuries of all kinds. This paradise, five miles
from the Standard at Cornhill, was separated from the outer world by a
thick hedge of tall trees, and an ivy-covered porter's-gate, through
which they who travelled to London on the top of the Clapham coach could
only get a glimpse of the bliss within. It was a serious paradise. As you
entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a
garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his horse and cart madly
about the adjoining lanes and common, whistled wild melodies (caught up
in abominable playhouse galleries), and joked with a hundred cook-maids,
on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his
joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants' entrance. The rooks in
the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peacocks walked
demurely on the terraces; the guinea-fowls looked more Quaker-like than
those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious, and a clerk
at a neighbouring chapel. The pastors who entered at the gate, and
greeted his comely wife and children, fed the little lambkins with
tracts. The head-gardener was a Scotch Calvinist, after the strictest
order, only occupying himself with the melons and pines provisionally,
and until the end of the world, which event, he could prove by infallible
calculations, was to come off in two or three years at farthest.
Wherefore, he asked, should the butler brew strong ale to be drunken
three years hence; or the housekeeper (a follower of Joanna Southcote)
make provisions of fine linen and lay up stores of jams? On a Sunday
(which good old Saxon word was scarcely known at the Hermitage) the
household marched away in separate couples or groups to at least half a
dozen of religious edifices, each to sit under his or her favourite
minister, the only man who went to church being Thomas Newcome,
accompanied by Tommy his little son, and Sarah his nurse, who was, I
believe, also his aunt, or at least his mother's first cousin. Tommy was
taught hymns, very soon after he could speak, appropriate to his tender
age, pointing out to him the inevitable fate of wicked children, and
giving him the earliest possible warning and description of the
punishment of little sinners. He repeated these poems to his stepmother
after dinner, before a great shining mahogany table, covered with grapes,
pineapples, plum-cake, port wine, and Madeira, and surrounded by stout
men in black, with baggy white neckcloths, who took the little man
between their knees, and questioned him as to his right understanding of
the place whither naughty boys were bound. They patted his head with
their fat hands if he said well, or rebuked him if he was bold, as he
often was.

Nurse Sarah or Aunt Sarah would have died had she remained many years in
that stifling garden of Eden. She could not bear to part from the child
whom her mistress and kinswoman had confided to her (the women had worked
in the same room at Newcome's, and loved each other always, when Susan
became a merchant's lady, and Sarah her servant). She was nobody in the
pompous new household but Master Tommy's nurse. The honest soul never
mentioned her relationship to the boy's mother, nor indeed did Mr.
Newcome acquaint his new family with that circumstance. The housekeeper
called her an Erastian: Mrs. Newcome's own serious maid informed against
her for telling Tommy stories of Lancashire witches, and believing in the
same. The black footman (madam's maid and the butler were of course
privately united) persecuted her with his addresses, and was even
encouraged by his mistress, who thought of sending him as a missionary to
the Niger. No little love, and fidelity, and constancy did honest Sarah
show and use during the years she passed at the Hermitage, and until
Tommy went to school. Her master, with many private prayers and
entreaties, in which he passionately recalled his former wife's memory
and affection, implored his friend to stay with him; and Tommy's fondness
for her and artless caresses, and the scrapes he got into, and the howls
he uttered over the hymns and catechisms which he was bidden to learn (by
Rev. T. Clack,, of Highbury College, his daily tutor, who was
commissioned to spare not the rod, neither to spoil the child), all these
causes induced Sarah to remain with her young master until such time as
he was sent to school.

Meanwhile an event of prodigious importance, a wonderment, a blessing and
a delight, had happened at the Hermitage. About two years after Mrs.
Newcome's marriage, the lady being then forty-three years of age, no less
than two little cherubs appeared in the Clapham Paradise--the twins,
Hobson Newcome and Brian Newcome, called after their uncle and late
grandfather, whose name and rank they were destined to perpetuate. And
now there was no reason why young Newcome should not go to school. Old
Mr. Hobson and his brother had been educated at that school of Grey
Friars, of which mention has been made in former works and to Grey Friars
Thomas Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging--O ye Gods! with what
delight!--the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the
place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose
in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his own:
tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefore: bartering a black eye,
per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow,
and shaking hands the next day; playing at cricket, hockey, prisoners'
base, and football, according to the season; and gorging himself and
friends with tarts when he had money (and of this he had plenty) to
spend. I have seen his name carved upon the Gown Boys' arch: but he was
at school long before my time; his son showed me the name when we were
boys together, in some year when George the Fourth was king.

The pleasures of this school-life were such to Tommy Newcome, that he did
not care to go home for a holiday: and indeed, by insubordination and
boisterousness; by playing tricks and breaking windows; by marauding upon
the gardener's peaches and the housekeeper's jam; by upsetting his two
little brothers in a go-cart (of which wanton and careless injury the
present Baronet's nose bears marks to this very day); by going to sleep
during the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with levity, he drew
down on himself the merited wrath of his stepmother; and many punishments
in this present life, besides those of a future and much more durable
kind, which the good lady did not fail to point out that he must
undoubtedly inherit. His father, at Mrs. Newcome's instigation, certainly
whipped Tommy for upsetting his little brothers in the go-cart; but upon
being pressed to repeat the whipping for some other peccadillo performed
soon after, Mr. Newcome refused at once, using a wicked, worldly
expression, which well might shock any serious lady; saying, in fact,
that he would be deed if he beat the boy any more, and that he got
flogging enough at school, in which opinion Master Tommy fully coincided.

The undaunted woman, his stepmother, was not to be made to forgo her
plans for the boy's reform by any such vulgar ribaldries; and Mr. Newcome
being absent in the City on his business, and Tommy refractory as usual,
she summoned the serious butler and the black footman (for the lashings
of whose brethren she felt an unaffected pity) to operate together in the
chastisement of this young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against
the butler's shins as to draw blood from his comely limbs, and to cause
that serious and overfed menial to limp and suffer for many days after;
and, seizing the decanter, he swore he would demolish blacky's ugly face
with it: nay, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs. Newcome's own head
before he would submit to the coercion which she desired her agents to
administer.

High words took place between Mr. and Mrs. Newcome that night on the
gentleman's return home from the City, and on his learning the events of
the morning. It is to be feared he made use of further oaths, which hasty
ejaculations need not be set down in this place; at any rate, he behaved
with spirit and manliness as master of the house, vowed that if any
servant laid a hand on the child, he would thrash him first and then
discharge him; and I dare say expressed himself with bitterness and
regret that he had married a wife who would not be obedient to her
husband, and had entered a house of which he was not suffered to be the
master. Friends were called in--the interference, the supplications, of
the Clapham clergy, some of whom dined constantly at the Hermitage,
prevailed to allay this domestic quarrel; and no doubt the good sense of
Mrs. Newcome--who, though imperious, was yet not unkind; and who,
excellent as she was, yet could be brought to own that she was sometimes
in fault--induced her to make at least a temporary submission to the man
whom she had placed at the head of her house, and whom it must be
confessed she had vowed to love and honour. When Tommy fell ill of the
scarlet fever, which afflicting event occurred presently after the above
dispute, his own nurse, Sarah, could not have been more tender, watchful,
and affectionate than his stepmother showed herself to be. She nursed him
through his illness; allowed his food and medicine to be administered by
no other hand; sat up with the boy through a night of his fever, and
uttered not one single reproach to her husband (who watched with her)
when the twins took the disease (from which we need not say they happily
recovered); and though young Tommy, in his temporary delirium, mistaking
her for Nurse Sarah, addressed her as his dear Fat Sally--whereas no
whipping-post to which she ever would have tied him could have been
leaner than Mrs. Newcome--and, under this feverish delusion, actually
abused her to her face; calling her an old cat, an old Methodist, and,
jumping up in his little bed, forgetful of his previous fancy, vowing
that he would put on his clothes and run away to Sally. Sally was at her
northern home by this time, with a liberal pension which Mr. Newcome gave
her, and which his son and his son's son after him, through all their
difficulties and distresses, always found means to pay.

What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt, more
than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after he actually
ran away, not from school, but from home; and appeared one morning, gaunt
and hungry, at Sarah's cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham, who
housed the poor prodigal, and killed her calf for him--washed him, with
many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which
slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose sure
instinct, backed by Mrs. Newcome's own quick intelligence, had made him
at once aware whither the young runaway had fled. The poor father came
horsewhip in hand--he knew of no other law or means to maintain his
authority; many and many a time had his own father, the old weaver, whose
memory he loved and honoured, strapped and beaten him. Seeing this
instrument in the parent's hand, as Mr. Newcome thrust out the weeping
trembling Sarah and closed the door upon her, Tommy, scared out of a
sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket, knew his fate; and,
getting up out of bed, received his punishment without a word. Very
likely the father suffered more than the child; for when the punishment
was over, the little man, yet trembling and quivering with the pain, held
out his little bleeding hand and said, "I can--I can take it from you,
sir;" saying which his face flushed, and his eyes filled, for the first
time; whereupon the father burst into a passion of tears, and embraced
the boy and kissed him, besought and prayed him to be rebellious no more
--flung the whip away from him and swore, come what would, he would never
strike him again. The quarrel was the means of a great and happy
reconciliation. The three dined together in Sarah's cottage. Perhaps the
father would have liked to walk that evening in the lanes and fields
where he had wandered as a young fellow: where he had first courted and
first kissed the young girl he loved--poor child--who had waited for him
so faithfully and fondly, who had passed so many a day of patient want
and meek expectance, to be repaid by such a scant holiday and brief
fruition.

Mrs. Newcome never made the slightest allusion to Tom's absence after his
return, but was quite gentle and affectionate with him, and that night
read the parable of the Prodigal in a very low and quiet voice.

This, however, was only a temporary truce. War very soon broke out again
between the impetuous lad and his rigid domineering mother-in-law. It was
not that he was very bad, or she perhaps more stern than other ladies,
but the two could not agree. The boy sulked and was miserable at home. He
fell to drinking with the grooms in the stables. I think he went to Epsom
races, and was discovered after that act of rebellion. Driving from a
most interesting breakfast at Roehampton (where a delightful Hebrew
convert had spoken, oh! so graciously!), Mrs. Newcome--in her
state-carriage, with her bay horses--met Tom, her son-in-law, in a
tax-cart, excited by drink, and accompanied by all sorts of friends, male
and female. John the black man was bidden to descend from the carriage
and bring him to Mrs. Newcome. He came; his voice was thick with drink.
He laughed wildly: he described a fight at which he had been present. It
was not possible that such a castaway as this should continue in a house
where her two little cherubs were growing up in innocence and grace.

The boy had a great fancy for India; and Orme's History, containing the
exploits of Clive and Lawrence, was his favourite book of all in his
father's library. Being offered a writership, he scouted the idea of a
civil appointment, and would be contented with nothing but a uniform. A
cavalry cadetship was procured for Thomas Newcome; and the young man's
future career being thus determined, and his stepmother's unwilling
consent procured, Mr. Newcome thought fit to send his son to a tutor for
military instruction, and removed him from the London school, where in
truth he had made but very little progress in the humaner letters. The
lad was placed with a professor who prepared young men for the army, and
received rather a better professional education than fell to the lot of
most young soldiers of his day. He cultivated the mathematics and
fortification with more assiduity than he had ever bestowed on Greek and
Latin, and especially made such a progress in the French tongue as was
very uncommon among the British youth his contemporaries.

In the study of this agreeable language, over which young Newcome spent a
great deal of his time, he unluckily had some instructors who were
destined to bring the poor lad into yet further trouble at home. His
tutor, an easy gentleman, lived at Blackheath, and, not far from thence,
on the road to Woolwich, dwelt the little Chevalier de Blois, at whose
house the young man much preferred to take his French lessons rather than
to receive them under his tutor's own roof.

For the fact was that the little Chevalier de Blois had two pretty young
daughters, with whom he had fled from his country along with thousands of
French gentlemen at the period of revolution and emigration. He was a
cadet of a very ancient family, and his brother, the Marquis de Blois,
was a fugitive like himself, but with the army of the princes on the
Rhine, or with his exiled sovereign at Mittau. The Chevalier had seen the
wars of the great Frederick: what man could be found better to teach
young Newcome the French language and the art military? It was surprising
with what assiduity he pursued his studies. Mademoiselle Leonore, the
Chevalier's daughter, would carry on her little industry very
undisturbedly in the same parlour with her father and his pupil. She
painted card-racks: laboured at embroidery; was ready to employ her quick
little brain or fingers in any way by which she could find means to add a
few shillings to the scanty store on which this exiled family supported
themselves in their day of misfortune. I suppose the Chevalier was not in
the least unquiet about her, because she was promised in marriage to the
Comte de Florac, also of the emigration--a distinguished officer like the
Chevalier, than whom he was a year older--and, at the time of which we
speak, engaged in London in giving private lessons on the fiddle.
Sometimes on a Sunday he would walk to Blackheath with that instrument in
his hand, and pay his court to his young fiancee, and talk over happier
days with his old companion-in-arms. Tom Newcome took no French lessons
on a Sunday. He passed that day at Clapham generally, where, strange to
say, he never said a word about Mademoiselle de Blois.

What happens when two young folks of eighteen, handsome and ardent,
generous and impetuous, alone in the world, or without strong affections
to bind them elsewhere,--what happens when they meet daily over French
dictionaries, embroidery frames, or indeed upon any business whatever? No
doubt Mademoiselle Leonore was a young lady perfectly bien elevee, and
ready, as every well-elevated young Frenchwoman should be, to accept a
husband of her parents' choosing; but while the elderly M. de Florac was
fiddling in London, there was that handsome young Tom Newcome ever
present at Blackheath. To make a long matter short, Tom declared his
passion, and was for marrying Leonore off hand, if she would but come
with him to the little Catholic chapel at Woolwich. Why should they not
go out to India together and be happy ever after?

The innocent little amour may have been several months in transaction,
and was discovered by Mrs. Newcome, whose keen spectacles nothing could
escape. It chanced that she drove to Blackheath to Tom's tutor's. Tom was
absent taking his French and drawing lesson of M. de Blois. Thither Tom's
stepmother followed him, and found the young man sure enough with his
instructor over his books and plans of fortification. Mademoiselle and
her card-screens were in the room, but behind those screens she could not
hide her blushes and confusion from Mrs. Newcome's sharp glances. In one
moment the banker's wife saw the whole affair--the whole mystery which
had been passing for months under poor M. de Blois' nose, without his
having the least notion of the truth.

Mrs. Newcome said she wanted her son to return home with her upon private
affairs; and before they had reached the Hermitage a fine battle had
ensued between them. His mother had charged him with being a wretch and a
monster, and he had replied fiercely, denying the accusation with scorn,
and announcing his wish instantly to marry the most virtuous, the most
beautiful of her sex. To marry a Papist! This was all that was wanted to
make poor Tom's cup of bitterness run over. Mr. Newcome was called in,
and the two elders passed a great part of the night in an assault upon
the lad. He was grown too tall for the cane; but Mrs. Newcome thonged him
with the lash of her indignation for many an hour that evening.

He was forbidden to enter, M. de Blois' house, a prohibition at which the
spirited young fellow snapped his fingers, and laughed in scorn. Nothing,
he swore, but death should part him from the young lady. On the next day
his father came to him alone and plied him with entreaties, but he was as
obdurate as before. He would have her; nothing should prevent him. He
cocked his hat and walked out of the lodge-gate, as his father, quite
beaten by the young man's obstinacy, with haggard face and tearful eyes,
went his own way into town. He was not very angry himself: in the course
of their talk overnight the boy had spoken bravely and honestly, and
Newcome could remember how, in his own early life, he too had courted and
loved a young lass. It was Mrs. Newcome the father was afraid of. Who
shall depict her wrath at the idea that a child of her house was about to
marry a Popish girl?

So young Newcome went his way to Blackheath, bent upon falling
straightway down upon his knees before Leonore, and having the
Chevalier's blessing. That old fiddler in London scarcely seemed to him
to be an obstacle: it seemed monstrous that a young creature should be
given away to a man older than her own father. He did not know the law of
honour, as it obtained amongst French gentlemen of those days, or how
religiously their daughters were bound by it.

But Mrs. Newcome had been beforehand with him, and had visited the
Chevalier de Blois almost at cockcrow. She charged him insolently with
being privy to the attachment between the young people; pursued him with
vulgar rebukes about beggary, Popery, and French adventurers. Her husband
had to make a very contrite apology afterwards for the language which his
wife had thought fit to employ. "You forbid me," said the Chevalier, "you
forbid Mademoiselle de Blois to marry your son, Mr. Thomas! No, madam,
she comes of a race which is not accustomed to ally itself with persons
of your class; and is promised to a gentleman whose ancestors were dukes
and peers when Mr. Newcome's were blacking shoes!" Instead of finding his
pretty blushing girl on arriving at Woolwich, poor Tom only found his
French master, livid with rage and quivering under his ailes de pigeon.
We pass over the scenes that followed; the young man's passionate
entreaties, and fury and despair. In his own defence, and to prove his
honour to the world, M. de Blois determined that his daughter should
instantly marry the Count. The poor girl yielded without a word, as
became her; and it was with this marriage effected almost before his
eyes, and frantic with wrath and despair, that young Newcome embarked for
India, and quitted the parents whom he was never more to see.

Tom's name was no more mentioned at Clapham. His letters to his father
were written to the City; very pleasant they were, and comforting to the
father's heart. He sent Tom liberal private remittances to India, until
the boy wrote to say that he wanted no more. Mr. Newcome would have liked
to leave Tom all his private fortune, for the twins were only too well
cared for; but he dared not on account of his terror of Sophia Alethea,
his wife; and he died, and poor Tom was only secretly forgiven.




CHAPTER III

Colonel Newcome's Letter-box


I

"With the most heartfelt joy, my dear Major, I take up my pen to announce
to you the happy arrival of the Ramchunder, and the dearest and
handsomest little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little Clive
is in perfect health. He speaks English wonderfully well. He cried when
he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly brought him
from Southampton in a postchaise, but these tears in childhood are of
very brief duration! The voyage, Mr. Sneid states, was most favourable,
occupying only four months and eleven days. How different from that more
lengthened and dangerous passage of eight months, and almost perpetual
sea-sickness, in which my poor dear sister Emma went to Bengal, to become
the wife of the best of husbands and the mother of the dearest of little
boys, and to enjoy these inestimable blessings for so brief an interval!
She has quitted this wicked and wretched world for one where all is
peace. The misery and ill-treatment which she endured from Captain Case
her first odious husband, were, I am sure, amply repaid, my dear Colonel,
by your subsequent affection. If the most sumptuous dresses which London,
even Paris, could supply, jewellery the most costly, and elegant lace,
and everything lovely and fashionable, could content a woman, these, I am
sure, during the last four years of her life, the poor girl had. Of what
avail are they when this scene of vanity is closed?

"Mr. Sneid announces that the passage was most favourable. They stayed a
week at the Cape, and three days at St. Helena, where they visited
Bonaparte's tomb (another instance of the vanity of all things!), and
their voyage was enlivened off Ascension by the taking of some delicious
turtle!

"You may be sure that the most liberal sum which you have placed to my
credit with the Messrs. Hobson and Co. shall be faithfully expended on my
dear little charge. Mrs. Newcome can scarcely be called his grandmamma, I
suppose; and I daresay her Methodistical ladyship will not care to see
the daughter and grandson of a clergyman of the Church of England! My
brother Charles took leave to wait upon her when he presented your last
most generous bill at the bank. She received him most rudely, and said a
fool and his money are soon parted; and when Charles said, 'Madam, I am
the brother of the late Mrs. Major Newcome,' 'Sir,' says she, 'I judge
nobody; but from all accounts, you are the brother of a very vain, idle,
thoughtless, extravagant woman; and Thomas Newcome was as foolish about
his wife as about his money.' Of course, unless Mrs. N. writes to invite
dear Clive, I shall not think of sending him to Clapham.

"It is such hot weather that I cannot wear the beautiful shawl you have
sent me, and shall keep it in lavender till next winter! My brother, who
thanks you for your continuous bounty, will write next month, and report
progress as to his dear pupil. Clive will add a postscript of his own,
and I am, my dear Major, with a thousand thanks for your kindness to me,
--Your grateful and affectionate              Martha Honeyman."

In a round hand and on lines ruled with pencil:--

"Dearest Papa i am very well i hope you are Very Well. M Sneed brought me
in a postchaise i like Mr. Sneed very much. i like Aunt Martha i like
Hannah. There are no ships here i am your affectionate son Clive
Newcome."


II

Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain, Paris,

Nov. 15, 1820,

"Long separated from the country which was the home of my youth, I
carried from her tender recollections, and bear her always a lively
gratitude. The Heaven has placed me in a position very different from
that in which I knew you. I have been the mother of many children. My
husband has recovered a portion of the property which the Revolution tore
from us; and France, in returning to its legitimate sovereign, received
once more the nobility which accompanied his august house into exile. We,
however, preceded His Majesty, more happy than many of our companions.
Believing further resistance to be useless; dazzled, perhaps, by the
brilliancy of that genius which restored order, submitted Europe, and
governed France; M. de Florac, in the first days, was reconciled to the
Conqueror of Marengo and Austerlitz, and held a position in his Imperial
Court. This submission, at first attributed to infidelity, has
subsequently been pardoned to my husband. His sufferings during the
Hundred Days made to pardon his adhesion to him who was Emperor. My
husband is now an old man. He was of the disastrous campaign of Moscow,
as one of the chamberlains of Napoleon. Withdrawn from the world, he
gives his time to his feeble health--to his family--to Heaven.

"I have not forgotten a time before those days, when, according to
promises given by my father, I became the wife of M. de Florac. Sometimes
I have heard of your career. One of my parents, M. de F., who took
service in the English India, has entertained me of you; he informed me
how yet a young man you won laurels at Argom and Bhartpour; how you
escaped to death at Laswari. I have followed them, sir, on the map. I
have taken part in your victories and your glory. Ah! I am not so cold,
but my heart has trembled for your dangers; not so aged, but I remember
the young man who learned from the pupil of Frederick the first rudiments
of war. Your great heart, your love of truth, your courage were your own.
None had to teach you those qualities, of which a good God had endowed
you, My good father is dead since many years. He, too, was permitted to
see France before to die.

"I have read in the English journals not only that you are married, but
that you have a son. Permit me to send to your wife, to your child, these
accompanying tokens of an old friendship. I have seen that Mistress
Newcome was widow, and am not sorry of it. My friend, I hope there was
not that difference of age between your wife and you that I have known in
other unions. I pray the good God to bless yours. I hold you always in my
memory. As I write, the past comes back to me. I see a noble young man,
who has a soft voice, and brown eyes. I see the Thames, and the smiling
plains of Blackheath. I listen and pray at my chamber-door as my father
talks to you in our little cabinet of studies. I look from my window, and
see you depart.

"My son's are men: one follows the profession of arms, one has embraced
the ecclesiastical state; my daughter is herself a mother. I remember
this was your birthday; I have made myself a little fete in celebrating
it, after how many years of absence, of silence!   Comtesse De Florac.
                                                  (Nee L. de Blois.)"


III

"My Dear Thomas,--Mr. Sneid, supercargo of the Ramchunder, East Indiaman,
handed over to us yesterday your letter, and, to-day, I have purchased
three thousand three hundred and twenty-three pounds 6 and 8d. three per
cent Consols, in our joint names (H. and B. Newcome), held for your
little boy. Mr. S. gives a very favourable account of the little man, and
left him in perfect health two days since, at the house of his aunt, Miss
Honeyman. We have placed 200 pounds to that lady's credit, at your
desire.

"Lady Anne is charmed with the present which she received yesterday, and
says the white shawl is a great deal too handsome. My mother is also
greatly pleased with hers, and has forwarded, by the coach to Brighton,
to-day, a packet of books, tracts, etc., suited for his tender age, for
your little boy. She heard of you lately from the Rev. T. Sweatenham on
his return from India. He spoke of your kindness,--and of the hospitable
manner in which you had received him at your house, and alluded to you in
a very handsome way in the course of the thanksgiving that evening. I
dare say my mother will ask your little boy to the Hermitage; and when we
have a house of our own, I am sure Anne and I will be very happy to see
him. Yours affectionately,        Major Newcome.       B. Newcome."


IV

"My Dear Colonel,--Did I not know the generosity of your heart, and the
bountiful means which Heaven has put at your disposal in order to gratify
that noble disposition; were I not certain that the small sum I required
will permanently place me beyond the reach of the difficulties of life,
and will infallibly be repaid before six months are over, believe me I
never would have ventured upon that bold step which our friendship
(carried on epistolarily as it has been), our relationship, and your
admirable disposition, have induced me to venture to take.

"That elegant and commodious chapel, known as Lady Whittlesea's, Denmark
Street, Mayfair, being for sale, I have determined on venturing my all in
its acquisition, and in laying, as I hope, the foundation of a competence
for myself and excellent sister. What is a lodging-house at Brighton but
an uncertain maintenance? The mariner on the sea before those cliffs is
no more sure of wind and wave, or of fish to his laborious net, than the
Brighton house-owner (bred in affluence she may have been, and used to
unremitting plenty) to the support of the casual travellers who visit the
city. On one day they come in shoals, it is true, but where are they on
the next? For many months my poor sister's first floor was a desert,
until occupied by your noble little boy, my nephew and pupil. Clive is
everything that a father's, an uncle's (who loves him as a father), a
pastor's, a teacher's affections could desire. He is not one of those
premature geniuses whose much-vaunted infantine talents disappear along
with adolescence; he is not, I frankly own, more advanced in his
classical and mathematical studies than some children even younger than
himself; but he has acquired the rudiments of health; he has laid in a
store of honesty and good-humour, which are not less likely to advance
him in life than mere science and language, than the as in praesenti, or
the pons asinorum.

"But I forget, in thinking of my dear little friend and pupil, the
subject of this letter--namely, the acquisition of the proprietary chapel
to which I have alluded, and the hopes, nay, certainty of a fortune, if
aught below is certain, which that acquisition holds out. What is a
curacy, but a synonym for starvation? If we accuse the Eremites of old of
wasting their lives in unprofitable wildernesses, what shall we say to
many a hermit of Protestant, and so-called civilised times, who hides his
head in a solitude in Yorkshire, and buries his probably fine talents in
a Lincolnshire fen? Have I genius? Am I blessed with gifts of eloquence
to thrill and soothe, to arouse the sluggish, to terrify the sinful, to
cheer and convince the timid, to lead the blind groping in darkness, and
to trample the audacious sceptic in the dust? My own conscience, besides
a hundred testimonials from places of popular, most popular worship, from
reverend prelates, from distinguished clergy, tells me I have these
gifts. A voice within me cries, 'Go forth, Charles Honeyman, fight the
good fight; wipe the tears of the repentant sinner; sing of hope to the
agonised criminal; whisper courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly
deathbed, and strike down the infidel with the lance of evidence and the
shield of reason!' In a pecuniary point of view I am confident, nay, the
calculations may be established as irresistibly as an algebraic equation,
that I can realise, as incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel, the sum of
not less than one thousand pounds per annum. Such a sum, with economy
(and without it what sum were sufficient?), will enable me to provide
amply for my wants, to discharge my obligations to you, to my sister, and
some other creditors, very, very unlike you, and to place Miss Honeyman
in a home more worthy of her than that which she now occupies, only to
vacate it at the beck of every passing stranger!

"My sister does not disapprove of my plan, into which enter some
modifications which I have not, as yet, submitted to her, being anxious
at first that they should be sanctioned by you. From the income of the
Whittlesea chapel I propose to allow Miss Honeyman the sum of two hundred
pounds per annum, paid quarterly. This, with her private property, which
she has kept more thriftily than her unfortunate and confiding brother
guarded his (for whenever I had a guinea a tale of distress would melt it
into half a sovereign), will enable Miss Honeyman to live in a way
becoming my father's daughter.

"Comforted with this provision as my sister will be, I would suggest that
our dearest young Clive should be transferred from her petticoat
government, and given up to the care of his affectionate uncle and tutor.
His present allowance will most liberally suffice for his expenses,
board, lodging, and education while under my roof, and I shall be able to
exert a paternal, a pastoral influence over his studies, his conduct, and
his highest welfare, which I cannot so conveniently exercise at Brighton,
where I am but Miss Honeyman's stipendiary, and where I often have to
submit in cases where I know, for dearest Clive's own welfare, it is I,
and not my sister, should be paramount.

"I have given then to a friend, the Rev. Marcus Flather a draft for two
hundred and fifty pounds sterling, drawn upon you at your agent's in
Calcutta, which sum will go in liquidation of dear Clive's first year's
board with me, or, upon my word of honour as a gentleman and clergyman,
shall be paid back at three months after sight, if you will draw upon me.
As I never--no, were it my last penny in the world--would dishonour your
draft, I implore you, my dear Colonel, not to refuse mine. My credit in
this city, where credit is everything, and the awful future so little
thought of, my engagements to Mr. Flather, my own prospects in life, and
the comfort of my dear sister's declining years, all--all depend upon
this bold, this eventful measure. My ruin or my earthly happiness lies
entirely in your hands. Can I doubt which way your kind heart will lead
you, and that you will come to the aid of your affectionate
brother-in-law?                                Charles Honeyman."

"Our little Clive has been to London on a visit to his uncles and to the
Hermitage, Clapham, to pay his duty to his step-grandmother, the wealthy
Mrs. Newcome. I pass over words disparaging of myself which the child in
his artless prattles subsequently narrated. She was very gracious to him,
and presented him with a five-pound note, a copy of Kirk White's Poems,
and a work called Little Henry and his Bearer, relating to India, and the
excellent Catechism of our Church. Clive is full of humour, and I enclose
you a rude scrap representing the Bishopess of Clapham, as she is
called,--the other figure is a rude though entertaining sketch of some
other droll personage.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, etc."


V

"My Dear Colonel;--The Rev. Marcus Flather has just written me a letter
at which I am greatly shocked and perplexed, informing me that my brother
Charles has given him a draft upon you for two hundred and fifty pounds,
when goodness knows it is not you but we who are many, many hundred
pounds debtors to you. Charles has explained that he drew the bill at
your desire, that you wrote to say you would be glad to serve him in any
way, and that the money is wanted to make his fortune. Yet I don't know--
poor Charles is always going to make his fortune and has never done it.
That school which he bought, and for which you and me between us paid the
purchase-money, turned out no good, and the only pupils left at the end
of the first half-year were two woolly-headed poor little mulattos, whose
father was in gaol at St. Kitt's, and whom I kept actually in my own
second-floor back room whilst the lawyers were settling things, and
Charles was away in France, and until my dearest little Clive came to
live with me.

"Then, as he was too small for a great school, I thought Clive could not
do better than stay with his old aunt and have his Uncle Charles for a
tutor, who is one of the finest scholars in the world. I wish you could
hear him in the pulpit. His delivery is grander and more impressive than
any divine now in England. His sermons you have subscribed for, and
likewise his book of elegant poems, which are pronounced to be very fine.

"When he returned from Calais, and those horrid lawyers had left off
worriting him, I thought as his frame was much shattered and he was too
weak to take a curacy, that he could not do better than become Clive's
tutor, and agreed to pay him out of your handsome donation of 250 pounds
for Clive, a sum of one hundred pounds per year, so that, when the board
of the two and Clive's clothing are taken into consideration, I think you
will see that no great profit is left to Miss Martha Honeyman.

"Charles talks to me of his new church in London, and of making me some
grand allowance. The poor boy is very affectionate, and always building
castles in the air, and of having Clive to live with him in London. Now
this mustn't be, and I won't hear of it. Charles is too kind to be a
schoolmaster, and Master Clive laughs at him. It was only the other day,
after his return from his grandmamma's, regarding which I wrote you, per
Burrampooter, the 23rd ult., that I found a picture of Mrs. Newcome and
Charles too, and of both their spectacles, quite like. I put it away, but
some rogue, I suppose, has stolen it. He has done me and Hannah too. Mr.
Speck, the artist, laughed and took it home, and says he is a wonder at
drawing.

"Instead, then, of allowing Clive to go with Charles to London next
month, where my brother is bent on going, I shall send Clivey to Dr.
Timpany's school, Marine Parade, of which I hear the best account, but I
hope you will think of soon sending him to a great school. My father
always said it was the best place for boys, and I have a brother to whom
my poor mother spared the rod, and who, I fear, has turned out but a
spoilt child.

"I am, dear Colonel, your most faithful servant,      Martha Honeyman."

"Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C. B."


VI

"My Dear Brother,--I hasten to inform you of a calamity which, though it
might be looked for in the course of nature, has occasioned deep grief
not only in our family but in this city. This morning, at half-past four
o'clock, our beloved and respected mother, Sophia Alethea Newcome,
expired, at the advanced age of eighty-three years. On the night of
Tuesday-Wednesday, the 12-13th, having been engaged reading and writing
in her library until a late hour, and having dismissed the servants, whom
she never would allow to sit up for her, as well as my brother and his
wife, who always are in the habit of retiring early, Mrs. Newcome
extinguished the lamps, took a bedchamber candle to return to her room,
and must have fallen on the landing, where she was discovered by the
maids, sitting with her head reclining against the balustrades, and
endeavouring to staunch a wound in her forehead, which was bleeding
profusely, having struck in a fall against the stone step of the stair.

"When Mrs. Newcome was found she was speechless, but still sensible, and
medical aid being sent for, she was carried to bed. Mr. Newcome and Lady
Anne both hurried to her apartment, and she knew them, and took the hands
of each, but paralysis had probably ensued in consequence of the shock of
the fall; nor was her voice ever heard, except in inarticulate moanings,
since the hour on the previous evening when she gave them her blessing
and bade them good-night. Thus perished this good and excellent woman,
the truest Christian, the most charitable friend to the poor and needful,
the head of this great house of business, the best and most affectionate
of mothers.

"The contents of her will have long been known to us, and that document
was dated one month after our lamented father's death. Mr. Thomas
Newcome's property being divided equally amongst his three sons, the
property of his second wife naturally devolves upon her own issue, my
brother Brian and myself. There are very heavy legacies to servants and
to charitable and religious institutions, of which, in life, she was the
munificent patroness; and I regret, my dear brother, that no memorial to
you should have been left by my mother, because she often spoke of you
latterly in terms of affection, and on the very day on which she died,
commenced a letter to your little boy, which was left unfinished on the
library table. My brother said that on that same day, at breakfast, she
pointed to a volume of Orme's Hindostan, the book, she said, which set
poor dear Tom wild to go to India, I know you will be pleased to hear of
these proofs of returning goodwill and affection in one who often spoke
latterly of her early regard for you. I have no more time, under the
weight of business which this present affliction entails, than to say
that I am yours, dear brother, very sincerely,         H. Newcome."

"Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, etc."




CHAPTER IV

In which the Author and the Hero resume their Acquaintance


If we are to narrate the youthful history not only of the hero of this
tale, but of the hero's father, we shall never have done with nursery
biography. A gentleman's grandmother may delight in fond recapitulation
of her darling's boyish frolics and early genius; but shall we weary our
kind readers by this infantile prattle, and set down the revered British
public for an old woman? Only to two or three persons in all the world
are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent
who nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves
him; to himself always and supremely--whatever may be his actual
prosperity or ill-fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties,
renown, or disappointments, the dawn of his life still shines brightly
for him, the early griefs and delights and attachments remain with him
ever faithful and dear. I shall ask leave to say, regarding the juvenile
biography of Mr. Clive Newcome, of whose history I am the chronicler,
only so much as is sufficient to account for some peculiarities of his
character, and for his subsequent career in the world.

Although we were schoolfellows, my acquaintance with young Newcome at the
seat of learning where we first met was very brief and casual. He had the
advantage of being six years the junior of his present biographer, and
such a difference of age between lads at a public school puts intimacy
out of the question--a junior ensign being no more familiar with the
Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards, or a barrister on his first
circuit with my Lord Chief Justice on the bench, than the newly breeched
infant in the Petties with a senior boy in a tailed coat. As we "knew
each other at home," as our school phrase was, and our families being
somewhat acquainted, Newcome's maternal uncle, the Rev. Charles Honeyman
(the highly gifted preacher, and incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's Chapel,
Denmark Street, Mayfair), when he brought the child, after the Christmas
vacation of 182-, to the Grey Friars' school, recommended him in a neat
complimentary speech to my superintendence and protection. My uncle,
Major Pendennis, had for a while a seat in the chapel of this sweet and
popular preacher, and professed, as a great number of persons of fashion
did, a great admiration for him--an admiration which I shared in my early
youth, but which has been modified by maturer judgment.

Mr. Honeyman told me, with an air of deep respect, that his young
nephew's father, Colonel Thomas Newcome, C.B., was a most gallant and
distinguished officer in the Bengal establishment of the Honourable East
India Company;--and that his uncles, the Colonel's half-brothers, were
the eminent bankers, heads of the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome,
Hobson Newcome, Esquire, Bryanstone Square, and Marblehead, Sussex, and
Sir Brian Newcome, of Newcome and Park Lane, "whom to name," says Mr.
Honeyman, with the fluent eloquence with which he decorated the commonest
circumstances of life, "is to designate two of the merchant princes of
the wealthiest city the world has ever known; and one, if not two, of the
leaders of that aristocracy which rallies round the throne of the most
elegant and refined of European sovereigns." I promised Mr. Honeyman to
do what I could for the boy; and he proceeded to take leave of his little
nephew in my presence in terms equally eloquent, pulling out a long and
very slender green purse, from which he extracted the sum of
two-and-sixpence, which he presented to the child, who received the money
with rather a queer twinkle in his blue eyes.

After that day's school, I met my little protege in the neighbourhood of
the pastrycook's, regaling himself with raspberry-tarts. "You must not
spend all that money, sir, which your uncle gave you," said I (having
perhaps even at that early age a slightly satirical turn), "in tarts and
ginger-beer."

The urchin rubbed the raspberry-jam off his mouth, and said, "It don't
matter, sir, for I've got lots more."

"How much?" says the Grand Inquisitor: for the formula of interrogation
used to be, when a new boy came to the school, "What's your name? Who's
your father? and how much money have you got?"

The little fellow pulled such a handful of sovereigns out of his pocket
as might have made the tallest scholar feel a pang of envy. "Uncle
Hobson," says he, "gave me two; Aunt Hobson gave me one--no, Aunt Hobson
gave me thirty shillings; Uncle Newcome gave me three pound; and Aunt
Anne gave me one pound five; and Aunt Honeyman sent me ten shillings in a
letter. And Ethel wanted to give me a pound, only I wouldn't have it, you
know; because Ethel's younger than me, and I have plenty."

"And who is Ethel?" asks the senior boy, smiling at the artless youth's
confessions.

"Ethel is my cousin," replies little Newcome; "Aunt Anne's daughter.
There's Ethel and Alice, and Aunt Anne wanted the baby to be called
Boadicea, only uncle wouldn't; and there's Barnes and Egbert and little
Alfred; only he don't count, he's quite a baby you know. Egbert and me
was at school at Timpany's; he's going to Eton next half. He's older than
me, but I can lick him."

"And how old is Egbert?" asks the smiling senior.

"Egbert's ten, and I'm nine, and Ethel's seven," replies the little
chubby-faced hero, digging his hands deep into his trousers' pockets, and
jingling all the sovereigns there. I advised him to let me be his banker;
and, keeping one out of his many gold pieces, he handed over the others,
on which he drew with great liberality till his whole stock was expended.
The school hours of the upper and under boys were different at that time;
the little fellows coming out of their hall half an hour before the Fifth
and Sixth Forms; and many a time I used to find my little blue jacket in
waiting, with his honest square face, and white hair, and bright blue
eyes, and I knew that he was come to draw on his bank. Ere long one of
the pretty blue eyes was shut up, and a fine black one substituted in its
place. He had been engaged, it appeared, in a pugilistic encounter with a
giant of his own Form, whom he had worsted in the combat. "Didn't I pitch
into him, that's all?" says he in the elation of victory; and when I
asked whence the quarrel arose, he stoutly informed me that "Wolf minor,
his opponent, had been bullying a little boy, and that he (the gigantic
Newcome) wouldn't stand it."

So, being called away from the school, I said farewell and God bless you
to the brave little man, who remained a while at the Grey Friars, where
his career and troubles had only just begun.

Nor did we meet again until I was myself a young man occupying chambers
in the Temple, when our rencontre took place in the manner already
described.

Poor Costigan's outrageous behaviour had caused my meeting with my
schoolfellow of early days to terminate so abruptly and unpleasantly,
that I scarce expected to see Clive again, or at any rate to renew my
acquaintance with the indignant East Indian warrior who had quitted our
company in such a huff. Breakfast, however, was scarcely over in my
chambers the next morning, when there came a knock at the outer door, and
my clerk introduced "Colonel Newcome and Mr. Newcome."

Perhaps the (joint) occupant of the chambers in Lamb Court, Temple, felt
a little pang of shame at hearing the name of the visitors; for, if the
truth must be told, I was engaged pretty much as I had been occupied on
the night previous, and was smoking a cigar over the Times newspaper. How
many young men in the Temple smoke a cigar after breakfast as they read
the Times? My friend and companion of those days, and all days, Mr.
George Warrington, was employed with his short pipe, and was not in the
least disconcerted at the appearance of the visitors, as he would not
have been had the Archbishop of Canterbury stepped in.

Little Clive looked curiously about our queer premises, while the Colonel
shook me cordially by the hand. No traces of yesterday's wrath were
visible on his face, but a friendly smile lighted his bronzed
countenance, as he too looked round the old room with its dingy curtains
and prints and bookcases, its litter of proof-sheets, blotted
manuscripts, and books for review, empty soda-water bottles, cigar-boxes,
and what not.

"I went off in a flame of fire last night," says the Colonel, "and being
cooled this morning, thought it but my duty to call on Mr. Pendennis and
apologise for my abrupt behaviour. The conduct of that tipsy old Captain
--what is his name?--was so abominable, that I could not bear that Clive
should be any longer in the same room with him, and I went off without
saying a word of thanks or good-night to my son's old friend. I owe you a
shake of the hand for last night, Mr. Pendennis." And, so saying, he was
kind enough to give me his hand a second time.

"And this is the abode of the Muses, is it, sir?" our guest went on. "I
know your writings very well. Clive here used to send me the Pall Mall
Gazette every month."

"We took it at Smiffle, regular," says Clive. "Always patronise Grey
Friars men." "Smiffle," it must be explained, is a fond abbreviation for
Smithfield, near to which great mart of mutton and oxen our school is
situated, and old Cistercians often playfully designate their place of
education by the name of the neighbouring market.

"Clive sent me the Gazette every month; and I read your romance of Walter
Lorraine in my boat as I was coming down the river to Calcutta."

"Have Pen's immortal productions made their appearance on board Bengalee
budgerows; and are their leaves floating on the yellow banks of Jumna?"
asks Warrington, that sceptic, who respects no work of modern genius.

"I gave your book to Mrs. Timmins, at Calcutta," says the Colonel simply.
"I daresay you have heard of her. She is one of the most dashing women in
all India. She was delighted with your work; and I can tell you it is not
with every man's writing that Mrs. Timmins is pleased," he added, with a
knowing air.

"It's capital," broke in Clive. "I say, that part, you know, where Walter
runs away with Neaera, and the General can't pursue them, though he has
got the postchaise at the door, because Tim O'Toole has hidden his wooden
leg! By Jove, it's capital!--All the funny part--I don't like the
sentimental stuff, and suicide, and that; and as for poetry, I hate
poetry."

"Pen's is not first chop," says Warrington. "I am obliged to take the
young man down from time to time, Colonel Newcome. Otherwise he would
grow so conceited there would be no bearing him."

"I say," says Clive.

"What were you about to remark?" asks Mr. Warrington, with an air of
great interest.

"I say, Pendennis," continued the artless youth, "I thought you were a
great swell. When we used to read about the grand parties in the Pall
Mall Gazette, the fellows used to say you were at every one of them, and
you see, I thought you must have chambers in the Albany, and lots of
horses to ride, and a valet and a groom, and a cab at the very least."

"Sir," says the Colonel, "I hope it is not your practice to measure and
estimate gentlemen by such paltry standards as those. A man of letters
follows the noblest calling which any man can pursue. I would rather be
the author of a work of genius, than be Governor-General of India. I
admire genius. I salute it wherever I meet it. I like my own profession
better than any in the world, but then it is because I am suited to it. I
couldn't write four lines in verse, no, not to save me from being shot. A
man cannot have all the advantages of life. Who would not be poor if he
could be sure of possessing genius, and winning fame and immortality,
sir? Think of Dr. Johnson, what a genius he had, and where did he live?
In apartments that, I daresay, were no better than these, which, I am
sure, gentlemen, are most cheerful and pleasant," says the Colonel,
thinking he had offended us. "One of the great pleasures and delights
which I had proposed to myself on coming home was to be allowed to have
the honour of meeting with men of learning and genius, with wits, poets,
and historians, if I may be so fortunate; and of benefiting by their
conversation. I left England too young to have that privilege. In my
father's house money was thought of, I fear, rather than intellect;
neither he nor I had the opportunities which I wish you to have; and I am
surprised you should think of reflecting upon Mr. Pendennis's poverty, or
of feeling any sentiment but respect and admiration when you enter the
apartments of the poet and the literary man. I have never been in the
rooms of a literary man before," the Colonel said, turning away from his
son to us: "excuse me, is that--that paper really a proof-sheet?" We
handed over to him that curiosity, smiling at the enthusiasm of the
honest gentleman who could admire what to us was as unpalatable as a tart
to a pastrycook.

Being with men of letters, he thought proper to make his conversation
entirely literary; and in the course of my subsequent more intimate
acquaintance with him, though I knew he had distinguished himself in
twenty actions, he never could be brought to talk of his military feats
or experience, but passed them by, as if they were subjects utterly
unworthy of notice.

I found he believed Dr. Johnson to be the greatest of men: the Doctor's
words were constantly in his mouth; and he never travelled without
Boswell's Life. Besides these, he read Caesar and Tacitus, "with
translations, sir, with translations--I'm thankful that I kept some of my
Latin from Grey Friars;" and he quoted sentences from the Latin Grammar,
apropos of a hundred events of common life, and with perfect simplicity
and satisfaction to himself. Besides the above-named books, the
Spectator, Don Quixote, and Sir Charles Grandison formed a part of his
travelling library. "I read these, sir," he used to say, "because I like
to be in the company of gentlemen; and Sir Roger de Coverley, and Sir
Charles Grandison, and Don Quixote are the finest gentlemen in the
world." And when we asked him his opinion of Fielding,--

"Tom Jones, sir; Joseph Andrews, sir!" he cried, twirling his mustachios.
"I read them when I was a boy, when I kept other bad company, and did
other low and disgraceful things, of which I'm ashamed now. Sir, in my
father's library I happened to fall in with those books; and I read them
in secret, just as I used to go in private and drink beer, and fight
cocks, and smoke pipes with Jack and Tom, the grooms in the stables. Mrs.
Newcome found me, I recollect, with one of those books; and thinking it
might be by Mrs. Hannah More, or some of that sort, for it was a
grave-looking volume: and though I wouldn't lie about that or anything
else--never did, sir; never, before heaven, have I told more than three
lies in my life--I kept my own counsel; I say, she took it herself to
read one evening; and read on gravely--for she had no more idea of a joke
than I have of Hebrew--until she came to the part about Lady B---- and
Joseph Andrews; and then she shut the book, sir; and you should have seen
the look she gave me! I own I burst out a-laughing, for I was a wild
young rebel, sir. But she was in the right, sir, and I was in the wrong.
A book, sir, that tells the story of a parcel of servants, of a pack of
footmen and ladies'-maids fuddling in alehouses! Do you suppose I want to
know what my kitmutgars and cousomahs are doing? I am as little proud as
any man in the world: but there must be distinction, sir; and as it is my
lot and Clive's lot to be a gentleman, I won't sit in the kitchen and
boose in the servants'-hall. As for that Tom Jones--that fellow that
sells himself, sir--by heavens, my blood boils when I think of him! I
wouldn't sit down in the same room with such a fellow, sir. If he came in
at that door, I would say, 'How dare you, you hireling ruffian, to sully
with your presence an apartment where my young friend and I are
conversing together? where two gentlemen, I say, are taking their wine
after dinner? How dare you, you degraded villain?' I don't mean you, sir.
I--I--I beg your pardon."

The Colonel was striding about the room in his loose garments, puffing
his cigar fiercely anon, and then waving his yellow bandana; and it was
by the arrival of Larkins, my clerk, that his apostrophe to Tom Jones was
interrupted; he, Larkins, taking care not to show his amazement, having
been schooled not to show or feel surprise at anything he might see or
hear in our chambers.

"What is it, Larkins?" said I. Larkins' other master had taken his leave
some time before, having business which called him away, and leaving me
with the honest Colonel, quite happy with his talk and cigar.

"It's Brett's man," says Larkins.

I confounded Brett's man, and told the boy to bid him call again. Young
Larkins came grinning back in a moment, and said:

"Please, sir, he says his orders is not to go away without the money."

"Confound him again," I cried. "Tell him I have no money in the house. He
must come to-morrow."

As I spoke, Clive was looking in wonder, and the Colonel's countenance
assumed an appearance of the most dolorous sympathy. Nevertheless, as
with a great effort, he fell to talking about Tom Jones again, and
continued:

"No, sir, I have no words to express my indignation against such a fellow
as Tom Jones. But I forgot that I need not speak. The great and good Dr.
Johnson has settled that question. You remember what he said to Mr.
Boswell about Fielding?"

"And yet Gibbon praises him, Colonel," said the Colonel's interlocutor,
"and that is no small praise. He says that Mr. Fielding was of the family
that drew its origin from the Counts of Hapsburg; but----"

"Gibbon! Gibbon was an infidel, and I would not give the end of this
cigar for such a man's opinion. If Mr. Fielding was a gentleman by birth,
he ought to have known better; and so much the worse for him that he did
not. But what am I talking of, wasting your valuable time? No more smoke,
thank you. I must away into the City, but would not pass the Temple
without calling on you, and thanking my boy's old protector. You will
have the kindness to come and dine with us--to-morrow, the next day, your
own day? Your friend is going out of town? I hope, on his return, to have
the pleasure of making his further acquaintance. Come, Clive."

Clive, who had been deep in a volume of Hogarth's engravings during the
above discussion, or rather oration of his father's, started up and took
leave, beseeching me, at the same time, to come soon and see his pony;
and so, with renewed greetings, we parted.

I was scarcely returned to my newspaper again, when the knocker of our
door was again agitated, and the Colonel ran back, looking very much
agitated and confused.

"I beg pardon," says he; "I think I left my--my----" Larkins had quitted
the room by this time, and then he began more unreservedly. "My dear
young friend," says he, "a thousand pardons for what I am going to say,
but, as Clive's friend, I know I may take that liberty. I have left the
boy in the court. I know the fate of men of letters and genius: when we
were here just now, there came a single knock--a demand--that, that you
did not seem to be momentarily able to meet. Now do, do pardon the
liberty, and let me be your banker. You said you were engaged in a new
work: it will be a masterpiece, I am sure, if it's like the last. Put me
down for twenty copies, and allow me to settle with you in advance. I may
be off, you know. I'm a bird of passage--a restless old soldier."

"My dear Colonel," said I, quite touched and pleased by this extreme
kindness, "my dun was but the washerwoman's boy, and Mrs. Brett is in my
debt, if I am not mistaken. Besides, I already have a banker in your
family."

"In my family, my dear Sir?"

"Messrs. Newcome, in Threadneedle Street, are good enough to keep my
money for me when I have any, and I am happy to say they have some of
mine in hand now. I am almost sorry that I am not in want, in order that
I might have the pleasure of receiving a kindness from you." And we shook
hands for the fourth time that morning, and the kind gentleman left me to
rejoin his son.




CHAPTER V

Clive's Uncles


The dinner so hospitably offered by the Colonel was gladly accepted, and
followed by many more entertainments at the cost of that good-natured
friend. He and an Indian chum of his lived at this time at Nerot's Hotel,
in Clifford Street, where Mr. Clive, too, found the good cheer a great
deal more to his taste than the homely, though plentiful, fare at Grey
Friars, at which, of course, when boys, we all turned up our noses,
though many a poor fellow, in the struggles of after-life, has looked
back with regret very likely to that well-spread youthful table. Thus my
intimacy with the father and the son grew to be considerable, and a great
deal more to my liking than my relations with Clive's City uncles, which
have been mentioned in the last chapter, and which were, in truth,
exceedingly distant and awful.

If all the private accounts kept by those worthy bankers were like mine,
where would have been Newcome Hall and Park Lane, Marblehead and
Bryanstone Square? I used, by strong efforts of self-denial, to maintain
a balance of two or three guineas untouched at the bank, so that my
account might still remain open; and fancied the clerks and cashiers
grinned when I went to draw for money. Rather than face that awful
counter, I would send Larkins, the clerk, or Mrs. Flanagan, the
laundress. As for entering the private parlour at the back, wherein
behind the glazed partition I could see the bald heads of Newcome
Brothers engaged with other capitalists or peering over the newspaper, I
would as soon have thought of walking into the Doctor's own library at
Grey Friars, or of volunteering to take an armchair in a dentist's
studio, and have a tooth out, as of entering into that awful precinct. My
good uncle, on the other hand, the late Major Pendennis, who kept
naturally but a very small account with Hobsons', would walk into the
parlour and salute the two magnates who governed there with the ease and
gravity of a Rothschild. "My good fellow," the kind old gentleman would
say to his nephew and pupil, "il faut se faire valoir. I tell you, sir,
your bankers like to keep every gentleman's account. And it's a mistake
to suppose they are only civil to their great moneyed clients. Look at
me. I go in to them and talk to them whenever I am in the City. I hear
the news of 'Change, and carry it to our end of the town. It looks well,
sir, to be well with your banker; and at our end of London, perhaps, I
can do a good turn for the Newcomes."

It is certain that in his own kingdom of Mayfair and St. James's my
revered uncle was at least the bankers' equal. On my coming to London, he
was kind enough to procure me invitations to some of Lady Anne Newcome's
evening parties in Park Lane, as likewise to Mrs. Newcome's
entertainments in Bryanstone Square; though, I confess, of these latter,
after a while, I was a lax and negligent attendant. "Between ourselves,
my good fellow," the shrewd old Mentor of those days would say, "Mrs.
Newcome's parties are not altogether select; nor is she a lady of the
very highest breeding; but it gives a man a good air to be seen at his
banker's house. I recommend you to go for a few minutes whenever you are
asked." And go I accordingly did sometimes, though I always fancied,
rightly or wrongly, from Mrs. Newcome's manner to me, that she knew I had
but thirty shillings left at the bank. Once and again, in two or three
years, Mr. Hobson Newcome would meet me, and ask me to fill a vacant
place that day or the next evening at his table; which invitation I might
accept or otherwise. But one does not eat a man's salt, as it were, at
these dinners. There is nothing sacred in this kind of London
hospitality. Your white waistcoat fills a gap in a man's table, and
retires filled for its service of the evening. "Gad," the dear old Major
used to say, "if we were not to talk freely of those we dine with, how
mum London would be! Some of the pleasantest evenings I have ever spent
have been when we have sate after a great dinner, en petit comite, and
abused the people who are gone. You have your turn, mon cher; but why
not? Do you suppose I fancy my friends haven't found out my little faults
and peculiarities? And as I can't help it, I let myself be executed, and
offer up my oddities de bonne grace. Entre nous, Brother Hobson Newcome
is a good fellow, but a vulgar fellow; and his wife--his wife exactly
suits him."

Once a year Lady Anne Newcome (about whom my Mentor was much more
circumspect; for I somehow used to remark that as the rank of persons
grew higher, Major Pendennis spoke of them with more caution and
respect)--once or twice in a year Lady Anne Newcome opened her saloons
for a concert and a ball, at both of which the whole street was crowded
with carriages, and all the great world, and some of the small, were
present. Mrs. Newcome had her ball too, and her concert of English music,
in opposition to the Italian singers of her sister-in-law. The music of
her country, Mrs. N. said, was good enough for her.

The truth must be told, that there was no love lost between the two
ladies. Bryanstone Square could not forget the superiority of Park Lane's
rank; and the catalogue of grandees at dear Anne's parties filled dear
Maria's heart with envy. There are people upon whom rank and worldly
goods make such an impression, that they naturally fall down on their
knees and worship the owners; there are others to whom the sight of
Prosperity is offensive, and who never see Dives' chariot but to growl
and hoot at it. Mrs. Newcome, as far as my humble experience would lead
me to suppose, is not only envious, but proud of her envy. She mistakes
it for honesty and public spirit. She will not bow down to kiss the hand
of a haughty aristocracy. She is a merchant's wife and an attorney's
daughter. There is no pride about her. Her brother-in-law, poor dear
Brian--considering everybody knows everything in London, was there ever
such a delusion as his?--was welcome, after banking-hours, to forsake his
own friends for his wife's fine relations, and to dangle after lords and
ladies in Mayfair. She had no such absurd vanity--not she. She imparted
these opinions pretty liberally to all her acquaintances in almost all
her conversations. It was clear that the two ladies were best apart.
There are some folks who will see insolence in persons of rank, as there
are others who will insist; that all clergymen are hypocrites, all
reformers villains, all placemen plunderers, and so forth; and Mrs.
Newcome never, I am sure, imagined that she had a prejudice, or that she
was other than an honest, independent, high-spirited woman. Both of the
ladies had command over their husbands, who were of soft natures easily
led by woman, as, in truth, are all the males of this family.
Accordingly, when Sir Brian Newcome voted for the Tory candidate in the
City, Mr. Hobson Newcome plumped for the Reformer. While Brian, in the
House of Commons, sat among the mild Conservatives, Hobson unmasked
traitors and thundered at aristocratic corruption, so as to make the
Marylebone Vestry thrill with enthusiasm. When Lady Anne, her husband,
and her flock of children fasted in Lent, and declared for the High
Church doctrines, Mrs. Hobson had paroxysms of alarm regarding the
progress of Popery, and shuddered out of the chapel where she had a pew,
because the clergyman there, for a very brief season, appeared to preach
in a surplice.

Poor bewildered Honeyman! it was a sad day for you, when you appeared in
your neat pulpit with your fragrant pocket-handkerchief (and your sermon
likewise all millefleurs), in a trim, prim, freshly mangled surplice,
which you thought became you! How did you look aghast, and pass your
jewelled hand through your curls, as you saw Mrs. Newcome, who had been
as good as five-and-twenty pounds a year to you, look up from her pew,
seize hold of Mr. Newcome, fling open the pew-door, drive out with her
parasol her little flock of children, bewildered but not ill-pleased to
get away from the sermon, and summon John from the back seats to bring
away the bag of prayer-books! Many a good dinner did Charles Honeyman
lose by assuming that unlucky ephod. Why did the high-priest of his
diocese order him to put it on? It was delightful to view him afterwards,
and the airs of martyrdom which he assumed. Had they been going to tear
him to pieces with wild beasts next day, he could scarcely have looked
more meek, or resigned himself more pathetically to the persecutors. But
I am advancing matters. At this early time of which I write, a period not
twenty years since, surplices were not even thought of in conjunction
with sermons: clerical gentlemen have appeared in them, and under the
heavy hand of persecution have sunk down in their pulpits again, as Jack
pops back into his box. Charles Honeyman's elegant discourses were at
this time preached in a rich silk Master of Arts' gown, presented to him,
along with a teapot full of sovereigns, by his affectionate congregation
at Leatherhead.

But that I may not be accused of prejudice in describing Mrs. Newcome and
her family, and lest the reader should suppose that some slight offered
to the writer by this wealthy and virtuous banker's lady was the secret
reason for this unfavourable sketch of her character, let me be allowed
to report, as accurately as I can remember them, the words of a kinsman
of her own, ---- Giles, Esquire, whom I had the honour of meeting at her
table, and who, as we walked away from Bryanstone Square, was kind enough
to discourse very freely about the relatives whom he had just left.

"That was a good dinner, sir," said Mr. Giles, puffing the cigar which I
offered to him, and disposed to be very social and communicative. "Hobson
Newcome's table is about as good a one as any I ever put my legs under.
You didn't have twice of turtle, sir, I remarked that--I always do, at
that house especially, for I know where Newcome gets it. We belong to the
same livery in the City, Hobson and I, the Oystermongers' Company, sir,
and we like our turtle good, I can tell you--good, and a great deal of
it, you say. Hay, hay, not so bad!

"I suppose you're a young barrister, sucking lawyer, or that sort of
thing. Because you was put at the end of the table and nobody took notice
of you. That's my place too; I'm a relative and Newcome asks me if he has
got a place to spare. He met me in the City to-day, and says, 'Tom,' says
he, 'there's some dinner in the Square at half-past seven: I wish you
would go and fetch Louisa, whom we haven't seen this ever so long.'
Louisa is my wife, sir--Maria's sister--Newcome married that gal from my
house. 'No, no,' says I, 'Hobson; Louisa's engaged nursing number eight'
--that's our number, sir. The truth is, between you and me, sir, my
missis won't come any more at no price. She can't stand it; Mrs.
Newcome's dam patronising airs is enough to choke off anybody. 'Well,
Hobson, my boy,' says I, 'a good dinner's a good dinner; and I'll come
though Louisa won't, that is, can't.'"

While Mr. Giles, who was considerably enlivened by claret, was
discoursing thus candidly, his companion was thinking how he, Mr. Arthur
Pendennis, had been met that very afternoon on the steps of the
Megatherium Club by Mr. Newcome, and had accepted that dinner which Mrs.
Giles, with more spirit, had declined. Giles continued talking--"I'm an
old stager, I am. I don't mind the rows between the women. I believe Mrs.
Newcome and Lady Newcome's just as bad too; I know Maria is always
driving at her one way or the other, and calling her proud and
aristocratic, and that; and yet my wife says Maria, who pretends to be
such a Radical, never asks us to meet the Baronet and his lady. 'And why
should she, Loo, my dear?' says I. 'I don't want to meet Lady Newcome,
nor Lord Kew, nor any of 'em.' Lord Kew, ain't it an odd name? Tearing
young swell, that Lord Kew: tremendous wild fellow."

"I was a clerk in that house, sir, as a young man; I was there in the old
woman's time, and Mr. Newcome's--the father of these young men--as good a
man as ever stood on 'Change." And then Mr. Giles, warming with his
subject, enters at large into the history of the house. "You see, sir,"
says he, "the banking-house of Hobson Brothers, or Newcome Brothers, as
the partners of the firm really are, is not one of the leading banking
firms of the City of London, but a most respectable house of many years'
standing, and doing a most respectable business, especially in the
Dissenting connection." After the business came into the hands of the
Newcome Brothers, Hobson Newcome, Esq., and Sir Brian Newcome, Bart.,
M.P., Mr. Giles shows how a considerable West End connection was likewise
established, chiefly through the aristocratic friends and connections of
the above-named Bart.

But the best man of business, according to Mr. Giles, whom the firm of
Hobson Brothers ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than
her husband Sir T. Newcome, better than her sons and successors above
mentioned, was the famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome--of
whom might be said what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she
was sexu foemina, vir ingenio--in sex a woman, and in mind a man. Nor was
she, my informant told me, without even manly personal characteristics:
she had a very deep and gruff voice, and in her old age a beard which
many a young man might envy; and as she came into the bank out of her
carriage from Clapham, in her dark green pelisse with fur trimmings, in
her grey beaver hat, beaver gloves, and great gold spectacles, not a
clerk in that house did not tremble before her, and it was said she only
wanted a pipe in her mouth considerably to resemble the late
Field-Marshal Prince Blucher.

Her funeral was one of the most imposing sights ever witnessed in
Clapham. There was such a crowd you might have thought it was a
Derby-day. The carriages of some of the greatest City firms, and the
wealthiest Dissenting houses; several coaches full of ministers of all
denominations, including the Established Church; the carriage of the
Right Honourable the Earl of Kew, and that of his daughter, Lady Anne
Newcome, attended that revered lady's remains to their final
resting-place. No less than nine sermons were preached at various places
of public worship regarding her end. She fell upstairs at a very advanced
age, going from the library to the bedroom, after all the household was
gone to rest, and was found by the maids in the morning, inarticulate,
but still alive, her head being cut frightfully with the bedroom candle
with which she was retiring to her apartment. "And," said Mr. Giles with
great energy, "besides the empty carriages at that funeral, and the
parson in black, and the mutes and feathers and that, there were hundreds
and hundreds of people who wore no black, and who weren't present; and
who wept for their benefactress, I can tell you. She had her faults, and
many of 'em; but the amount of that woman's charities are unheard of,
sir--unheard of,--and they are put to the credit side of her account up
yonder.

"The old lady had a will of her own," my companion continued. "She would
try and know about everybody's business out of business hours: got to
know from the young clerks what chapels they went to, and from the
clergymen whether they attended regular; kept her sons, years after they
were grown men, as if they were boys at school--and what was the
consequence? They had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Newcome's own son, a
harum-scarum lad, who ran away, and then was sent to India; and, between
ourselves, Mr. Hobson and Mr. Brian both, the present Baronet, though at
home they were as mum as Quakers at a meeting, used to go out on the sly,
sir, and be off to the play, sir, and sowed their wild oats like any
other young men, sir, like any other young men. Law bless me, once, as I
was going away from the Haymarket, if I didn't see Mr. Hobson coming out
of the Opera, in tights and an opera-hat, sir, like 'Froggy would wooing
go,' of a Saturday-night, too, when his ma thought him safe in bed in the
City! I warrant he hadn't his opera-hat on when he went to chapel with
her ladyship the next morning--that very morning, as sure as my name's
John Giles.

"When the old lady was gone, Mr. Hobson had no need of any more
humbugging, but took his pleasure freely. Fighting, tandems,
four-in-hand, anything. He and his brother--his elder brother by a
quarter of an hour--were always very good friends; but after Mr. Brian
married, and there was only court-cards at his table, Mr. Hobson couldn't
stand it. They weren't of his suit, he said; and for some time he said he
wasn't a marrying man--quite the contrary; but we all come to our fate,
you know, and his time came as mine did. You know we married sisters? It
was thought a fine match for Polly Smith, when she married the great Mr.
Newcome; but I doubt whether my old woman at home hasn't had the best of
it, after all; and if ever you come Bernard Street way on a Sunday, about
six o'clock, and would like a slice of beef and a glass of port, I hope
you'll come and see us."

Do not let us be too angry with Colonel Newcome's two most respectable
brothers, if for some years they neglected their Indian relative, or held
him in slight esteem. Their mother never pardoned him, or at least by any
actual words admitted his restoration to favour. For many years, as far
as they knew, poor Tom was an unrepentant prodigal, wallowing in bad
company, and cut off from all respectable sympathy. Their father had
never had the courage to acquaint them with his more true, and kind, and
charitable version of Tom's story. So he passed at home for no better
than a black sheep; his marriage with a penniless young lady did not tend
to raise him in the esteem of his relatives at Clapham; it was not until
he was a widower, until he had been mentioned several times in the
Gazette for distinguished military service, until they began to speak
very well of him in Leadenhall Street, where the representatives of
Hobson Brothers were of course East India proprietors, and until he
remitted considerable sums of money to England, that the bankers his
brethren began to be reconciled to him.

I say, do not let us be hard upon them. No people are so ready to give a
man a bad name as his own kinsfolk; and having made him that present,
they are ever most unwilling to take it back again. If they give him
nothing else in the days of his difficulty, he may be sure of their pity,
and that he is held up as an example to his young cousins to avoid. If he
loses his money they call him poor fellow, and point morals out of him.
If he falls among thieves, the respectable Pharisees of his race turn
their heads aside and leave him penniless and bleeding. They clap him on
the back kindly enough when he returns, after shipwreck, with money in
his pocket. How naturally Joseph's brothers made salaams to him, and
admired him, and did him honour, when they found the poor outcast a prime
minister, and worth ever so much money! Surely human nature is not much
altered since the days of those primeval Jews. We would not thrust
brother Joseph down a well and sell him bodily, but--but if he has
scrambled out of a well of his own digging, and got out of his early
bondage into renown and credit, at least we applaud him and respect him,
and are proud of Joseph as a member of the family.

Little Clive was the innocent and lucky object upon whom the increasing
affection of the Newcomes for their Indian brother was exhibited. When he
was first brought home a sickly child, consigned to his maternal aunt,
the kind old maiden lady at Brighton, Hobson Brothers scarce took any
notice of the little man, but left him to the entire superintendence of his
own family. Then there came a large remittance from his father, and the
child was asked by Uncle Newcome at Christmas. Then his father's name was
mentioned in general orders, and Uncle Hobson asked little Clive at
Midsummer. Then Lord H., a late Governor-General, coming home, and
meeting the brothers at a grand dinner at the Albion, given by the Court
of Directors to his late Excellency, spoke to the bankers about that most
distinguished officer their relative; and Mrs. Hobson drove over to see
his aunt, where the boy was; gave him a sovereign out of her purse, and
advised strongly that he should be sent to Timpany's along wit her own
boy. Then Clive went from one uncle's house to another; and was liked at
both; and much preferred ponies to ride, going out after rabbits with the
keeper, money in his pocket (charge to the debit of Lieut.-Col. T.
Newcome), and clothes from the London tailor, to the homely quarters and
conversation of poor kind old Aunt Honeyman at Brighton. Clive's uncles
were not unkind; they liked each other; their wives, who hated each
other, united in liking Clive when they knew him, and petting the wayward
handsome boy: they were only pursuing the way of the world, which huzzas
all prosperity, and turns away from misfortune as from some contagious
disease. Indeed, how can we see a man's brilliant qualities if he is what
we call in the shade?

The gentlemen, Clive's uncles, who had their affairs to mind during the
day, society and the family to occupy them of evenings and holidays,
treated their young kinsman, the Indian Colonel's son, as other wealthy
British uncles treat other young kinsmen. They received him in his
vacations kindly enough. They tipped him when he went to school; when he
had the hooping-cough, a confidential young clerk went round by way of
Grey Friars Square to ask after him; the sea being recommended to him,
Mrs. Newcome gave him change of air in Sussex, and transferred him to his
maternal aunt at Brighton. Then it was bonjour. As the lodge-gates closed
upon him, Mrs. Newcome's heart shut up too and confined itself within the
firs, laurels, and palings which bound the home precincts. Had not she
her own children and affairs? her brood of fowls, her Sunday-school, her
melon-beds, her rose-garden, her quarrel with the parson, etc., to attend
to? Mr. Newcome, arriving on a Saturday night; hears he is gone, says
"Oh!" and begins to ask about the new gravel-walk along the cliff, and
whether it is completed, and if the China pig fattens kindly upon the new
feed.

Clive, in the avuncular gig, is driven over the downs to Brighton to his
maternal aunt there; and there he is a king. He has the best bedroom,
Uncle Honeyman turning out for him sweetbreads for dinner; no end of jam
for breakfast; excuses from church on the plea of delicate health; his
aunt's maid to see him to bed; his aunt to come smiling in when he rings
his bell of a morning. He is made much of, and coaxed, and dandled and
fondled, as if he were a young duke. So he is to Miss Honeyman. He is the
son of Colonel Newcome, C.B., who sends her shawls, ivory chessmen,
scented sandalwood workboxes and kincob scarfs; who, as she tells Martha
the maid, has fifty servants in India; at which Martha constantly
exclaims, "Lor', mum, what can he do with 'em, mum?" who, when in
consequence of her misfortunes she resolved on taking a house at
Brighton, and letting part of the same furnished, sent her an order for a
hundred pounds towards the expenses thereof; who gave Mr. Honeyman, her
brother, a much larger sum of money at the period of his calamity. Is it
gratitude for past favours? is it desire for more? is it vanity of
relationship? is it love for the dead sister--or tender regard for her
offspring which makes Mrs. Martha Honeyman so fond of her nephew? I never
could count how many causes went to produce any given effect or action in
a person's life, and have been for my own part many a time quite misled
in my own case, fancying some grand, some magnanimous, some virtuous
reason, for an act of which I was proud, when lo! some pert little
satirical monitor springs up inwardly, upsetting the fond humbug which I
was cherishing--the peacock's tail wherein my absurd vanity had clad
itself--and says, "Away with this boasting! I am the cause of your
virtue, my lad. You are pleased that yesterday at dinner you refrained
from the dry champagne? My name is Worldly Prudence, not Self-denial, and
I caused you to refrain. You are pleased because you gave a guinea to
Diddler? I am Laziness, not Generosity, which inspired you. You hug
yourself because you resisted other temptation? Coward! it was because
you dared not run the risk of the wrong. Out with your peacock's plumage!
walk off in the feathers which Nature gave you, and thank Heaven they are
not altogether black." In a word, Aunt Honeyman was a kind soul, and such
was the splendour of Clive's father, of his gifts, his generosity, his
military services, and companionship of the battles, that the lad did
really appear a young duke to her. And Mrs. Newcome was not unkind: and
if Clive had been really a young duke, I am sure he would have had the
best bedroom at Marble Hill, and not one of the far-off little rooms in
the boys' wing; I am sure he would have had jellies and Charlottes
Russes, instead of mere broth, chicken, and batter-pudding, as fell to
his lot; and when he was gone (in the carriage, mind you, not in the gig
driven by a groom), I am sure Mrs. Newcome would have written a letter
that night to Her Grace the Duchess Dowager his mamma, full of praise of
the dear child, his graciousness, his beauty, and his wit, and declaring
that she must love him henceforth and for ever after as a son of her own.
You toss down the page with scorn, and say, "It is not true. Human nature
is not so bad as this cynic would have it to be. You would make no
difference between the rich and the poor." Be it so. You would not. But
own that your next-door neighbour would. Nor is this, dear madam,
addressed to you; no, no, we are not so rude as to talk about you to your
face; but if we may not speak of the lady who has just left the room,
what is to become of conversation and society?

We forbear to describe the meeting between the Colonel and his son--the
pretty boy from whom he had parted more than seven years before with such
pangs of heart; and of whom he had thought ever since with such a
constant longing affection. Half an hour after the father left the boy,
and in his grief and loneliness was rowing back to shore, Clive was at
play with a dozen of other children on the sunny deck of the ship. When
two bells rang for their dinner, they were all hurrying to the cuddy
table, and busy over their meal. What a sad repast their parents had that
day! How their hearts followed the careless young ones home across the
great ocean! Mothers' prayers go with them. Strong men, alone on their
knees, with streaming eyes and broken accents, implore Heaven for those
little ones, who were prattling at their sides but a few hours since.
Long after they are gone, careless and happy, recollections of the sweet
past rise up and smite those who remain: the flowers they had planted in
their little gardens, the toys they played with, the little vacant cribs
they slept in as fathers' eyes looked blessings down on them. Most of us
who have passed a couple of score of years in the world, have had such
sights as these to move us. And those who have will think none the worse
of my worthy Colonel for his tender and faithful heart.

With that fidelity which was an instinct of his nature, this brave man
thought ever of his absent child, and longed after him. He never forsook
the native servants and nurses who had had charge of the child, but
endowed them with money sufficient (and indeed little was wanted by
people of that frugal race) to make all their future lives comfortable.
No friends went to Europe, nor ship departed, but Newcome sent presents
and remembrances to the boy, and costly tokens of his love and thanks to
all who were kind to his son. What a strange pathos seems to me to
accompany all our Indian story! Besides that official history which fills
Gazettes, and embroiders banners with names of victory; which gives
moralists and enemies cause to cry out at English rapine; and enables
patriots to boast of invincible British valour--besides the splendour and
conquest, the wealth and glory, the crowned ambition, the conquered
danger, the vast prize, and the blood freely shed in winning it--should
not one remember the tears, too? Besides the lives of myriads of British
men, conquering on a hundred fields, from Plassey to Meanee, and bathing
them cruore nostro: think of the women, and the tribute which they
perforce must pay to those victorious achievements. Scarce a soldier goes
to yonder shores but leaves a home and grief in it behind him. The lords
of the subject province find wives there; but their children cannot live
on the soil. The parents bring their children to the shore, and part from
them. The family must be broken up--keep the flowers of your home beyond
a certain time, and the sickening buds wither and die. In America it is
from the breast of a poor slave that a child is taken. In India it is
from the wife, and from under the palace, of a splendid proconsul.

The experience of this grief made Newcome's naturally kind heart only the
more tender, and hence he had a weakness for children which made him the
laughing-stock of old maids, old bachelors, and sensible persons; but the
darling of all nurseries, to whose little inhabitants he was uniformly
kind: were they the collectors' progeny in their palanquins, or the
sergeants' children tumbling about the cantonment, or the dusky little
heathens in the huts of his servants round his gate.

It is known that there is no part of the world where ladies are more
fascinating than in British India. Perhaps the warmth of the sun kindles
flames in the hearts of both sexes, which would probably beat quite
coolly in their native air: else why should Miss Brown be engaged ten
days after her landing at Calcutta? or why should Miss Smith have half a
dozen proposals before she has been a week at the station? And it is not
only bachelors on whom the young ladies confer their affections; they
will take widowers without any difficulty; and a man so generally liked
as Major Newcome, with such a good character, with a private fortune of
his own, so chivalrous, generous, good-looking, eligible in a word, you
may be sure would have found a wife easily enough, had he any mind for
replacing the late Mrs. Casey.

The Colonel, as has been stated, had an Indian chum or companion, with
whom he shared his lodgings; and from many jocular remarks of this latter
gentleman (who loved good jokes, and uttered not a few) I could gather
that the honest widower Colonel Newcome had been often tempted to alter
his condition, and that the Indian ladies had tried numberless attacks
upon his bereaved heart, and devised endless schemes of carrying it by
assault, treason, or other mode of capture. Mrs. Casey (his defunct wife)
had overcome it by sheer pity and helplessness. He had found her so
friendless, that he took her into the vacant place, and installed her
there as he would have received a traveller into his bungalow. He divided
his meal with her, and made her welcome to his best. "I believe Tom
Newcome married her," sly Mr. Binnie used to say, "in order that he might
have permission to pay her milliner's bills;" and in this way he was
amply gratified until the day of her death. A feeble miniature of the
lady, with yellow ringlets and a guitar, hung over the mantelpiece of the
Colonel's bedchamber, where I have often seen that work of art; and
subsequently, when he and Mr. Binnie took a house, there was hung up in
the spare bedroom a companion portrait to the miniature--that of the
Colonel's predecessor, Jack Casey, who in life used to fling plates at
his Emma's head, and who perished from a fatal attachment to the bottle.
I am inclined to think that Colonel Newcome was not much cast down by the
loss of his wife, and that they lived but indifferently together. Clive
used to say in his artless way that his father scarcely ever mentioned
his mother's name; and no doubt the union was not happy, although Newcome
continued piously to acknowledge it, long after death had brought it to a
termination, by constant benefactions and remembrances to the departed
lady's kindred.

Those widows or virgins who endeavoured to fill Emma's place found the
door of Newcombe's heart fast and barred, and assailed it in vain. Miss
Billing sat down before it with her piano, and, as the Colonel was a
practitioner on the flute, hoped to make all life one harmonious duet
with him; but she played her most brilliant sonatas and variations in
vain; and, as everybody knows, subsequently carried her grand piano to
Lieutenant and Adjutant Hodgkin's house, whose name she now bears. The
lovely widow Wilkins, with two darling little children, stopped at
Newcome's hospitable house, on her way to Calcutta; and it was thought
she might never leave it; but her kind host, as was his wont, crammed her
children with presents and good things, consoled and entertained the fair
widow, and one morning, after she had remained three months at the
station, the Colonel's palanquins and bearers made their appearance, and
Elvira Wilkins went away weeping as a widow should. Why did she abuse
Newcome ever after at Calcutta, Bath, Cheltenham, and wherever she went,
calling him selfish, pompous, Quixotic, and a Bahawder? I could mention
half a dozen other names of ladies of most respectable families connected
with Leadenhall Street, who, according to Colonel Newcome's chum--that
wicked Mr. Binnie--had all conspired more or less to give Clive Newcome a
stepmother.

But he had had an unlucky experience in his own case; and thought within
himself, "No, I won't give Clive a stepmother. As Heaven has taken his
own mother from him, why, I must try to be father and mother too to the
lad." He kept the child as long as ever the climate would allow of his
remaining, and then sent him home. Then his aim was to save money for the
youngster. He was of a nature so uncontrollably generous, that to be sure
he spent five rupees where another would save them, and make a fine show
besides; but it is not a man's gifts or hospitalities that generally
injure his fortune. It is on themselves that prodigals spend most. And as
Newcome had no personal extravagances, and the smallest selfish wants;
could live almost as frugally as a Hindoo; kept his horses not to race
but to ride; wore his old clothes and uniforms until they were the
laughter of his regiment; did not care for show, and had no longer an
extravagant wife; he managed to lay by considerably out of his liberal
allowances, and to find himself and Clive growing richer every year.

"When Clive has had five or six years at school"--that was his scheme--
"he will be a fine scholar, and have at least as much classical learning
as a gentleman in the world need possess. Then I will go to England, and
we will pass three or four years together, in which he will learn to be
intimate with me, and, I hope, to like me. I shall be his pupil for Latin
and Greek, and try and make up for lost time. I know there is nothing
like a knowledge of the classics to give a man good breeding--Ingenuas
didicisse fideliter artes emollunt mores, nec sinuisse feros. I shall be
able to help him with my knowledge of the world, and to keep him out of
the way of sharpers and a pack of rogues who commonly infest young men. I
will make myself his companion, and pretend to no superiority; for,
indeed, isn't he my superior? Of course he is, with his advantages. He
hasn't been an idle young scamp as I was. And we will travel together,
first through England, Scotland, and Ireland, for every man should know
his own country, and then we will make the grand tour. Then, by the time
he is eighteen, he will be able to choose his profession. He can go into
the army, and emulate the glorious man after whom I named him; or if he
prefers the church, or the law, they are open to him; and when he goes to
the university, by which time I shall be in all probability a
major-general, I can come back to India for a few years, and return by
the time he has a wife and a home for his old father; or if I die I shall
have done the best for him, and my boy will be left with the best
education, a tolerable small fortune, and the blessing of his old
father."

Such were the plans of our kind schemer. How fondly he dwelt on them, how
affectionately he wrote of them to his boy! How he read books of travels
and looked over the maps of Europe! and said, "Rome, sir, glorious Rome;
it won't be very long, Major, before my boy and I see the Colosseum, and
kiss the Pope's toe. We shall go up the Rhine to Switzerland, and over
the Simplon, the work of the great Napoleon. By Jove, sir, think of the
Turks before Vienna, and Sobieski clearing eighty thousand of 'em off the
face of the earth! How my boy will rejoice in the picture-galleries
there, and in Prince Eugene's prints! You know, I suppose, that Prince
Eugene, one of the greatest generals in the world, was also one of the
greatest lovers of the fine arts. Ingenuas didicisse, hey, Doctor! you
know the rest,--emollunt mores nec----"

"Emollunt mores! Colonel," says Doctor McTaggart, who perhaps was too
canny to correct the commanding officer's Latin. "Don't ye noo that
Prence Eugene was about as savage a Turrk as iver was? Have ye niver rad
the mimores of the Prants de Leen?"

"Well, he was a great cavalry officer," answers the Colonel, "and he left
a great collection of prints--that you know. How Clive will delight in
them! The boy's talent for drawing is wonderful, sir, wonderful. He sent
me a picture of our old school--the very actual thing, sir; the
cloisters, the school, the head gown-boy going in with the rods, and the
Doctor himself. It would make you die of laughing!"

He regaled the ladies of the regiment with Clive's letters, and those of
Miss Honeyman, which contained an account of the boy. He even bored some
of his bearers with this prattle; and sporting young men would give or
take odds that the Colonel would mention Clive's name, once before five
minutes, three times in ten minutes, twenty-five times in the course of
dinner, and so on. But they who laughed at the Colonel laughed very
kindly; and everybody who knew him, loved him; everybody, that is, who
loved modesty, and generosity, and honour.

At last the happy time came for which the kind father had been longing
more passionately than any prisoner for liberty, or schoolboy for
holiday. Colonel Newcome has taken leave of his regiment, leaving Major
Tomkinson, nothing loth, in command. He has travelled to Calcutta; and
the Commander-in-Chief, in general orders, has announced that in giving
to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Newcome, C.B., of the Bengal Cavalry, leave
for the first time, after no less than thirty-four years' absence from
home, "he (Sir George Hustler) cannot refrain from expressing his sense
of the great and meritorious services of this most distinguished officer,
who has left his regiment in a state of the highest discipline and
efficiency." And now the ship has sailed, the voyage is over, and once
more, after so many long years, the honest soldier's foot is on his
native shore.




CHAPTER VI

Newcome Brothers


Besides his own boy, whom he worshipped, this kind Colonel had a score,
at least, of adopted children, to whom he chose to stand in the light of
a father. He was for ever whirling away in postchaises to this school and
that, to see Jack Brown's boys, of the Cavalry; or Mrs. Smith's girls, of
the Civil Service; or poor Tom Hicks's orphan, who had nobody to look
after him now that the cholera had carried off Tom, and his wife too. On
board the ship in which he returned from Calcutta were a dozen of little
children, of both sexes, some of whom he actually escorted to their
friends before he visited his own; and though his heart was longing for
his boy at Grey Friars. The children at the schools seen, and largely
rewarded out of his bounty (his loose white trousers had great pockets,
always heavy with gold and silver, which he jingled when he was not
pulling his mustachios--to see the way in which he tipped children made
one almost long to be a boy again); and when he had visited Miss
Pinkerton's establishment, or Doctor Ramshorn's adjoining academy at
Chiswick, and seen little Tom Davis or little Fanny Holmes the honest
fellow would come home and write off straightway a long letter to Tom's
or Fanny's parents, far away in the Indian country, whose hearts he made
happy by his accounts of their children, as he had delighted the children
themselves by his affection and bounty. All the apple- and orange-women
(especially such as had babies as well as lollipops at their stalls), all
the street-sweepers on the road between Nerot's and the Oriental, knew
him, and were his pensioners. His brothers in Threadneedle Street cast up
their eyes at the cheques which he drew.

One of the little people of whom the kind Newcome had taken charge
luckily dwelt near Portsmouth; and when the faithful Colonel consigned
Miss Fipps to her grandmother, Mrs. Admiral Fipps, at Southampton, Miss
Fipps clung to her guardian, and with tears and howls was torn away from
him. Not until her maiden aunts had consoled her with strawberries, which
she never before had tasted, was the little Indian comforted for the
departure of her dear Colonel. Master Cox, Tom Cox's boy, of the Native
Infantry, had to be carried asleep from the "George" to the mail that
night. Master Cox woke up at the dawn wondering, as the coach passed
through the pleasant green roads of Bromley. The good gentleman consigned
the little chap to his uncle, Dr. Cox, Bloomsbury Square, before he went
to his own quarters, and then on the errand on which his fond heart was
bent.

He had written to his brothers from Portsmouth, announcing his arrival,
and three words to Clive, conveying the same intelligence. The letter was
served to the boy along with one bowl of tea and one buttered roll, of
eighty such which were distributed to fourscore other boys, boarders of
the same house with our young friend. How the lad's face must have
flushed, and his eyes brightened, when he read the news! When the master
of the house, the Rev. Mr. Popkinson, came into the long-room, with a
good-natured face, and said, "Newcome, you're wanted," he knows who is
come. He does not heed that notorious bruiser, Old Hodge, who roars out,
"Confound you, Newcome: I'll give it you for upsetting your tea over my
new trousers." He runs to the room where the stranger is waiting for him.
We will shut the door, if you please, upon that scene.

If Clive had not been as fine and handsome a young lad as any in that
school or country, no doubt his fond father would have been just as well
pleased, and endowed him with a hundred fanciful graces; but in truth, in
looks and manners he was every thing which his parent could desire; and I
hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to
his portrait. Mr. Clive himself, let that painter be assured, will not be
too well pleased if his countenance and figure do not receive proper
attention. He is not yet endowed with those splendid mustachios and
whiskers which he has himself subsequently depicted, but he is the
picture of health, strength, activity, and good-humour. He has a good
forehead, shaded with a quantity of waving light hair; a complexion which
ladies might envy; a mouth which seems accustomed to laughing; and a pair
of blue eyes that sparkle with intelligence and frank kindness. No wonder
the pleased father cannot refrain from looking at him. He is, in a word,
just such a youth as has a right to be the hero of a novel.

The bell rings for second school, and Mr. Popkinson, arrayed in cap and
gown, comes in to shake Colonel Newcome by the hand, and to say he
supposes it's to be a holiday for Newcome that day. He does not say a
word about Clive's scrape of the day before, and that awful row in the
bedrooms, where the lad and three others were discovered making a supper
off a pork-pie and two bottles of prime old port from the Red Cow
public-house in Grey Friars Lane. When the bell has done ringing, and all
these busy little bees have swarmed into their hive, there is a solitude
in the place. The Colonel and his son walked the playground together,
that gravelly flat, as destitute of herbage as the Arabian desert, but,
nevertheless, in the language of the place called the green. They walk
the green, and they pace the cloisters, and Clive shows his father his
own name of Thomas Newcome carved upon one of the arches forty years ago.
As they talk, the boy gives sidelong glances at his new friend, and
wonders at the Colonel's loose trousers, long mustachios, and yellow
face. He looks very odd, Clive thinks, very odd and very kind, and he
looks like a gentleman, every inch of him:--not like Martin's father, who
came to see his son lately in high-lows, and a shocking bad hat, and
actually flung coppers amongst the boys for a scramble. He bursts out
a-laughing at the exquisitely ludicrous idea of a gentleman of his
fashion scrambling for coppers.

And now, enjoining the boy to be ready against his return (and you may be
sure Mr. Clive was on the look-out long before his sire appeared), the
Colonel whirled away in his cab to the City to shake hands with his
brothers, whom he had not seen since they were demure little men in blue
jackets, under charge of a serious tutor.

He rushed through the clerks and the banking-house, he broke into the
parlour where the lords of the establishment were seated. He astonished
those trim quiet gentlemen by the warmth of his greeting, by the vigour
of his hand-shake, and the loud high tones of his voice, which penetrated
the glass walls of the parlour, and might actually be heard by the busy
clerks in the hall without. He knew Brian from Hobson at once--that
unlucky little accident in the go-cart having left its mark for ever on
the nose of Sir Brian Newcome, the elder of the twins. Sir Brian had a
bald head and light hair, a short whisker cut to his cheek, a buff
waistcoat, very neat boots and hands. He looked like the "Portrait of a
Gentleman" at the Exhibition, as the worthy is represented: dignified in
attitude, bland, smiling, and statesmanlike, sitting at a table unsealing
letters, with a despatch-box and a silver inkstand before him, a column
and a scarlet curtain behind, and a park in the distance, with a great
thunderstorm lowering in the sky. Such a portrait, in fact, hangs over
the great sideboard at Newcome to this day, and above the three great
silver waiters, which the gratitude of as many Companies has presented to
their respected director and chairman.

In face, Hobson Newcome, Esq., was like his elder brother, but was more
portly in person. He allowed his red whiskers to grow wherever nature had
planted them, on his cheeks and under his chin. He wore thick shoes with
nails in them, or natty round-toed boots, with tight trousers and a
single strap. He affected the country gentleman in his appearance. His
hat had a broad brim, and the ample pockets of his cut-away coat were
never destitute of agricultural produce, samples of beans or corn, which
he used to bite and chew even on 'Change, or a whip-lash, or balls for
horses: in fine, he was a good old country gentleman. If it was fine in
Threadneedle Street, he would say it was good weather for the hay; if it
rained, the country wanted rain; if it was frosty, "No hunting to-day,
Tomkins, my boy," and so forth. As he rode from Bryanstone Square to the
City you would take him--and he was pleased to be so taken--for a jolly
country squire. He was a better man of business than his more solemn and
stately brother, at whom he laughed in his jocular way; and he said
rightly, that a gentleman must get up very early in the morning who
wanted to take him in.

The Colonel breaks into the sanctum of these worthy gentlemen; and each
receives him in a manner consonant with his peculiar nature. Sir Brian
regretted that Lady Anne was away from London, being at Brighton with the
children, who were all ill of the measles. Hobson said, "Maria can't
treat you to such good company as my lady could give you, but when will
you take a day and come and dine with us? Let's see, to-day's Wednesday;
to-morrow we've a party. No, we're engaged." He meant that his table was
full, and that he did not care to crowd it; but there was no use in
imparting this circumstance to the Colonel. "Friday, we dine at Judge
Budge's--queer name, Judge Budge, ain't it? Saturday, I'm going down to
Marblehead, to look after the hay. Come on Monday, Tom, and I'll
introduce you to the missus and the young 'uns."

"I will bring Clive," says Colonel Newcome, rather disturbed at this
reception. "After his illness my sister-in-law was very kind to him."

"No, hang it, don't bring boys; there's no good in boys; they stop the
talk downstairs, and the ladies don't want 'em in the drawing-room. Send
him to dine with the children on Sunday, if you like, and come along down
with me to Marblehead, and I'll show you such a crop of hay as will make
your eyes open. Are you fond of farming?"

"I have not seen my boy for years," says the Colonel; "I had rather pass
Saturday and Sunday with him, if you please, and some day we will go to
Marblehead together."

"Well, an offer's an offer. I don't know any pleasanter thing than
getting out of this confounded City and smelling the hedges, and looking
at the crops coming up, and passing the Sunday in quiet." And his own
tastes being thus agricultural, the honest gentleman thought that
everybody else must delight in the same recreation.

"In the winter, I hope we shall see you at Newcome," says the elder
brother, blandly smiling. "I can't give you any tiger-shooting, but I'll
promise you that you shall find plenty of pheasants in our jungle," and
he laughed very gently at this mild sally.

The Colonel gave him a queer look. "I shall be at Newcome before the
winter. I shall be there, please God, before many days are over."

"Indeed!" says the Baronet, with an air of great surprise. "You are going
down to look at the cradle of our race. I believe the Newcomes were there
before the Conqueror. It was but a village in our grandfather's time, and
it is an immense flourishing town now, for which I hope to get--I expect
to get--a charter."

"Do you?" says the Colonel. "I am going down there to see a relation."

"A relation! What relatives have we there?" cries the Baronet. "My
children, with the exception of Barnes. Barnes, this is your uncle
Colonel Thomas Newcome. I have great pleasure, brother, in introducing
you to my eldest son."

A fair-haired young gentleman, languid and pale, and arrayed in the very
height of fashion, made his appearance at this juncture in the parlour,
and returned Colonel Newcome's greeting with a smiling acknowledgment of
his own. "Very happy to see you, I'm sure," said the young man. "You find
London very much changed since you were here? Very good time to come--the
very full of the season."

Poor Thomas Newcome was quite abashed by this strange reception. Here was
a man, hungry for affection, and one relation asked him to dinner next
Monday, and another invited him to shoot pheasants at Christmas. Here was
a beardless young sprig, who patronised him, and vouchsafed to ask him
whether he found London was changed.

"I don't know whether it's changed," says the Colonel, biting his nails;
"I know it's not what I expected to find it."

"To-day it's really as hot as I should thing it must be in India," says
young Mr. Barnes Newcome.

"Hot!" says the Colonel, with a grin. "It seems to me you are all cool
enough here."

"Just what Sir Thomas de Boots said, sir," says Barnes, turning round to
his father. "Don't you remember when he came home from Bombay? I
recollect his saying, at Lady Featherstone's, one dooced hot night, as it
seemed to us; I recklect his saying that he felt quite cold. Did you know
him in India, Colonel Newcome? He's liked at the Horse Guards, but he's
hated in his regiment."

Colonel Newcome here growled a wish regarding the ultimate fate of Sir
Thomas de Boots, which we trust may never be realised by that
distinguished cavalry officer.

"My brother says he's going to Newcome, Barnes, next week," said the
Baronet, wishing to make the conversation more interesting to the newly
arrived Colonel. "He was saying so just when you came in, and I was
asking him what took him there?"

"Did you ever hear of Sarah Mason?" says the Colonel.

"Really, I never did," the Baronet answered.

"Sarah Mason? No, upon my word, I don't think I ever did, said the young
man.

"Well, that's a pity too," the Colonel said, with a sneer. "Mrs. Mason is
a relation of yours--at least by marriage. She is my aunt or cousin--I
used to call her aunt, and she and my father and mother all worked in the
same mill at Newcome together."

"I remember--God bless my soul--I remember now!" cried the Baronet. "We
pay her forty pound a year on your account--don't you know, brother? Look
to Colonel Newcome's account--I recollect the name quite well. But I
thought she had been your nurse, and--and an old servant of my father's."

"So she was my nurse, and an old servant of my father's," answered the
Colonel. "But she was my mother's cousin too and very lucky was my mother
to have such a servant, or to have a servant at all. There is not in the
whole world a more faithful creature or a better woman."

Mr. Hobson rather enjoyed his brother's perplexity, and to see when the
Baronet rode the high horse, how he came down sometimes, "I am sure it
does you very great credit," gasped the courtly head of the firm, "to
remember a--a humble friend and connexion of our father's so well."

"I think, brother, you might have recollected her too," the Colonel
growled out. His face was blushing; he was quite angry and hurt at what
seemed to him Sir Brian's hardness of heart.

"Pardon me if I don't see the necessity," said Sir Brian. "I have no
relationship with Mrs. Mason, and do not remember ever having seen her.
Can I do anything for you, brother? Can I be useful to you in any way?
Pray command me and Barnes here, who after City hours will be delighted
if he can be serviceable to you--I am nailed to this counter all the
morning, and to the House of Commons all night;--I will be with you in
one moment, Mr. Quilter. Good-bye, my dear Colonel. How well India has
agreed with you! how young you look! the hot winds are nothing to what we
endure in Parliament.--Hobson," in a low voice, "you saw about that h'm,
that power of attorney--and h'm and h'm will call here at twelve about
that h'm.--I am sorry I must say good-bye--it seems so hard after not
meeting for so many years."

"Very," says the Colonel.

"Mind and send for me whenever you want me, now."

"Oh, of course," said the elder brother, and thought when will that ever
be!

"Lady Anne will be too delighted at hearing of your arrival. Give my love
to Clive--a remarkable fine boy, Clive--good morning:" and the Baronet
was gone, and his bald head might presently be seen alongside of Mr.
Quilter's confidential grey poll, both of their faces turned into an
immense ledger.

Mr. Hobson accompanied the Colonel to the door, and shook him cordially
by the hand as he got into his cab. The man asked whither be should
drive? and poor Newcome hardly knew where he was or whither he should go.
"Drive! a--oh--ah--damme, drive me anywhere away from this place!" was
all he could say; and very likely the cabman thought he was a
disappointed debtor who had asked in vain to renew a bill. In fact,
Thomas Newcome had overdrawn his little account. There was no such
balance of affection in that bank of his brothers, as the simple creature
had expected to find there.

When he was gone, Sir Brian went back to his parlour, where sate young
Barnes perusing the paper. "My revered uncle seems to have brought back a
quantity of cayenne pepper from India, sir," he said to his father.

"He seems a very kind-hearted simple man," the Baronet said "eccentric,
but he has been more than thirty years away from home. Of course you will
call upon him to-morrow morning. Do everything you can to make him
comfortable. Whom would he like to meet at dinner? I will ask some of the
Direction. Ask him, Barnes, for next Wednesday or Saturday--no; Saturday
I dine with the Speaker. But see that every attention is paid him."

"Does he intend to have our relation up to town, sir? I should like to
meet Mrs. Mason of all things. A venerable washerwoman, I daresay, or
perhaps keeps a public-house," simpered out young Barnes.

"Silence, Barnes; you jest at everything, you young men do--you do.
Colonel Newcome's affection for his old nurse does him the greatest
honour," said the Baronet, who really meant what he said.

"And I hope my mother will have her to stay a good deal at Newcome. I'm
sure she must have been a washerwoman, and mangled my uncle in early
life. His costume struck me with respectful astonishment. He disdains the
use of straps to his trousers, and is seemingly unacquainted with gloves.
If he had died in India, would my late aunt have had to perish on a
funeral pile?" Here Mr. Quilter, entering with a heap of bills, put an
end to these sarcastic remarks, and young Newcome, applying himself to
his business (of which he was a perfect master), forgot about his uncle
till after City hours, when he entertained some young gentlemen of Bays's
Club with an account of his newly arrived relative.

Towards the City, whither he wended his way whatever had been the ball or
the dissipation of the night before, young Barnes Newcome might be seen
walking every morning, resolutely and swiftly, with his neat umbrella. As
he passed Charing Cross on his way westwards, his little boots trailed
slowly over the pavement, his head hung languid (bending lower still, and
smiling with faded sweetness as he doffed his hat and saluted a passing
carriage), his umbrella trailed after him. Not a dandy on all the Pall
Mall pavement seemed to have less to do than he.

Heavyside, a large young officer of the household troops--old Sir Thomas
de Boots--and Horace Fogey, whom every one knows--are in the window of
Bays's, yawning as widely as that window itself. Horses under the charge
of men in red jackets are pacing up and down St. James's Street. Cabmen
on the stand are regaling with beer. Gentlemen with grooms behind them
pass towards the Park. Great dowager barouches roll along emblazoned with
coronets, and driven by coachmen in silvery wigs. Wistful provincials
gaze in at the clubs. Foreigners chatter and show their teeth, and look
at the ladies in the carriages, and smoke and spit refreshingly round
about. Policeman X slouches along the pavement. It is five o'clock, the
noon in Pall Mall.

"Here's little Newcome coming," says Mr. Horace Fogey. "He and the
muffin-man generally make their appearance in public together."

"Dashed little prig," says Sir Thomas de Boots, "why the dash did they
ever let him in here? If I hadn't been in India, by dash--he should have
been blackballed twenty times over, by dash." Only Sir Thomas used words
far more terrific than dash, for this distinguished cavalry officer swore
very freely.

"He amuses me; he's such a mischievous little devil," says good-natured
Charley Heavyside.

"It takes very little to amuse you," remarks Fogey.

"You don't, Fogey," answers Charley. "I know every one of your demd old
stories, that are as old as my grandmother. How-dy-do, Barney?" (Enter
Barnes Newcome.) "How are the Three per Cents, you little beggar? I wish
you'd do me a bit of stiff; and just tell your father, if I may overdraw
my account I'll vote with him--hanged if I don't."

Barnes orders absinthe-and-water, and drinks: Heavyside resuming his
elegant raillery. "I say, Barney, your name's Barney, and you're a
banker. You must be a little Jew, hey? Vell, how mosh vill you to my
little pill for?"

"Do hee-haw in the House of Commons, Heavyside," says the young man with
a languid air. "That's your place: you're returned for it." (Captain the
Honourable Charles Heavyside is a member of the legislature, and eminent
in the House for asinine imitations which delight his own, and confuse
the other party.) "Don't bray here. I hate the shop out of shop hours."

"Dash the little puppy," growls Sir de Boots, swelling in his waistband.

"What do they say about the Russians in the City?" says Horace Fogey, who
has been in the diplomatic service. "Has the fleet left Cronstadt, or has
it not?"

"How should I know?" asks Barney. "Ain't it all in the evening paper?"

"That is very uncomfortable news from India, General," resumes Fogey--
"there's Lady Doddington's carriage, how well she looks--that movement of
Runjeet-Singh on Peshawur: that fleet on the Irrawaddy. It looks doocid
queer, let me tell you, and Penguin is not the man to be Governor-General
of India in a time of difficulty."

"And Hustler's not the man to be Commander-in-Chief: dashder old fool
never lived: a dashed old psalm-singing, blundering old woman," says Sir
Thomas, who wanted the command himself.

"You ain't in the psalm-singing line, Sir Thomas," says Mr. Barnes;
"quite the contrary." In fact, Sir de Boots in his youth used to sing
with the Duke of York, and even against Captain Costigan, but was beaten
by that superior bacchanalian artist.

Sir Thomas looks as if to ask what the dash is that to you? but wanting
still to go to India again, and knowing how strong the Newcomes are in
Leadenhall Street, he thinks it necessary to be civil to the young cub,
and swallows his wrath once more into his waistband.

"I've got an uncle come home from India--upon my word I have," says
Barnes Newcome. "That is why I am so exhausted. I am going to buy him a
pair of gloves, number fourteen--and I want a tailor for him--not a young
man's tailor. Fogey's tailor rather. I'd take my father's; but he has all
his things made in the country--all--in the borough, you know--he's a
public man."

"Is Colonel Newcome, of the Bengal Cavalry, your uncle?" asks Sir Thomas
de Boots.

"Yes; will you come and meet him at dinner next Wednesday week, Sir
Thomas? and, Fogey, you come; you know you like a good dinner. You don't
know anything against my uncle, do you, Sir Thomas? Have I any
Brahminical cousins? Need we be ashamed of him?"

"I tell you what, young man, if you were more like him it wouldn't hurt
you. He's an odd man; they call him Don Quixote in India; I suppose
you've read Don Quixote?"

"Never heard of it, upon my word; and why do you wish I should be more
like him? I don't wish to be like him at all, thank you."

"Why, because he is one of the bravest officers that ever lived," roared
out the old soldier. "Because he's one of the kindest fellows; because he
gives himself no dashed airs, although he has reason to be proud if he
chose. That's why, Mr. Newcome."

"A topper for you, Barney, my boy," remarks Charles Heavyside, as the
indignant General walks away gobbling and red. Barney calmly drinks the
remains of his absinthe.

"I don't know what that old muff means," he says innocently, when he has
finished his bitter draught. "He's always flying out at me, the old
turkey-cock. He quarrels with my play at whist, the old idiot, and can no
more play than an old baby. He pretends to teach me billiards, and I'll
give him fifteen in twenty and beat his old head off. Why do they let
such fellows into clubs? Let's have a game at piquet till dinner,
Heavyside. Hallo! That's my uncle, that tall man with the mustachios and
the short trousers, walking with that boy of his. I dare say they are
going to dine in Covent Garden, and going to the play. How-dy-do,
Nunky?"--and so the worthy pair went up to the card-room, where they sate
at piquet until the hour of sunset and dinner arrived.




CHAPTER VII

In which Mr. Clive's School-days are over


Our good Colonel had luckily to look forward to a more pleasant meeting
with his son, than that unfortunate interview with his other near
relatives. He dismissed his cab at Ludgate Hill, and walked thence by the
dismal precincts of Newgate, and across the muddy pavement of Smithfield,
on his way back to the old school where his son was, a way which he had
trodden many a time in his own early days. There was Cistercian Street,
and the Red Cow of his youth: there was the quaint old Grey Friars
Square, with its blackened trees and garden, surrounded by ancient houses
of the build of the last century, now slumbering like pensioners in the
sunshine.

Under the great archway of the hospital he could look at the old Gothic
building: and a black-gowned pensioner or two crawling over the quiet
square, or passing from one dark arch to another. The boarding-houses of
the school were situated in the square, hard by the more ancient
buildings of the hospital. A great noise of shouting, crying, clapping
forms and cupboards, treble voices, bass voices, poured out of the
schoolboys' windows: their life, bustle, and gaiety contrasted strangely
with the quiet of those old men creeping along in their black gowns under
the ancient arches yonder, whose struggle of life was over, whose hope
and noise and bustle had sunk into that grey calm. There was Thomas
Newcome arrived at the middle of life, standing between the shouting boys
and the tottering seniors, and in a situation to moralise upon both, had
not his son Clive, who has espied him from within Mr. Hopkinson's, or let
us say at once Hopkey's house, come jumping down the steps to greet his
sire. Clive was dressed in his very best; not one of those four hundred
young gentlemen had a better figure, a better tailor, or a neater boot.
Schoolfellows, grinning through the bars, envied him as he walked away;
senior boys made remarks on Colonel Newcome's loose clothes and long
mustachios, his brown hands and unbrushed hat. The Colonel was smoking a
cheroot as he walked; and the gigantic Smith, the cock of the school, who
happened to be looking majestically out of window, was pleased to say
that he thought Newcome's governor was a fine manly-looking fellow.

"Tell me about your uncles, Clive," said the Colonel, as they walked on
arm in arm.

"What about them, sir?" asks the boy. "I don't think I know much."

"You have been to stay with them. You wrote about them. Were they kind to
you?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose they are very kind. They always tipped me: only you
know when I go there I scarcely ever see them. Mr. Newcome asks me the
oftenest--two or three times a quarter when he's in town, and gives me a
sovereign regular."

"Well, he must see you to give you the sovereign," says Clive's father,
laughing.

The boy blushed rather.

"Yes. When it's time to go back to Smithfield on a Sunday night, I go
into the dining-room to shake hands, and he gives it me; but he don't
speak to me much, you know, and I don't care about going to Bryanstone
Square, except for the tip, of course that's important, because I am made
to dine with the children, and they are quite little ones; and a great
cross French governess, who is always crying and shrieking after them,
and finding fault with them. My uncle generally has his dinner-parties on
Saturday, or goes out; and aunt gives me ten shillings and sends me to
the play; that's better fun than a dinner-party." Here the lad blushed
again. "I used," says he, "when I was younger, to stand on the stairs and
prig things out of the dishes when they came out from dinner, but I'm
past that now. Maria (that's my cousin) used to take the sweet things and
give 'em to the governess. Fancy! she used to put lumps of sugar into her
pocket and eat them in the schoolroom! Uncle Hobson don't live in such
good society as Uncle Newcome. You see, Aunt Hobson, she's very kind, you
know, and all that, but I don't think she's what you call comme il faut."

"Why, how are you to judge?" asks the father, amused at the lad's candid
prattle, "and where does the difference lie?"

"I can't tell you what it is, or how it is," the boy answered, "only one
can't help seeing the difference. It isn't rank and that; only somehow
there are some men gentlemen and some not, and some women ladies and some
not. There's Jones now, the fifth form master, every man sees he's a
gentleman, though he wears ever so old clothes; and there's Mr. Brown,
who oils his hair, and wears rings, and white chokers--my eyes! such
white chokers!--and yet we call him the handsome snob! And so about Aunt
Maria, she's very handsome and she's very finely dressed, only somehow
she's not--she's not the ticket, you see."

"Oh, she's not the ticket," says the Colonel, much amused.

"Well, what I mean is--but never mind," says the boy. "I can't tell you
what I mean. I don't like to make fun of her, you know, for after all,
she is very kind to me; but Aunt Anne is different, and it seems as if
what she says is more natural; and though she has funny ways of her own
too, yet somehow she looks grander,"--and here the lad laughed again.
"And do you know, I often think that as good a lady as Aunt Anne herself,
is old Aunt Honeyman at Brighton--that is, in all essentials, you know.
For she is not proud, and she is not vain, and she never says an unkind
word behind anybody's back, and she does a deal of kindness to the poor
without appearing to crow over them, you know; and she is not a bit
ashamed of letting lodgings, or being poor herself, as sometimes I think
some of our family----"

"I thought we were going to speak no ill of them?" says the Colonel,
smiling.

"Well, it only slipped out unawares," says Clive, laughing; "but at
Newcome when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great ass, Barnes
Newcome, gives himself his airs, it makes me die of laughing. That time I
went down to Newcome, I went to see old Aunt Sarah, and she told me
everything, and showed me the room where my grandfather--you know; and do
you know I was a little hurt at first, for I thought we were swells till
then. And when I came back to school, where perhaps I had been giving
myself airs, and bragging about Newcome, why, you know, I thought it was
right to tell the fellows."

"That's a man," said the Colonel, with delight; though had he said,
"That's a boy," he had spoken more correctly. Indeed, how many men do we
know in the world without caring to know who their fathers were? and how
many more who wisely do not care to tell us? "That's a man," cries the
Colonel; "never be ashamed of your father, Clive."

"Ashamed of my father!" says Clive, looking up to him, and walking on as
proud as a peacock. "I say," the lad resumed, after a pause--

"Say what you say," said the father.

"Is that all true what's in the Peerage--in the Baronetage, about Uncle
Newcome and Newcome; about the Newcome who was burned at Smithfield;
about the one that was at the battle of Bosworth; and the old old Newcome
who was bar--that is, who was surgeon to Edward the Confessor, and was
killed at Hastings? I am afraid it isn't; and yet I should like it to be
true."

"I think every man would like to come of an ancient and honourable race,"
said the Colonel, in his honest way. "As you like your father to be an
honourable man, why not your grandfather, and his ancestors before him?
But if we can't inherit a good name, at least we can do our best to leave
one, my boy; and that is an ambition which, please God, you and I will
both hold by."

With this simple talk the old and young gentleman beguiled their way,
until they came into the western quarter of the town, where the junior
member of the firm of Newcome Brothers had his house--a handsome and
roomy mansion in Bryanstone Square. Colonel Newcome was bent on paying a
visit to his sister-in-law, and as he knocked at the door, where the pair
were kept waiting some little time, he could remark through the opened
windows of the dining-room, that a great table was laid and every
preparation made for a feast.

"My brother said he was engaged to dinner to-day," said the Colonel.
"Does Mrs. Newcome give parties when he is away?"

"She invites all the company," answered Clive. "My uncle never asks any
one without aunt's leave."

The Colonel's countenance fell. He has a great dinner, and does not ask
his own brother! Newcome thought. Why, if he had come to me in India with
all his family, he might have stayed for a year, and I should have been
offended if he had gone elsewhere.

A hot menial, in a red waistcoat, came and opened the door; and without
waiting for preparatory queries, said, "Not at home."

"It's my father, John," said Clive; "my aunt will see Colonel Newcome."

"Missis not at home," said the man. "Missis is gone in carriage--Not at
this door!-Take them things down the area steps, young man!" bawls out
the domestic. This latter speech was addressed to a pastrycook's boy,
with a large sugar temple and many conical papers containing delicacies
for dessert. "Mind the hice is here in time; or there'll be a blow-up
with your governor,"--and John struggled back, closing the door on the
astonished Colonel.

"Upon my life, they actually shut the door in our faces," said the poor
gentleman.

"The man is very busy, sir. There's a great dinner. I'm sure my aunt
would not refuse you," Clive interposed. "She is very kind. I suppose
it's different here to what it is in India. here are the children in the
square,--those are the girls in blue,--that's the French governess, the
one with the mustachios and the yellow parasol. How d'ye do, Mary? How
d'ye do, Fanny? This is my father,--this is your uncle."

"Mesdemoiselles! Je vous ddfends de parler a qui que ce soit hors du
squar!" screams out the lady of the mustachios; and she strode forward to
call back her young charges.

The Colonel addressed her in very good French. "I hope you will permit me
to make acquaintance with my nieces," he said, "and with their
instructress, of whom my son has given me such a favourable account."

"Hem!" said Mademoiselle Lebrun, remembering the last fight she and Clive
had had together, and a portrait of herself (with enormous whiskers)
which the young scapegrace had drawn. "Monsieur is very good. But one
cannot too early inculcate retenue and decorum to young ladies in a
country where demoiselles seem for ever to forget that they are young
ladies of condition. I am forced to keep the eyes of lynx upon these
young persons, otherwise heaven knows what would come to them. Only
yesterday, my back is turned for a moment, I cast my eyes on a book,
having but little time for literature, monsieur--for literature, which I
adore--when a cry makes itself to hear. I turn myself, and what do I see?
Mesdemoiselles, your nieces, playing at criquette, with the Messieurs
Smees--sons of Doctor Smees--young galopins, monsieur!" All this was
shrieked with immense volubility and many actions of the hand and parasol
across the square-railings to the amused Colonel, at whom the little
girls peered through the bars.

"Well, my dears, I should like to have a game at cricket with you, too,"
says the kind gentleman, reaching them each a brown hand.

"You, monsieur, c'est different--a man of your age! Salute monsieur, your
uncle, mesdemoiselles. You conceive, monsieur, that I also must be
cautious when I speak to a man so distinguished in a public squar." And
she cast down her great eyes and hid those radiant orbs from the Colonel.

Meanwhile, Colonel Newcome, indifferent to the direction which Miss
Lebrun's eyes took, whether towards his hat or his boots, was surveying
his little nieces with that kind expression which his face always wore
when it was turned towards children. "Have you heard of your uncle in
India?" he asked them.

"No," says Maria.

"Yes," says Fanny. "You know mademoiselle said" (mademoiselle at this
moment was twittering her fingers, and, as it were, kissing them in the
direction of a grand barouche that was advancing along the Square)--"you
know mademoiselle said that if we were mechantes we should be sent to our
uncle in India. I think I should like to go with you."

"O you silly child!" cries Maria.

"Yes I should, if Clive went too," says little Fanny.

"Behold madam, who arrives from her promenade!" Miss Lebrun exclaimed;
and, turning round, Colonel Newcome had the satisfaction of beholding,
for the first time, his sister-in-law.

A stout lady, with fair hair and a fine bonnet and pelisse (who knows
what were the fine bonnets and pelisses of the year 183-?), was reclining
in the barouche, the scarlet-plush integuments of her domestics blazing
before and behind her. A pretty little foot was on the cushion opposite
to her; feathers waved in her bonnet; a book was in her lap; an oval
portrait of a gentleman reposed on her voluminous bosom. She wore another
picture of two darling heads, with pink cheeks and golden hair, on one of
her wrists, with many more chains, bracelets, bangles, and knick-knacks.
A pair of dirty gloves marred the splendour of this appearance; a heap of
books from the library strewed the back seat of the carriage, and showed
that her habits were literary. Springing down from his station behind his
mistress, the youth clad in the nether garments of red sammit discharged
thunderclaps on the door of Mrs. Newcome's house, announcing to the whole
Square that his mistress had returned to her abode. Since the fort
saluted the Governor-General at ------, Colonel Newcome had never heard
such a cannonading.

Clive, with a queer twinkle of his eyes, ran towards his aunt.

She bent over the carriage languidly towards him. She liked him. "What,
you, Clive?" she said. "How come you away from school of a Thursday,
sir?"

"It is a holiday," says he. "My father is come; and he is come to see
you."

She bowed her head with an expression of affable surprise and majestic
satisfaction. "Indeed, Clive!" she was good enough to exclaim and with an
air which seemed to say, "Let him come up and be presented to me." The
honest gentleman stepped forward and took off his hat and bowed, and
stood bareheaded. She surveyed him blandly, and with infinite grace put
forward one of the pudgy little hands in one of the dirty gloves. Can you
fancy a twopenny-halfpenny baroness of King Francis's time patronising
Bayard? Can you imagine Queen Guinever's lady's-maid's lady's maid being
affable to Sir Lancelot? I protest there is nothing like the virtue of
English women.

"You have only arrived to-day, and you came to see me? That was very
kind. N'est-ce pas que c'etoit bong de Mouseer le Collonel, mademoiselle?
Madamaselle Lebrun, le Collonel Newcome, mong frere." (In a whisper, "My
children's governess and my friend, a most superior woman.") "Was it not
kind of Colonel Newcome to come to see me? Have you had a pleasant
voyage? Did you come by St. Helena? Oh, how I envy you seeing the tomb of
that great man! Nous parlong de Napolleong, mademoiselle, dong voter pere
a ete le General favvory."

"O Dieu! que n'ai je pu le voir," interjaculates mademoiselle. "Lui dont
parle l'univers, dont mon pere m'a si souvent parle!" but this remark
passes quite unnoticed by mademoiselle's friend, who continues:

"Clive, donnez-moi voter bras. These are two of my girls. My boys are at
school. I shall be so glad to introduce them to their uncle. This naughty
boy might never have seen you, but that we took him home to Marblehead,
after the scarlet fever, and made him well, didn't we, Clive? And we are
all very fond of him, and you must not be jealous of his love for his
aunt. We feel that we quite know you through him, and we know that you
know us, and we hope you will like us. Do you think your pa will like us,
Clive? Or perhaps you will like Lady Anne best? Yes; you have been to her
first, of course? Not been? Oh! because she is not in town." Leaning
fondly on the arm of Clive, mademoiselle standing grouped with the
children hard by while John, with his hat off, stood at the opened door,
Mr Newcome slowly uttered the above remarkable remarks to the Colonel, on
the threshold of her house, which she never asked him to pass.

"If you will come in to us at about ten this evening," she then said,
"you will find some men, not undistinguished, who honour me of an
evening. Perhaps they will be interesting to you, Colonel Newcome, as you
are newly arrived in Europe. Not men of worldly rank, necessarily,
although some of them are amongst the noblest of Europe. But my maxim is,
that genius is an illustration, and merit is better than any pedigree.
You have heard of Professor Bodgers? Count Poski? Doctor McGuffog, who is
called in his native country the Ezekiel of Clackmannan? Mr. Shaloony,
the great Irish patriot? our papers have told you of him. These and some
more I have been good enough to promise me a visit to-night. A stranger
coming to London could scarcely have a better opportunity of seeing some
of our great illustrations of science and literature. And you will meet
our own family--not Sir Brian's, who--who have other society and
amusements--but mine. I hope Mr. Newcome and myself will never forget
them. We have a few friends at dinner, and now I must go in and consult
with Mrs. Hubbard, my housekeeper. Good-bye for the present. Mind, not
later than ten, as Mr. Newcome must be up betimes in the morning, and our
parties break up early. When Clive is a little older, I dare say we shall
see him, too. Good-bye!" And again the Colonel was favoured with a shake
of the glove, and the lady and her suite sailed up the stair, and passed
in at the door.

She had not the faintest idea but that the hospitality which she was
offering to her kinsman was of the most cordial and pleasant kind. She
fancied everything she did was perfectly right and graceful. She invited
her husband's clerks to come through the rain at ten o'clock from Kentish
Town; she asked artists to bring their sketch-books from Kensington, or
luckless pianists to trudge with their music from Brompton. She rewarded
them with a smile and a cup of tea, and thought they were made happy by
her condescension. If, after two or three of these delightful evenings,
they ceased to attend her receptions, she shook her little flaxen head,
and sadly intimated that Mr. A. was getting into bad courses, or feared
that Mr. B. found merely intellectual parties too quiet for him. Else,
what young man in his senses could refuse such entertainment and
instruction?




CHAPTER VIII

Mrs. Newcome at Home (a Small Early Party)


To push on in the crowd, every male or female struggler must use his
shoulders. If a better place than yours presents itself just beyond your
neighbour, elbow him and take it. Look how a steadily purposed man or
woman at court, at a ball, or exhibition, wherever there is a competition
and a squeeze, gets the best place; the nearest the sovereign, if bent on
kissing the royal hand; the closest to the grand stand, if minded to go
to Ascot; the best view and hearing of the Rev. Mr. Thumpington, when all
the town is rushing to hear that exciting divine; the largest quantity of
ice, champagne, and seltzer, cold pate, or other his or her favourite
flesh-pot, if gluttonously minded, at a supper whence hundreds of people
come empty away. A woman of the world will marry her daughter and have
done with her; get her carriage and be at home and asleep in bed; whilst
a timid mamma has still her girl in the nursery, or is beseeching the
servants in the cloakroom to look for her shawls, with which some one
else has whisked away an hour ago. What a man has to do in society is to
assert himself. Is there a good place at table? Take it. At the Treasury
or the Home Office? Ask for it. Do you want to go to a party to which you
are not invited? Ask to be asked. Ask A., ask B., ask Mrs. C., ask
everybody you know: you will be thought a bore; but you will have your
way. What matters if you are considered obtrusive, provided that you
obtrude? By pushing steadily, nine hundred and ninety-nine people in a
thousand will yield to you. Only command persons, and you may be pretty
sure that a good number will obey. How well your money will have been
laid out, O gentle reader, who purchase this; and, taking the maxim to
heart, follow it through life! You may be sure of success. If your
neighbour's foot obstructs you, stamp on it; and do you suppose he won't
take it away?

The proofs of the correctness of the above remarks I show in various
members of the Newcome family. Here was a vulgar little woman, not clever
nor pretty, especially; meeting Mr. Newcome casually, she ordered him to
marry her, and he obeyed; as he obeyed her in everything else which she
chose to order through life. Meeting Colonel Newcome on the steps of her
house, she orders him to come to her evening party; and though he has not
been to an evening party for five-and-thirty years--though he has not
been to bed the night before--though he has no mufti-coat except one sent
him out by Messrs. Stultz to India in the year 1821--he never once thinks
of disobeying Mrs. Newcome's order, but is actually at her door at five
minutes past ten, having arrayed himself to the wonderment of Clive, and
left the boy to talk with his friend and fellow-passenger, Mr. Binnie,
who has just arrived from Portsmouth, who has dined with him, and who, by
previous arrangement, has taken up his quarters at the same hotel.

This Stultz coat, a blue swallow-tail, with yellow buttons, now wearing a
tinge of their native copper, a very high velvet collar on a level with
the tips of the Captain's ears, with a high waist, indicated by two
lapelles, and a pair of buttons high up in the wearer's back, a white
waistcoat and scarlet under-waistcoat, and a pair of the never-failing
duck trousers, complete Thomas Newcome's costume, along with the white
hat in which we have seen him in the morning, and which was one of two
dozen purchased by him some years since at public outcry, Burrumtollah.
We have called him Captain purposely, while speaking of his coat, for he
held that rank when the garment came out to him; and having been in the
habit of considering it a splendid coat for twelve years past, he has not
the least idea of changing his opinion.

The Doctor McGuffog, Professor Bodgers, Count Poski, and all the lions
present at Mrs. Newcome's reunion that evening, were completely eclipsed
by Colonel Newcome. The worthy soul, who cared not the least about
adorning himself, had a handsome diamond brooch of the year 1801--given
him by poor Jack Cutler, who was knocked over by his side at Argaum--and
wore this ornament in his desk for a thousand days and nights at a time;
in his shirt-frill, on such parade evenings as he considered Mrs.
Newcome's to be. The splendour of this jewel, and of his flashing
buttons, caused all eyes to turn to him. There were many pairs of
mustachios present, those of Professor Schnurr, a very corpulent martyr,
just escaped from Spandau, and of Maximilien Tranchard, French exile and
apostle of liberty, were the only whiskers in the room capable of vying
in interest with Colonel Newcome's. Polish chieftains were at this time
so common in London, that nobody (except one noble Member for Marylebone,
once a year, the Lord Mayor) took any interest in them. The general
opinion was, that the stranger was the Wallachian Boyar, whose arrival at
Mivart's the Morning Post had just announced. Mrs. Miles, whose delicious
every other Wednesdays in Montague Square are supposed by some to be
rival entertainments to Mrs. Newcome's alternate Thursdays in Bryanstone
Square, pinched her daughter Mira, engaged in a polyglot conversation
with Herr Schnurr, nor Carabossi, the guitarist, and Monsieur Pivier, the
celebrated French chess-player, to point out the Boyar. Mira Miles wished
she knew a little Moldavian, not so much that she might speak it, but
that she might be heard to speak it. Mrs. Miles, who had not had the
educational advantages of her daughter, simpered up with "Madame Newcome
pas ici--votre excellence nouvellement arrive--avez-vous fait ung bong
voyage? Je recois chez moi Mercredi prochaing; lonnure de vous voir--
Madamasel Miles ma fille;" and, Mira, now reinforcing her mamma, poured
in a glib little oration in French, somewhat to the astonishment of the
Colonel, who began to think, however, that perhaps French was the
language of the polite world, into which he was now making his very first
entree.

Mrs. Newcome had left her place at the door of her drawing-room, to walk
through her rooms with Rummun Loll, the celebrated Indian merchant,
otherwise His Excellency Rummun Loll, otherwise his Highness Rummun Loll,
the chief proprietor of the diamond-mines in Golconda, with a claim of
three millions and a-half upon the East India Company--who smoked his
hookah after dinner when the ladies were gone, and in whose honour (for
his servants always brought a couple or more of hookahs with them) many
English gentlemen made themselves sick, while trying to emulate the same
practice. Mr. Newcome had been obliged to go to bed himself in
consequence of the uncontrollable nausea produced by the chillum; and
Doctor McGuffog, in hopes of converting His Highness, had puffed his till
he was as black in the face as the interesting Indian--and now, having
hung on his arm--always in the dirty gloves--flirting a fan whilst His
Excellency consumed betel out of a silver box; and having promenaded him
and his turban, and his shawls, and his kincab pelisse, and his lacquered
moustache, and keen brown face; and opal eyeballs, through her rooms, the
hostess came back to her station at the drawing-room door.

As soon as His Excellency saw the Colonel, whom he perfectly well knew,
His Highness's princely air was exchanged for one of the deepest
humility. He bowed his head and put his two hands before his eyes, and
came creeping towards him submissively, to the wonderment of Mrs. Miles;
who was yet more astonished when the Moldavian magnate exclaimed in
perfectly good English, "What, Rummun, you here?"

The Rummun, still bending and holding his hands before him, uttered a
number of rapid sentences in the Hindustani language, which Colonel
Newcome received twirling his mustachios with much hauteur. He turned on
his heel rather abruptly and began to speak to Mrs. Newcome, who smiled
and thanked him for coming on his first night after his return.

The Colonel said, "To whose house should he first come but to his
brother's?" How Mrs. Newcome wished she could have had room for him at
dinner! And there was room after all, for Mr. Shaloony was detained at
the House. The most interesting conversation. The Indian Prince was so
intelligent!

"The Indian what?" asks Colonel Newcome. The heathen gentleman had gone
off, and was seated by one of the handsomest young women in the room,
whose fair face was turned towards him, whose blond ringlets touched his
shoulder, and who was listening to him as eagerly as Desdemona listened
to Othello.

The Colonel's rage was excited as he saw the Indian's behaviour. He
curled his mustachios up to his eyes in his wrath. "You don't mean that
that man calls himself a Prince? That a fellow who wouldn't sit down in
an officer's presence is----"

"How do you do, Mr. Honeyman?--Eh, bong soir, Monsieur--You are very
late, Mr. Pressly.--What, Barnes! is it possible that you do me the
honour to come all the way from Mayfair to Marylebone? I thought you
young men of fashion never crossed Oxford Street. Colonel Newcome, this
is your nephew."

"How do you do, sir?" says Barnes, surveying the Colonel's costume with
inward wonder, but without the least outward manifestation of surprise.
"I suppose you dined here to meet the black Prince. I came to ask him and
my uncle to meet you at dinner on Wednesday. Where's my uncle, ma'am?"

"Your uncle is gone to bed ill. He smoked one of those hookahs which the
Prince brings, and it has made him very unwell indeed, Barnes. How is
Lady Anne? Is Lord Kew in London? Is your sister better for Brighton air?
I see your cousin is appointed Secretary of Legation. Have you good
accounts of your aunt Lady Fanny?"

"Lady Fanny is as well as can be expected, and the baby is going on
perfectly well, thank you," Barnes said drily; and his aunt, obstinately
gracious with him, turned away to some other new comet.

"It's interesting, isn't it, sir," says Barnes, turning to the Colonel,
"to see such union in families? Whenever I come here, my aunt trots out
all my relations; and I send a man round in the mornin to ask how they
all are. So Uncle Hobson is gone to bed sick with a hookah? I know there
was a deuce of a row made when I smoked at Marblehead. You are promised
to us for Wednesday, please. Is there anybody you would like to meet? Not
our friend the Rummun? How the girls crowd round him! By Gad, a fellow
who's rich in London may have the pick of any gal--not here--not in this
sort of thing; I mean in society, you know," says Barnes confidentially,
"I've seen the old dowagers crowdin round that fellow, and the girls
snugglin up to his india-rubber face. He's known to have two wives
already in India; but, by Gad, for a settlement, I believe some of 'em
here would marry--I mean of the girls in society."

"But isn't this society?" asked the Colonel.

"Oh, of course. It's very good society and that sort of thing--but it's
not, you know--you understand. I give you my honour there are not three
people in the room one meets anywhere, except the Rummun. What is he at
home, sir? I know he ain't a Prince, you know, any more than I am."

"I believe he is a rich man now," said the Colonel. "He began from very
low beginnings, and odd stories are told about the origin of his
fortune."

"That may be," says the young man; "of course, as businessmen, that's not
our affair. But has he got the fortune? He keeps a large account with us;
and, I think, wants to have larger dealings with us still. As one of the
family we may ask you to stand by us, and tell us anything you know. My
father has asked him down to Newcome, and we've taken him up; wisely or
not I can't say. I think otherwise; but I'm quite young in the house, and
of course the elders have the chief superintendence." The young man of
business had dropped his drawl or his languor, and was speaking quite
unaffectedly; good-naturedly, and selfishly. Had you talked to him for a
week, you could not have made him understand the scorn and loathing with
which the Colonel regarded him. Here was a young fellow as keen as the
oldest curmudgeon; a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that would
pursue his bond as rigidly as Shylock. "If he is like this at twenty,
what will he be at fifty?" groaned the Colonel. "I'd rather Clive were
dead than have him such a heartless woriding as this." And yet the young
man was not ungenerous, not untruth-telling, not unserviceable. He
thought his life was good enough. It was as good as that of other folks
he lived with. You don't suppose he had any misgivings, provided he was
in the City early enough in the morning; or slept badly, unless he
indulged too freely over-night; or twinges of conscience that his life
was misspent? He thought his life a most lucky and reputable one. He had
a share in a good business, and felt that he could increase it. Some day
he would marry a good match, with a good fortune; meanwhile he could take
his pleasure decorously, and sow his wild oats as some of the young
Londoners sow them, not broadcast after the fashion of careless
scatter-brained youth, but trimly and neatly, in quiet places, where the
crop can come up unobserved, and be taken in without bustle or scandal.
Barnes Newcome never missed going to church, or dressing for dinner. He
never kept a tradesman waiting for his money. He never drank too much,
except when other fellows did, and in good company. He never was late for
business, or huddled over his toilet, however brief had been his sleep,
or severe his headache. In a word, he was as scrupulously whited as any
sepulchre in the whole bills of mortality.

Whilst young Barnes and his uncle were thus holding parley, a slim
gentleman of bland aspect, with a roomy forehead, or what his female
admirers called "a noble brow," and a neat white neckcloth tied with
clerical skill, was surveying Colonel Newcome through his shining
spectacles, and waiting for an opportunity to address him. The Colonel
remarked the eagerness with which the gentleman in black regarded him,
and asked Mr. Barnes who was the padre? Mr. Barnes turned his eyeglass
towards the spectacles, and said "he didn't know any more than the dead;
he didn't know two people in the room." The spectacles nevertheless made
the eyeglass a bow, of which the latter took no sort of cognisance. The
spectacles advanced; Mr. Newcome fell back with a peevish exclamation of
"Confound the fellow, what is he coming to speak to me for?" He did not
choose to be addressed by all sorts of persons in all houses.

But he of the spectacles, with an expression of delight in his pale blue
eyes, and smiles dimpling his countenance, pressed onwards with
outstretched hands, and it was towards the Colonel he turned these smiles
and friendly salutations. "Did I hear aright, sir, from Mrs. Miles," he
said, "and have I the honour of speaking to Colonel Newcome?"

"The same, sir," says the Colonel; at which the other, tearing off a
glove of lavender-coloured kid, uttered the words, "Charles Honeyman,"
and seized the hand of his brother-in-law. "My poor sister's husband," he
continued; "my own benefactor; Clive's father. How strange are these
meetings in the mighty world! How I rejoice to see you, and know you!"

"You are Charles, are you?" cries the other. "I am very glad, indeed, to
shake you by the hand, Honeyman. Clive and I should have beat up your
quarters to-day, but we were busy until dinnertime. You put me in mind of
poor Emma, Charles," he added, sadly. Emma had not been a good wife to
him; a flighty silly little woman, who had caused him when alive many a
night of pain and day of anxiety.

"Poor, poor Emma!" exclaimed the ecclesiastic, casting his eyes towards
the chandelier, and passing a white cambric pocket-handkerchief
gracefully before them. No man in London understood the ring business or
the pocket-handkerchief business better, or smothered his emotion more
beautifully. "In the gayest moments, in the giddiest throng of fashion,
the thoughts of the past will rise; the departed will be among us still.
But this is not the strain wherewith to greet the friend newly arrived on
our shores. How it rejoices me to behold you in old England! How you must
have joyed to see Clive!"

"D--- the humbug," muttered Barnes, who knew him perfectly well. "The
fellow is always in the pulpit."

The incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel smiled and bowed to him. "You
do not recognise me, sir; I have had the honour of seeing you in your
public capacity in the City, when I have called at the bank, the bearer
of my brother-in-law's generous----"

"Never mind that, Honeyman!" cried the Colonel.

"But I do mind, my dear Colonel," answers Mr. Honeyman. "I should be a
very bad man, and a very ungrateful brother, if I ever forgot your
kindness."

"For God's sake leave my kindness alone."

"He'll never leave it alone as long as he can use it," muttered Mr.
Barnes in his teeth; and turning to his uncle, "May I take you home, sir?
my cab is at the door, and I shall be glad to drive you." But the Colonel
said he must talk to his brother-in-law for a while, and Mr. Barnes,
bowing very respectfully to him, slipped under a dowager's arm in the
doorway, and retreated silently downstairs.

Newcome was now thrown entirely upon the clergyman, and the latter
described the personages present to the stranger, who was curious to know
how the party was composed. Mrs. Newcome herself would have been pleased
had she heard Honeyman's discourse regarding her guests and herself.
Charles Honeyman so spoke of most persons that you might fancy they were
listening over his shoulder. Such an assemblage of learning, genius, and
virtue, might well delight and astonish a stranger. "That lady in the red
turban, with the handsome daughters, is Lady Budge, wife of the eminent
judge of that name--everybody was astonished that he was not made Chief
Justice, and elevated to the Peerage--the only objection (as I have heard
confidentially) was on the part of a late sovereign, who said he never
could consent to have a peer of the name of Budge. Her ladyship was of
humble, I have heard even menial, station originally, but becomes her
present rank, dispenses the most elegant hospitality at her mansion in
Connaught Terrace, and is a pattern as a wife and a mother. The young man
talking to her daughter is a young barrister, already becoming celebrated
as a contributor to some of our principal reviews."

"Who is that cavalry officer in a white waistcoat talking to the Jew with
the beard?" asks the Colonel.

"He, he! That cavalry officer is another literary man of celebrity, and
by profession an attorney. But he has quitted the law for the Muses, and
it would appear that the Nine are never wooed except by gentlemen with
mustachios."

"Never wrote a verse in my life," says the Colonel, laughing, and
stroking his own.

"For I remark so many literary gentlemen with that decoration. The Jew
with the beard, as you call him, is Herr von Lungen, the eminent
hautboy-player. The three next gentlemen are Mr. Smee, of the Royal
Academy (who is shaved as you perceive), and Mr. Moyes and Mr. Cropper,
who are both very hairy about the chin. At the piano, singing,
accompanied by Mademoiselle Lebrun, is Signor Mezzocaldo, the great
barytone from Rome. Professor Quartz and Baron Hammerstein, celebrated
geologists from Germany, are talking with their illustrious confrere, Sir
Robert Craxton, in the door. Do you see yonder that stout gentleman with
stuff on his shirt? the eloquent Dr. McGuffog, of Edinburgh, talking to
Dr. Ettore, who lately escaped from the Inquisition at Rome in the
disguise of a washerwoman, after undergoing the question several times,
the rack and the thumbscrew. They say that he was to have been burned in
the Grand Square the next morning; but between ourselves, my dear
Colonel, I mistrust these stories of converts and martyrs. Did you ever
see a more jolly-looking man than Professor Schnurr, who was locked up in
Spielberg, and got out up a chimney, and through a window? Had he waited
a few months there are very few windows he could have passed through.
That splendid man in the red fez is Kurbash Pasha--another renegade, I
deeply lament to say--a hairdresser from Marseilles, by name Monsieur
Ferehaud, who passed into Egypt, and laid aside the tongs for a turban.
He is talking with Mr. Palmer, one of our most delightful young poets,
and with Desmond O'Tara, son of the late revered Bishop of Ballinafad,
who has lately quitted ours for the errors of the Church of Rome. Let me
whisper to you that your kinswoman is rather a searcher after what we
call here notabilities. I heard talk of one I knew in better days--of one
who was the comrade of my youth, and the delight of Oxford--poor Pidge of
Brasenose, who got the Newdigate in my third year, and who, under his
present name of Father Bartolo, was to have been here in his capuchin
dress, with a beard and bare feet; but I presume he could not get
permission from his Superior. That is Mr. Huff, the political economist,
talking with Mr. Macduff, the Member for Glenlivat. That is the coroner
for Middlesex conversing with the great surgeon Sir Cutler Sharp, and
that pretty laughing girl talking with them is no other than the
celebrated Miss Pinnnifer, whose novel of Ralph the Resurrectionist
created such a sensation after it was abused in the Trimestrial Review.
It was a little bold certainly--I just looked at it at my club--after
hours devoted to parish duty a clergyman is sometimes allowed, you know,
desipere in loco--there are descriptions in it certainly startling--ideas
about marriage not exactly orthodox; but the poor child wrote the book
actually in the nursery, and all England was ringing with it before Dr.
Pinnifer, her father, knew who was the author. That is the Doctor asleep
in the corner by Miss Rudge, the American authoress, who I dare say is
explaining to him the difference between the two Governments. My dear
Mrs. Newcome, I am giving my brother-in-law a little sketch of some of
the celebrities who are crowding your salon to-night. What a delightful
evening you have given us!"

"I try to do my best, Colonel Newcome," said the lady of the house. "I
hope many a night we may see you here; and, as I said this morning,
Clive, when he is of an age to appreciate this kind of entertainment.
Fashion I do not worship. You may meet that amongst other branches of our
family; but genius and talent I do reverence. And if I can be the means--
the humble means--to bring men of genius together--mind to associate with
mind--men of all nations to mingle in friendly unison--I shall not have
lived altogether in vain. They call us women of the world frivolous,
Colonel Newcome. So some may be; I do not say there are not in our own
family persons who worship mere worldly rank, and think but of fashion
and gaiety; but such, I trust, will never be the objects in life of me
and my children. We are but merchants; we seek to be no more. If I can
look around me and see as I do"-(she waves her fan round, and points to
the illustrations scintillating round the room)--"and see as I do now--a
Poski, whose name is ever connected with Polish history--an Ettore, who
has exchanged a tonsure and a rack for our own free country--a
Hammerstein, and a Quartz, a Miss Rudge, our Transatlantic sister (who I
trust will not mention this modest salon in her forthcoming work on
Europe), and Miss Pinnifer, whose genius I acknowledge, though I deplore
her opinions; if I can gather together travellers, poets, and painters,
princes and distinguished soldiers from the East, and clergymen
remarkable for their eloquence, my humble aim is attained, and Maria
Newcome is not altogether useless in her generation. Will you take a
little refreshment? Allow your sister to go down to the dining-room
supported by your gallant arm." She looked round to the admiring
congregation, whereof Honeyman, as it were acted as clerk, and flirting
her fan, and flinging up her little head. Consummate Virtue walked down
on the arm of the Colonel.

The refreshment was rather meagre. The foreign artists generally dashed
downstairs, and absorbed all the ices, creams, etc. To those coming late
there were chicken-bones, table-cloths puddled with melted ice, glasses
hazy with sherry, and broken bits of bread. The Colonel said he never
supped; and he and Honeyman walked away together, the former to bed, the
latter, I am sorry to say, to his club; for he was a dainty feeder, and
loved lobster, and talk late at night, and a comfortable little glass of
something wherewith to conclude the day.

He agreed to come to breakfast with the Colonel, who named eight or nine
for the meal. Nine Mr. Honeyman agreed to with a sigh. The incumbent of
Lady Whittlesea's chapel seldom rose before eleven. For, to tell the
truth, no French abbot of Louis XV. was more lazy and luxurious, and
effeminate, than our polite bachelor preacher.

One of Colonel Newcome's fellow-passengers from India was Mr. James
Binnie of the Civil Service, a jolly young bachelor of two- or
three-and-forty, who, having spent half of his past life in Bengal, was
bent upon enjoying the remainder in Britain or in Europe, if a residence
at home should prove agreeable to him. The Nabob of books and tradition
is a personage no longer to be found among us. He is neither as wealthy
nor as wicked as the jaundiced monster of romances and comedies, who
purchases the estates of broken-down English gentlemen, with rupees
tortured out of bleeding rajahs, who smokes a hookah in public, and in
private carries about a guilty conscience, diamonds of untold value, and
a diseased liver; who has a vulgar wife, with a retinue of black servants
whom she maltreats, and a gentle son and daughter with good impulses and
an imperfect education, desirous to amend their own and their parents'
lives, and thoroughly ashamed of the follies of the old people. If you go
to the house of an Indian gentleman now, he does not say, "Bring more
curricles," like the famous Nabob of Stanstead Park. He goes to
Leadenhall Street in an omnibus, and walks back from the City for
exercise. I have known some who have had maid-servants to wait on them at
dinner. I have met scores who look as florid and rosy as any British
squire who has never left his paternal beef and acres. They do not wear
nankeen jackets in summer. Their livers are not out of order any more;
and as for hookahs, I dare swear there are not two now kept alight within
the bills of mortality; and that retired Indians would as soon think of
smoking them, as their wives would of burning themselves on their
husbands' bodies at the cemetery, Kensal Green, near to the Tyburnian
quarter of the city which the Indian world at present inhabits. It used
to be Baker Street and Harley Street; it used to be Portland Place, and
in more early days Bedford Square, where the Indian magnates flourished;
districts which have fallen from their pristine state of splendour now,
even as Agra, and Benares, and Lucknow, and Tippoo Sultan's city are
fallen.

After two-and-twenty years' absence from London, Mr. Binnie returned to
it on the top of the Gosport coach with a hatbox and a little
portmanteau, a pink fresh-shaven face, a perfect appetite, a suit of
clothes like everybody else's, and not the shadow of a black servant. He
called a cab at the White Horse Cellar, and drove to Nerot's Hotel,
Clifford Street; and he gave the cabman eightpence, making the fellow,
who grumbled, understand that Clifford Street was not two hundred yards
from Bond Street, and that he was paid at the rate of five shillings and
fourpence per mile--calculating the mile at only sixteen hundred yards.
He asked the waiter at what time Colonel Newcome had ordered dinner, and
finding there was an hour on his hands before the meal, walked out to
examine the neighbourhood for a lodging where he could live more quietly
than in a hotel. He called it a hotel. Mr. Binnie was a North Briton, his
father having been a Writer to the Signet, in Edinburgh, who had procured
his son a writership in return for electioneering services done to an
East Indian Director. Binnie had his retiring pension, and, besides, had
saved half his allowances ever since he had been in India. He was a man
of great reading, no small ability, considerable accomplishment,
excellent good sense and good humour. The ostentatious said he was a
screw; but he gave away more money than far more extravagant people: he
was a disciple of David Hume (whom he admired more than any other
mortal), and the serious denounced him as a man of dangerous principles,
though there were, among the serious, men much more dangerous than James
Binnie.

On returning to his hotel, Colonel Newcome found this worthy gentleman
installed in his room in the best arm-chair sleeping cosily; the evening
paper laid decently over his plump waistcoat, and his little legs placed
on an opposite chair. Mr. Binnie woke up briskly when the Colonel
entered. "It is you, you gad-about, is it?" cried the civilian. "How has
the beau monde of London treated the Indian Adonis? Have you made a
sensation, Newcome? Gad, Tom, I remember you a buck of bucks when that
coat first came out to Calcutta--just a Barrackpore Brummell--in Lord
Minto's reign, was it, or when Lord Hastings was satrap over us?"

"A man must have one good coat," says the Colonel; "I don't profess to be
a dandy; but get a coat from a good tailor, and then have done with it."
He still thought his garment was as handsome as need be.

"Done with it--ye're never done with it!" cries the civilian.

"An old coat is an old friend, old Binnie. I don't want to be rid of one
or the other. How long did you and my boy sit up together--isn't he a
fine lad, Binnie? I expect you are going to put him down for something
handsome in your will."

"See what it is to have a real friend now, Colonel! I sate up for ye, or
let us say more correctly, I waited for you--because I knew you would
want to talk about that scapegrace of yours. And if I had gone to bed, I
should have had you walking up to No. 28, and waking me out of my first
rosy slumber. Well, now confess; avoid not. Haven't ye fallen in love
with some young beauty on the very first night of your arrival in your
sister's salong, and selected a mother-in-law for young Scapegrace?"

"Isn't he a fine fellow, James?" says the Colonel, lighting a cheroot as
he sits on the table. Was it joy, or the bedroom candle with which he
lighted his cigar, which illuminated his honest features so, and made
them so to shine?

"I have been occupied, sir, in taking the lad's moral measurement: and
have pumped him as successfully as ever I cross-examined a rogue in my
court. I place his qualities thus:--Love of approbation sixteen.
Benevolence fourteen. Combativeness fourteen. Adhesiveness two.
Amativeness is not yet of course fully developed, but I expect will be
prodeegiously strong. The imaginative and reflective organs are very
large--those, of calculation weak. He may make a poet or a painter, or
you may make a sojer of him, though worse men than him's good enough for
that--but a bad merchant, a lazy lawyer, and a miserable mathematician.
He has wit and conscientiousness, so ye mustn't think of making a
clergyman of him."

"Binnie!" says the Colonel gravely, "you are always sneering at the
cloth."

"When I think that, but for my appointment to India, I should have been a
luminary of the faith and a pillar of the church! grappling with the
ghostly enemy in the pulpit, and giving out the psawm. Eh, sir, what a
loss Scottish Divinity has had in James Binnie!" cries the little
civilian with his most comical face. "But that is not the question. My
opinion, Colonel, is, that young Scapegrace will give you a deal of
trouble; or would, only you are so absurdly proud of him that you think
everything he does is perfaction. He'll spend your money for you: he'll
do as little work as need be. He'll get into scrapes with the sax. He's
almost as simple as his father, and that is to say that any rogue will
cheat him; and he seems to me to have got your obstinate habit of telling
the truth, Colonel, which may prevet his getting on in the world, but on
the other hand will keep him from going very wrong. So that, though there
is every fear for him, there's some hope and some consolation."

"What do you think of his Latin and Greek?" asks the Colonel. Before
going out to his party, Newcome had laid a deep scheme with Binnie, and
it had been agreed that the latter should examine the young fellow in his
humanities.

"Wall," cries the Scot, "I find that the lad knows as much about Greek
and Latin as I knew myself when I was eighteen years of age."

"My dear Binnie, is it possible? You, the best scholar in all India!"

"And which amounted to exactly nothing. He has acquired in five years,
and by the admirable seestem purshood at your public schools, just about
as much knowledge of the ancient languages as he could get by three
months' application at home. Mind ye, I don't say he would apply; it is
most probable he would do no such thing. But at the cost of--how much?
two hundred pounds annually--for five years--he has acquired about
five-and-twenty guineas' worth of classical leeterature--enough, I dare
say, to enable him to quote Horace respectably through life, and what
more do ye want from a young man of his expectations? I think I should
send him into the army, that's the best place for him--there's the least
to do, and the handsomest clothes to wear. Acce segnum!" says the little
wag, daintily taking up the tail of his friend's coat.

"There's never any knowing whether you are in jest or in earnest,
Binnie," the puzzled Colonel said.

"How should you know, when I don't know myself?" answered the Scotchman.
"In earnest now, Tom Newcome, I think your boy is as fine a lad as I ever
set eyes on. He seems to have intelligence and good temper. He carries
his letter of recommendation in his countenance; and with the honesty--
and the rupees, mind ye--which he inherits from his father, the deuce is
in it if he can't make his way. What time's the breakfast? Eh, but it was
a comfort this morning not to hear the holystoning on the deck. We ought
to go into lodgings, and not fling our money out of the window of this
hotel. We must make the young chap take us about and show us the town in
the morning, Tom. I had but three days of it five-and-twenty years ago,
and I propose to reshoome my observations to-morrow after breakfast.
We'll just go on deck and see how's her head before we turn in, eh,
Colonel?" and with this the jolly gentleman nodded over his candle to his
friend, and trotted off to bed.

The Colonel and his friend were light sleepers and early risers, like
most men that come from the country where they had both been so long
sojourning, and were awake and dressed long before the London waiters had
thought of quitting their beds. The housemaid was the only being stirring
in the morning when little Mr. Binnie blundered over her pail as she was
washing the deck. Early as he was, his fellow-traveller had preceded him.
Binnie found the Colonel in his sitting-room arrayed in what are called
in Scotland his stocking-feet, already puffing the cigar, which in truth
was seldom out of his mouth at any hour of the day.

He had a couple of bedrooms adjacent to this sitting-room, and when
Binnie, as brisk and rosy about the gills as chanticleer, broke out in a
morning salutation, "Hush," says the Colonel, putting a long finger up to
his mouth, and advancing towards him as noiselessly as a ghost.

"What's in the wind now?" asks the little Scot; "and what for have ye not
got your shoes on?"

"Clive's asleep," says the Colonel, with a countenance full of extreme
anxiety.

"The darling boy slumbers, does he?" said the wag; "mayn't I just step in
and look at his beautiful countenance whilst he's asleep, Colonel?"

"You may if you take off those confounded creaking shoes," the other
answered, quite gravely; and Binnie turned away to hide his jolly round
face, which was screwed up with laughter.

"Have ye been breathing a prayer over your rosy infant's slumbers, Tom?"
asks Mr. Binnie.

"And if I have, James Binnie," the Colonel said gravely, and his sallow
face blushing somewhat, "if I have, I hope I've done no harm. The last
time I saw him asleep was nine years ago, a sickly little pale-faced boy
in his little cot, and now, sir, that I see him again, strong and
handsome, and all that a fond father can wish to see a boy, I should be
an ungrateful villain, James, if I didn't--if I didn't do what you said
just now, and thank God Almighty for restoring him to me."

Binnie did not laugh any more. "By George, Tom Newcome," said he, "you're
just one of the saints of the earth. If all men were like you there'd be
an end of both our trades; there would be no fighting and no soldiering,
no rogues and no magistrates to catch them." The Colonel wondered at his
friend's enthusiasm, who was not used to be complimentary; indeed what so
usual with him as that simple act of gratitude and devotion about which
his comrade spoke to him? To ask a blessing for his boy was as natural to
him as to wake with the sunrise, or to go to rest when the day was over.
His first and his last thought was always the child.

The two gentlemen were home in time enough to find Clive dressed, and his
uncle arrived for breakfast. The Colonel said a grace over that meal: the
life was begun which he had longed and prayed for, and the son smiling
before his eyes who had been in his thoughts for so many fond years.




CHAPTER IX

Miss Honeyman's


In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most
frequented in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have
bow-windows in front, bulging out with gentle prominences, and ornamented
with neat verandahs, from which you can behold the tide of humankind as
it flows up and down the Steyne, and that blue ocean over which Britannia
is said to rule, stretching brightly away eastward and westward. The
chain-pier, as every body knows, runs intrepidly into the sea, which
sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with laughing wavelets, and
anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring foam. Here, for
the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace this vast deck
without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch the sun setting in
splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its rising glories the ups
and downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen with his family inveigled
into the shallops of the mercenary native mariner, and fancy that the
motion cannot be pleasant; and how the hirer of the boat, otium et oppidi
laudat rura sui, haply sighs for ease, and prefers Richmond or Hampstead.
You behold a hundred bathing-machines put to sea; and your naughty fancy
depicts the beauties splashing under their white awnings. Along the
rippled sands (stay, are they rippled sands or shingly beach?) the
prawn-boy seeks the delicious material of your breakfast. Breakfast-meal
in London almost unknown, greedily devoured in Brighton! In yon vessels
now nearing the shore the sleepless mariner has ventured forth to seize
the delicate whiting, the greedy and foolish mackerel, and the homely
sole. Hark to the twanging horn! it is the early coach going out to
London. Your eye follows it, and rests on the pinnacles built by the
beloved GEORGE. See the worn-out London roue pacing the pier, inhaling
the sea air, and casting furtive glances under the bonnets of the pretty
girls who trot here before lessons! Mark the bilious lawyer, escaped for
a day from Pump Court, and sniffing the fresh breezes before he goes back
to breakfast and a bag full of briefs at the Albion! See that pretty
string of prattling schoolgirls, from the chubby-cheeked, flaxen-headed
little maiden just toddling by the side of the second teacher, to the
arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and conscious of her beauty, whom Miss
Griffin, the stern head-governess, awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a
telescope and marine jacket; young Nathan and young Abrams, already
bedizened in jewellery, and rivalling the sun in oriental splendour;
yonder poor invalid crawling along in her chair; yonder jolly fat lady
examining the Brighton pebbles (I actually once saw a lady buy one), and
her children wondering at the sticking-plaister portraits with gold hair,
and gold stocks, and prodigious high-heeled boots, miracles of art, and
cheap at seven-and-sixpence! It is the fashion to run down George IV.,
but what myriads of Londoners ought to thank him for inventing Brighton!
One of the best of physicians our city has ever known, is kind, cheerful,
merry Doctor Brighton. Hail, thou purveyor of shrimps and honest
prescriber of Southdown mutton! There is no mutton so good as Brighton
mutton; no flys so pleasant as Brighton flys; nor any cliff so pleasant
to ride on; no shops so beautiful to look at as the Brighton gimcrack
shops, and the fruit shops, and the market. I fancy myself in Mrs.
Honeyman's lodgings in Steyne Gardens, and in enjoyment of all these
things.

If the gracious reader has had losses in life, losses not so bad as to
cause absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of
starvation, let him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no
means so great as his timorous fancy depicted. Say your money has been
invested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless speculations--the
news of the smash comes; you pay your outlying bills with the balance at
the banker's; you assemble your family and make them a fine speech; the
wife of your bosom goes round and embraces the sons and daughters
seriatim; nestling in your own waistcoat finally, in possession of which,
she says (with tender tears and fond quotations from Holy Writ, God bless
her!), and of the darlings round about, lies all her worldly treasure:
the weeping servants are dismissed, their wages paid in full, and with a
present of prayer- and hymn-books from their mistress; your elegant house
in Harley Street is to let, and you subside into lodgings in Pentonville,
or Kensington, or Brompton. How unlike the mansion where you paid taxes
and distributed elegant hospitality for so many years!

You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find yourself very tolerably
comfortable. I am not sure that in her heart your wife is not happier
than in what she calls her happy days. She will be somebody hereafter:
she was nobody in Harley Street: that is, everybody else in her
visiting-book, take the names all round, was as good as she. They had the
very same entrees, plated ware, men to wait, etc., at all the houses
where you visited in the street. Your candlesticks might be handsomer
(and indeed they had a very fine effect upon the dinner-table), but then
Mr. Jones's silver (or electro-plated) dishes were much finer. You had
more carriages at your door on the evening of your delightful soirees
than Mrs. Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to my taste, than
that in which people are described as "seeing a great deal of carriage
company"); but yet Mrs. Brown, from the circumstance of her being a
baronet's niece, took precedence of your dear wife at most tables. Hence
the latter charming woman's scorn at the British baronetcy, and her many
jokes at the order. In a word, and in the height of your social
prosperity, there was always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something
bitter, in the midst of the fountain of delights at which you were
permitted to drink.

There is no good (unless your taste is that way) in living in a society
where you are merely the equal of everybody else. Many people give
themselves extreme pains to frequent company where all around them are
their superiors, and where, do what you will, you must be subject to
continual mortification--(as, for instance, when Marchioness X. forgets
you, and you can't help thinking that she cuts you on purpose; when
Duchess Z. passes by in her diamonds, etc.). The true pleasure of life is
to live with your inferiors. Be the cock of your village; the queen of
your coterie; and, besides very great persons, the people whom Fate has
specially endowed with this kindly consolation are those who have seen
what are called better days--those who have had losses. I am like Caesar,
and of a noble mind: if I cannot be first in Piccadilly, let me try
Hatton Garden, and see whether I cannot lead the ton there. If I cannot
take the lead at White's or the Travellers', let me be president of the
Jolly Bandboys at the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody who does not
pay me honour. If my darling Bessy cannot go out of a drawing-room until
a baronet's niece (ha! ha! a baronet's niece, forsooth!) has walked
before her, let us frequent company where we shall be the first; and how
can we be the first unless we select our inferiors for our associates?
This kind of pleasure is to be had by almost everybody, and at scarce any
cost. With a shilling's-worth of tea and muffins you can get as much
adulation and respect as many people cannot purchase with a thousand
pounds' worth of plate and profusion, hired footmen, turning their houses
topsy-turvy, and suppers from Gunter's. Adulation!--why, the people who
come to you give as good parties as you do. Respect!--the very menials,
who wait behind your supper-table, waited at a duke's yesterday, and
actually patronise you! O you silly spendthrift! you can buy flattery for
twopence, and you spend ever so much money in entertaining your equals
and betters, and nobody admires you!

Now Aunt Honeyman was a woman of a thousand virtues; cheerful, frugal,
honest, laborious, charitable, good-humoured, truth-telling, devoted to
her family, capable of any sacrifice for those she loved; and when she
came to have losses of money, Fortune straightway compensated her by many
kindnesses which no income can supply. The good old lady admired the word
gentlewoman of all others in the English vocabulary, and made all around
her feel that such was her rank. Her mother's father was a naval captain;
her father had taken pupils, got a living, sent his son to college, dined
with the squire, published his volume of sermons, was liked in his
parish, where Miss Honeyman kept house for him, was respected for his
kindness and famous for his port wine; and so died, leaving about two
hundred pounds a year to his two children, nothing to Clive Newcome's
mother who had displeased him by her first marriage (an elopement with
Ensign Casey) and subsequent light courses. Charles Honeyman spent his
money elegantly in wine-parties at Oxford, and afterwards in foreign
travel;--spent his money and as much of Miss Honeyman's as that worthy
soul would give him. She was a woman of spirit and resolution. She
brought her furniture to Brighton (believing that the whole place still
fondly remembered her grandfather, Captain Nokes, who had resided there
and his gallantry in Lord Rodney's action with the Count de Grasse), took
a house, and let the upper floors to lodgers.

The little brisk old lady brought a maid-servant out of the country with
her, who was daughter to her father's clerk, and had learned her letters
and worked her first sampler under Miss Honeyman's own eye, whom she
adored all through her life. No Indian begum rolling in wealth, no
countess mistress of castles and townhouses, ever had such a faithful
toady as Hannah Hicks was to her mistress. Under Hannah was a young lady
from the workhouse, who called Hannah "Mrs. Hicks, mum," and who bowed in
awe as much before that domestic as Hannah did before Miss Honeyman. At
five o'clock in summer, at seven in winter (for Miss Honeyman, a good
economist, was chary of candlelight), Hannah woke up little Sally, and
these three women rose. I leave you to imagine what a row there was in
the establishment if Sally appeared with flowers under her bonnet, gave
signs of levity or insubordination, prolonged her absence when sent forth
for the beer, or was discovered in flirtation with the baker's boy or the
grocer's young man. Sally was frequently renewed. Miss Honeyman called
all her young persons Sally; and a great number of Sallies were consumed
in her house. The qualities of the Sally for the time-being formed a
constant and delightful subject of conversation between Hannah and her
mistress. The few friends who visited Miss Honeyman in her back-parlour
had their Sallies, in discussing whose peculiarities of disposition these
good ladies passed the hours agreeably over their tea.

Many persons who let lodgings in Brighton have been servants themselves--
are retired housekeepers, tradesfolk, and the like. With these
surrounding individuals Hannah treated on a footing of equality, bringing
to her mistress accounts of their various goings on; "how No. 6 was let;
how No. 9 had not paid his rent again; how the first floor at 27 had game
almost every day, and made-dishes from Mutton's; how the family who had
taken Mrs. Bugsby's had left as usual after the very first night, the
poor little infant blistered all over with bites on its little dear face;
how the Miss Learys was going on shameful with the two young men,
actially in their setting-room, mum, where one of them offered Miss Laura
Leary a cigar; how Mrs. Cribb still went cuttin' pounds and pounds of
meat off the lodgers' jints, emptying their tea-caddies, actially reading
their letters. Sally had been told so by Polly the Cribb's maid, who was
kep, how that poor child was kep, hearing language perfectly hawful!"
These tales and anecdotes, not altogether redounding to their neighbours'
credit, Hannah copiously collected and brought to her mistress's
tea-table, or served at her frugal little supper when Miss Honeyman, the
labours of the day over, partook of that cheerful meal. I need not say
that such horrors as occurred at Mrs. Bugsby's never befell in Mrs.
Honeyman's establishment. Every room was fiercely swept and sprinkled,
and watched by cunning eyes which nothing could escape; curtains were
taken down, mattresses explored, every bone in bed dislocated and washed
as soon as a lodger took his departure. And as for cribbing meat or
sugar, Sally might occasionally abstract a lump or two, or pop a
veal-cutlet into her mouth while bringing the dishes downstairs:--Sallies
would--giddy creatures bred in workhouses; but Hannah might be entrusted
with untold gold and uncorked brandy; and Miss Honeyman would as soon
think of cutting a slice off Hannah's nose and devouring it, as of
poaching on her lodgers' mutton. The best mutton-broth, the best
veal-cutlets, the best necks of mutton and French beans, the best fried
fish and plumpest partridges, in all Brighton, were to be had at Miss
Honeyman's--and for her favourites the best Indian curry and rice, coming
from a distinguished relative, at present an officer in Bengal. But very
few were admitted to this mark of Miss Honeyman's confidence. If a family
did not go to church they were not in favour: if they went to a
Dissenting meeting she had no opinion of them at all. Once there came to
her house a quiet Staffordshire family who ate no meat on Fridays, and
whom Miss Honeyman pitied as belonging to the Romish superstition; but
when they were visited by two corpulent gentlemen in black, one of whom
wore a purple underwaistcoat, before whom the Staffordshire lady
absolutely sank down on her knees as he went into the drawing-room,--Miss
Honeyman sternly gave warning to these idolaters. She would have no
Jesuits in her premises. She showed Hannah the picture in Howell's
Medulla of the martyrs burning at Smithfield: who said, "Lord bless you,
mum," and hoped it was a long time ago. She called on the curate: and
many and many a time, for years after, pointed out to her friends, and
sometimes to her lodgers, the spot on the carpet where the poor benighted
creature had knelt down. So she went on, respected by all her friends, by
all her tradesmen, by herself not a little, talking of her previous
"misfortunes" with amusing equanimity; as if her father's parsonage-house
had been a palace of splendour, and the one-horse chaise (with the lamps
for evenings) from which she had descended, a noble equipage. "But I know
it is for the best, Clive," she would say to her nephew in describing
those grandeurs, "and, thank heaven, can be resigned in that station in
life to which it has pleased God to call me."

The good lady was called the Duchess by her fellow-tradesfolk in the
square in which she lived. (I don't know what would have come to her
had she been told she was a tradeswoman!) Her butchers, bakers, and
market-people paid her as much respect as though she had been a grandee's
housekeeper out of Kemp Town. Knowing her station, she yet was kind to
those inferior beings. She held affable conversations with them, she
patronised Mr. Rogers, who was said to be worth a hundred thousand--
two-hundred-thousand pounds (or lbs. was it?), and who said, "Law bless
the old Duchess, she do make as much of a pound of veal cutlet as some
would of a score of bullocks, but you see she's a lady born and a lady
bred: she'd die before she'd owe a farden, and she's seen better days,
you know." She went to see the grocer's wife on an interesting occasion,
and won the heart of the family by tasting their candle. Her fishmonger
(it was fine to hear her talk of "my fishmonger") would sell her a
whiting as respectfully as if she had called for a dozen turbots and
lobsters. It was believed by those good folks that her father had been a
Bishop at the very least; and the better days which she had known were
supposed to signify some almost unearthly prosperity. "I have always
found, Hannah," the simple soul would say, "that people know their place,
or can be very very easily made to find it if they lose it; and if a
gentlewoman does not forget herself, her inferiors will not forget that
she is a gentlewoman." "No indeed, mum, and I'm sure they would do no
such thing, mum," says Hannah, who carries away the teapot for her own
breakfast (to be transmitted to Sally for her subsequent refection),
whilst her mistress washes her cup and saucer, as her mother had washed
her own china many scores of years ago.

If some of the surrounding lodging-house keepers, as I have no doubt they
did, disliked the little Duchess for the airs which she gave herself, as
they averred; they must have envied her too her superior prosperity, for
there was scarcely ever a card in her window, whilst those ensigns in her
neighbours' houses would remain exposed to the flies and the weather, and
disregarded by passers-by for months together. She had many regular
customers, or what should be rather called constant friends. Deaf old Mr.
Cricklade came every winter for fourteen years, and stopped until the
hunting was over; an invaluable man, giving little trouble, passing all
day on horseback, and all night over his rubber at the club. The Misses
Barkham, Barkhambury, Tunbridge Wells, whose father had been at college
with Mr. Honeyman, came regularly in June for sea air, letting
Barkhambury for the summer season. Then, for many years, she had her
nephew, as we have seen; and kind recommendations from the clergymen of
Brighton, and a constant friend in the celebrated Dr. Goodenough of
London. who had been her father's private pupil, and of his college
afterwards, who sent his patients from time to time down to her, and his
fellow-physician, Dr. H----, who on his part would never take any fee
from Miss Honeyman, except a packet of India curry-powder, a ham cured as
she only knew how to cure them, and once a year, or so, a dish of her
tea.

"Was there ever such luck as that confounded old Duchess's?" says Mr.
Gawler, coal-merchant and lodging-house keeper, next door but two, whose
apartments were more odious in some respects than Mrs. Bugsby's own. "Was
there ever such devil's own luck, Mrs. G.? It's only a fortnight ago as I
read in the Sussex Advertiser the death of Miss Barkham, of Barkhambury,
Tunbridge Wells, and thinks I, there's a spoke in your wheel, you
stuck-up little old Duchess, with your cussed airs and impudence. And she
ain't put her card up three days; and look yere, yere's two carriages,
two maids, three children, one of them wrapped up in a Hinjar shawl--man
hout a livery,--looks like a foring cove I think--lady in satin pelisse,
and of course they go to the Duchess, be hanged to her! Of course it's
our luck, nothing ever was like our luck. I'm blowed if I don't put a
pistol to my 'ead, and end it, Mrs. G. There they go in--three, four,
six, seven on 'em, and the man. That's the precious child's physic I
suppose he's a-carryin' in the basket. Just look at the luggage. I say!
There's a bloody hand on the first carriage. It's a baronet, is it? I
'ope your ladyship's very well; and I 'ope Sir John will soon be down
yere to join his family." Mr. Gawler makes sarcastic bows over the card
in his bow-window whilst making this speech. The little Gawlers rush on
to the drawing-room verandah themselves to examine the new arrivals.

"This is Mrs. Honeyman's?" asks the gentleman designated by Mr. Gawler as
"the foring cove," and hands in a card on which the words, "Miss
Honeyman, 110, Steyne Gardens. J. Goodenough," are written in that
celebrated physician's handwriting. "We want five bet-rooms, six bets,
two or dree sitting-rooms. Have you got dese?"

"Will you speak to my mistress?" says Hannah. And if it is a fact that
Miss Honeyman does happen to be in the front parlour looking at the
carriages, what harm is there in the circumstance, pray? Is not Gawler
looking, and the people next door? Are not half a dozen little boys
already gathered in the street (as if they started up out of the
trap-doors for the coals), and the nursery maids in the stunted little
garden, are not they looking through the bars of the square? "Please to
speak to mistress," says Hannah, opening the parlour-door, and with a
curtsey, "A gentleman about the apartments, mum."

"Five bet-rooms," says the man, entering. "Six bets, two or dree
sitting-rooms? We gome from Dr. Goodenough."

"Are the apartments for you, sir?" says the little Duchess, looking up at
the large gentleman.

"For my lady," answers the man.

"Had you not better take off your hat?" asks the Duchess, pointing out of
one of her little mittens to "the foring cove's" beaver, which he has
neglected to remove.

The man grins, and takes off the hat. "I beck your bardon, ma'am," says
he. "Have you fife bet-rooms?" etc. The doctor has cured the German of an
illness, as well as his employers, and especially recommended Miss
Honeyman to Mr. Kuhn.

"I have such a number of apartments. My servant will show them to you."
And she walks back with great state to her chair by the window, and
resumes her station and work there.

Mr. Kuhn reports to his mistress, who descends to inspect the apartments,
accompanied through them by Hannah. The rooms are pronounced to be
exceedingly neat and pleasant, and exactly what are wanted for the
family. The baggage is forthwith ordered to be brought from the
carriages. The little invalid wrapped in his shawl is brought upstairs by
the affectionate Mr. Kuhn, who carries him as gently as if he had been
bred all his life to nurse babies. The smiling Sally (the Sally for the
time-being happens to be a very fresh pink-cheeked pretty little Sally)
emerges from the kitchen and introduces the young ladies, the governess,
the maids, to their apartments. The eldest, a slim black-haired young
lass of thirteen, frisks about the rooms, looks at all the pictures, runs
in and out of the verandah, tries the piano, and bursts out laughing at
its wheezy jingle (it had been poor Emma's piano, bought for her on her
seventeenth birthday, three weeks before she ran away with the ensign;
her music is still in the stand by it: the Rev. Charles Honeyman has
warbled sacred melodies over it, and Miss Honeyman considers it a
delightful instrument), kisses her languid little brother laid on the
sofa, and performs a hundred gay and agile motions suited to her age.

"Oh, what a piano! Why, it is as cracked as Miss Quigley's voice!"

"My dear!" says mamma. The little languid boy bursts out into a jolly
laugh.

"What funny pictures, mamma! Action with Count de Grasse; the death of
General Wolfe; a portrait of an officer, an old officer in blue, like
grandpapa; Brazen Nose College, Oxford: what a funny name!"

At the idea of Brazen Nose College, another laugh comes from the invalid.
"I suppose they've all got brass noses there," he says; and explodes at
this joke. The poor little laugh ends in a cough, and mamma's
travelling-basket, which contains everything, produces a bottle of syrup,
labelled "Master A. Newcome. A teaspoonful to be taken when the cough is
troublesome."

"'Oh, the delightful sea! the blue, the fresh, the ever free,'" sings the
young lady, with a shake. (I suppose the maritime song from which she
quoted was just written at this time.) "How much better this is than
going home and seeing those horrid factories and chimneys! I love Doctor
Goodenough for sending us here. What a sweet house it is! Everybody is
happy in it, even Miss Quigley is happy, mamma. What nice rooms! What
pretty chintz! What a--oh, what a--comfortable sofa!" and she falls down
on the sofa, which, truth to say, was the Rev. Charles Honeyman's
luxurious sofa from Oxford, presented to him by young Cibber Wright of
Christchurch, when that gentleman-commoner was eliminated from the
University.

"The person of the house," mamma says, "hardly comes up to Dr.
Goodenough's description of her. He says he remembers her a pretty little
woman when her father was his private tutor."

"She has grown very much since," says the girl. And an explosion takes
place from the sofa, where the little man is always ready to laugh at any
joke, or anything like a joke, uttered by himself or by any of his family
or friends. As for Doctor Goodenough, he says laughing has saved that
boy's life.

"She looks quite like a maid," continues the lady. "She has hard hands,
and she called me mum always. I was quite disappointed in her." And she
subsides into a novel, with many of which kind of works, and with other
volumes, and with workboxes, and with wonderful inkstands, portfolios,
portable days of the month, scent-bottles, scissor-cases, gilt miniature
easels displaying portraits, and countless gimcracks of travel, the rapid
Kuhn has covered the tables in the twinkling of an eye.

The person supposed to be the landlady enters the room at this juncture,
and the lady rises to receive her. The little wag on the sofa puts his
arm round his sister's neck, and whispers, "I say, Eth, isn't she a
pretty girl? I shall write to Doctor Goodenough and tell him how much
she's grown." Convulsions follow this sally, to the surprise of Hannah,
who says, "Pooty little dear!--what time will he have his dinner, mum?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Honeyman, at two o'clock," says the lady with a bow of
her head. "There is a clergyman of your name in London; is he a
relation?" The lady in her turn is astonished, for the tall person breaks
out into a grin, and says, "Law, mum, you're speakin' of Master Charles.
He's in London."

"Indeed!--of Master Charles?"

"And you take me for missis, mum. I beg your pardon, mum," cries Hannah.
The invalid hits his sister in the side with a weak little fist. If
laughter can cure, salva est res. Doctor Goodenough's patient is safe.
"Master Charles is missis's brother, mum. I've got no brother, mum--never
had no brother. Only one son, who's in the police, mum, thank you. And
law bless me, I was going to forget! If you please, mum, missis says, if
you are quite rested, she will pay her duty to you, mum."

"Oh, indeed," says the lady, rather stiffly; and, taking this for an
acceptance of her mistress's visit, Hannah retires.

"This Miss Honeyman seems to be a great personage," says the lady. "If
people let lodgings, why do they give themselves such airs?"

"We never saw Monsieur de Boigne at Boulogne, mamma," interposes the
girl.

"Monsieur de Boigne, my dear Ethel! Monsieur de Boigne is very well.
But--" here the door opens, and in a large cap bristling with ribbons,
with her best chestnut front, and her best black silk gown, on which her
gold watch shines very splendidly, little Miss Honeyman makes her
appearance, and a dignified curtsey to her lodger.

That lady vouchsafes a very slight inclination of the head indeed, which
she repeats when Miss Honeyman says, "I am glad to hear your ladyship is
pleased with the apartments."

"Yes, they will do very well, thank you," answers the latter person,
gravely.

"And they have such a beautiful view of the sea!" cries Ethel.

"As if all the houses hadn't a view of the sea, Ethel! The price has been
arranged, I think? My servants will require a comfortable room to dine
in--by themselves, ma'am, if you please. My governess and the younger
children will dine together. My daughter dines with me--and my little
boy's dinner will be ready at two o'clock precisely, if you please. It is
now near one."

"Am I to understand----" interposed Miss Honeyman.

"Oh! I have no doubt we shall understand each other, ma'am," cried Lady
Anne Newcome (whose noble presence the acute reader has no doubt ere this
divined and saluted). "Doctor Goodenough has given me a most satisfactory
account of you--more satisfactory perhaps than--than you are aware of."
Perhaps Lady Anne's sentence was not going to end in a very satisfactory
way for Miss Honeyman; but, awed by a peculiar look of resolution in the
little lady, her lodger of an hour paused in whatever offensive remark
she might have been about to make. "It is as well that I at last have the
pleasure of seeing you, that I may state what I want, and that we may, as
you say, understand each other. Breakfast and tea, if you please, will be
served in the same manner as dinner. And you will have the kindness to
order fresh milk every morning for my little boy--ass's milk--Doctor
Goodenough has ordered ass's milk. Anything further I want I will
communicate through the person who spoke to you--Kuhn, Mr. Kuhn; and that
will do."

A heavy shower of rain was descending at this moment, and little Mrs.
Honeyman looking at her lodger, who had sate down and taken up her book,
said, "Have your ladyship's servants unpacked your trunks?"

"What on earth, madam, have you--has that to do with the question?"

"They will be put to the trouble of packing again, I fear. I cannot
provide--three times five are fifteen--fifteen separate meals for seven
persons--besides those of my own family. If your servants cannot eat with
mine, or in my kitchen, they and their mistress must go elsewhere. And
the sooner the better, madam, the sooner the better!" says Mrs. Honeyman,
trembling with indignation, and sitting down in a chair spreading her
silks.

"Do you know who I am?" asks Lady Anne, rising.

"Perfectly well, madam," says the other. "And had I known, you should
never have come into my house, that's more."

"Madam!" cries the lady, on which the poor little invalid, scared and
nervous, and hungry for his dinner, began to cry from his sofa.

"It will be a pity that the dear little boy should be disturbed. Dear
little child, I have often heard of him, and of you, miss," says the
little householder, rising. "I will get you some dinner, my dear, for
Clive's sake. And meanwhile your ladyship will have the kindness to seek
for some other apartments--for not a bit shall my fire cook for any one
else of your company." And with this the indignant little landlady sailed
out of the room.

"Gracious goodness! Who is the woman?" cries Lady Anne. "I never was so
insulted in my life."

"Oh, mamma, it was you began!" says downright Ethel. "That is--Hush,
Alfred dear!--Hush, my darling!"

"Oh, it was mamma began! I'm so hungry! I'm so hungry!" howled the little
man on the sofa--or off it rather--for he was now down on the ground,
kicking away the shawls which enveloped him.

"What is it, my boy? What is it, my blessed darling? You shall have your
dinner! Give her all, Ethel. There are the keys of my desk--there's my
watch--there are my rings. Let her take my all. The monster! the child
must live! It can't go away in such a storm as this. Give me a cloak, a
parasol, anything--I'll go forth and get a lodging. I'll beg my bread
from house to house--if this fiend refuses me. Eat the biscuits, dear! A
little of the syrup, Alfred darling; it's very nice, love! and come to
your old mother--your poor old mother."

Alfred roared out, "No--it's not n-ice: it's n-a-a-asty! I won't have
syrup. I will have dinner." The mother, whose embraces the child repelled
with infantine kicks, plunged madly at the bells, rang them all four
vehemently, and ran downstairs towards the parlour, whence Miss Honeyman
was issuing.

The good lady had not at first known the names of her lodgers, but had
taken them in willingly enough on Dr. Goodenough's recommendation. And it
was not until one of the nurses entrusted with the care of Master
Alfred's dinner informed Miss Honeyman of the name of her guest, that she
knew she was entertaining Lady Anne Newcome; and that the pretty girl was
the fair Miss Ethel; the little sick boy, the little Alfred of whom his
cousin spoke, and of whom Clive had made a hundred little drawings in his
rude way, as he drew everybody. Then bidding Sally run off to St. James's
Street for a chicken--she saw it put on the spit, and prepared a bread
sauce, and composed a batter-pudding as she only knew how to make
batter-puddings. Then she went to array herself in her best clothes, as
we have seen,--as we have heard rather (Goodness forbid that we should
see Miss Honeyman arraying herself, or penetrate that chaste mystery, her
toilette!)--then she came to wait upon Lady Anne, not a little flurried
as to the result of that queer interview; then she whisked out of the
drawing-room as before has been shown; and, finding the chicken roasted
to a turn, the napkin and tray ready spread by Hannah the neat-handed,
she was bearing them up to the little patient when the frantic parent met
her on the stair.

"Is it--is it for my child?" cried Lady Anne, reeling against the
bannister.

"Yes, it's for the child," says Miss Honeyman, tossing up her head. "But
nobody else has anything in the house."

"God bless you--God bless you! A mother's bl-l-essings go with you,"
gurgled the lady, who was not, it must be confessed, a woman of strong
moral character.

It was good to see the little man eating the fowl. Ethel, who had never
cut anything in her young existence, except her fingers now and then with
her brother's and her governess's penknives, bethought her of asking Miss
Honeyman to carve the chicken. Lady Anne, with clasped hands and
streaming eyes, sate looking on at the ravishing scene.

"Why did you not let us know you were Clive's aunt?" Ethel asked, putting
out her hand. The old lady took hers very kindly, and said, "Because you
didn't give me time. And do you love Clive, my dear?"

The reconciliation between Miss Honeyman and her lodger was perfect. Lady
Anne wrote a quire of notepaper off to Sir Brian for that day's post--
only she was too late, as she always was. Mr. Kuhn perfectly delighted
Miss Honeyman that evening by his droll sayings, jokes, and
pronunciation, and by his praises of Master Glife, as he called him. He
lived out of the house, did everything for everybody, was never out of
the way when wanted, and never in the way when not wanted. Ere long Miss
Honeyman got out a bottle of the famous Madeira which her Colonel sent
her, and treated him to a glass in her own room. Kuhn smacked his lips
and held out the glass again. The honest rogue knew good wine.




CHAPTER X

Ethel and her Relations


For four-and-twenty successive hours Lady Anne Newcome was perfectly in
raptures with her new lodgings, and every person and thing which they
contained. The drawing-rooms were fitted with the greatest taste; the
dinner was exquisite. Were there ever such delicious veal-cutlets, such
verdant French beans? "Why do we have those odious French cooks, my dear,
with their shocking principles--the principles of all Frenchmen are
shocking--and the dreadful bills they bring us in; and their
consequential airs and graces? I am determined to part with Brignol. I
have written to your father this evening to give Brignol warning. When
did he ever give us veal-cutlets? What can be nicer?"

"Indeed they were very good," said Miss Ethel, who had mutton five times
a week at one o'clock. "I am so glad you like the house, and Clive, and
Mrs. Honeyman."

"Like her! the dear little old woman. I feel as if she had been my friend
all my life! I feel quite drawn towards her. What a wonderful coincidence
that Dr. Goodenough should direct us to this very house! I have written
to your father about it. And to think that I should have written to Clive
at this very house, and quite forgotten Mrs. Honeyman's name--and such an
odd name too. I forget everything, everything! You know I forgot your
Aunt Louisa's husband's name; and when I was godmother to her baby, and
the clergyman said, 'What is the infant's name?' I said, 'Really I
forget.' And so I did. He was a London clergyman, but I forget at what
church. Suppose it should be this very Mr. Honeyman! It may have been,
you know, and then the coincidence would be still more droll. That tall,
old, nice-looking, respectable person, with a mark on her nose, the
housekeeper--what is her name?--seems a most invaluable person. I think I
shall ask her to come to us. I am sure she would save me I don't know how
much money every week; and I am certain Mrs. Trotter is making a fortune
by us. I shall write to your papa, and ask him permission to ask this
person." Ethel's mother was constantly falling in love with her new
acquaintances; their man-servants and their maid-servants, their horses
and ponies, and the visitor within their gates. She would ask strangers
to Newcome, hug and embrace them on Sunday; not speak to them on Monday;
and on Tuesday behave so rudely to them, that they were gone before
Wednesday. Her daughter had had so many governesses--all darlings during
the first week, and monsters afterwards--that the poor child possessed
none of the accomplishments of her age. She could not play on the piano;
she could not speak French well; she could not tell you when gunpowder
was invented: she had not the faintest idea of the date of the Norman
Conquest, or whether the earth went round the sun, or vice versa. She did
not know the number of counties in England, Scotland, and Wales, let
alone Ireland; she did not know the difference between latitude and
longitude. She had had so many governesses: their accounts differed: poor
Ethel was bewildered by a multiplicity of teachers, and thought herself a
monster of ignorance. They gave her a book at a Sunday School, and little
girls of eight years old answered questions of which she knew nothing.
The place swam before her. She could not see the sun shining on their
fair flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy little children holding up
their eager hands, and crying the answer to this question and that,
seemed mocking her. She seemed to read in the book, "O Ethel, you dunce,
dunce, dunce!" She went home silent in the carriage, and burst into
bitter tears on her bed. Naturally a haughty girl of the highest spirit,
resolute and imperious, this little visit to the parish school taught
Ethel lessons more valuable than ever so much arithmetic and geography.
Clive has told me a story of her in her youth, which, perhaps, may apply
to some others of the youthful female aristocracy. She used to walk, with
other select young ladies and gentlemen, their nurses and governesses, in
a certain reserved plot of ground railed off from Hyde Park, whereof some
of the lucky dwellers in the neighbourhood of Apsley House have a key. In
this garden, at the age of nine or thereabout, she had contracted an
intimate friendship with the Lord Hercules O'Ryan.--as every one of my
gentle readers knows, one of the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The
Lord Hercules was a year younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may
account for the passion which grew up between these young persons; it
being a provision in nature that a boy always falls in love with a girl
older than himself, or rather, perhaps, that a girl bestows her
affections on a little boy, who submits to receive them.

One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that
very morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was
inconsolable. "What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?" she
asked of her nurse.

The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, "Perhaps his lordship would
know nothing about the circumstance." "He will," said Miss Ethel--"he'll
read it in the newspaper." My Lord Hercules, it is to be hoped, strangled
this infant passion in the cradle; having long since married Isabella,
only daughter of ------ Grains, Esq., of Drayton Windsor, a partner in
the great brewery of Foker and Co.

When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall girl,
that she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally
perhaps, also, felt herself too tall for their society. "Fancy myself,"
she thought, "dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore
like Lucy Tucker!" She did not care for their sports. She could not walk
with them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them at the
academy, nor attend the Cours de Litterature Universelle et de Science
Comprehensive of the professor then the mode--the smallest girls took her
up in the class. She was bewildered by the multitude of things they bade
her learn. At the youthful little assemblies of her sex, when, under the
guide of their respected governesses, the girls came to tea at six
o'clock, dancing, charades, and so forth, Ethel herded not with the
children of her own age, nor yet with the teachers who sit apart at these
assemblies, imparting to each other their little wrongs; but Ethel romped
with the little children--the rosy little trots--and took them on her
knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and
loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty kindly girl showed
herself to them; but at home she was alone, farouche and intractable, and
did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one after another. I
break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the
youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this
story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth
him. But of this be sure--she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our
tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at her bidding.

Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family,
whose history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding the
Earl of Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian Newcome had
married.

When we read in the fairy stories that the King and Queen, who lived once
upon a time, build a castle of steel, defended by moats and sentinels
innumerable, in which they place their darling only child, the Prince or
Princess, whose birth has blessed them after so many years of marriage,
and whose christening feast has been interrupted by the cantankerous
humour of that notorious old fairy who always persists in coming,
although she has not received any invitation to the baptismal ceremony:
when Prince Prettyman is locked up in the steel tower, provided only with
the most wholesome food, the most edifying educational works, and the
most venerable old tutor to instruct and to bore him, we know, as a
matter of course, that the steel bolts and brazen bars one day will be of
no avail, the old tutor will go off in a doze, and the moats and
drawbridges will either be passed by His Royal Highness's implacable
enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace himself, who is determined to
outwit his guardians, and see the wicked world. The old King and Queen
always come in and find the chambers empty, the saucy heir-apparent
flown, the porter and sentinels drunk, the ancient tutor asleep; they
tear their venerable wigs in anguish, they kick the major-domo
downstairs, they turn the duenna out of doors--the toothless old dragon!
There is no resisting fate. The Princess will slip out of window by the
rope-ladder; the Prince will be off to pursue his pleasures, and sow his
wild oats at the appointed season. How many of our English princes have
been coddled at home by their fond papas and mammas, walled up in
inaccessible castles, with a tutor and a library, guarded by cordons of
sentinels, sermoners, old aunts, old women from the world without, and
have nevertheless escaped from all these guardians, and astonished the
world by their extravagance and their frolics? What a wild rogue was that
Prince Harry, son of the austere sovereign who robbed Richard the Second
of his crown,--the youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented
Eastcheap taverns with Colonel Falstaff and worse company, and boxed
Chief Justice Gascoigne's ears! What must have been the venerable Queen
Charlotte's state of mind when she heard of the courses of her beautiful
young Prince; of his punting at gambling-tables; of his dealings with
horse-jockeys; of his awful doings with Perdita? Besides instances taken
from our Royal Family, could we not draw examples from our respected
nobility? There was that young Lord Warwick, Mr. Addison's stepson. We
know that his mother was severe, and his stepfather a most eloquent
moralist, yet the young gentleman's career was shocking, positively
shocking. He boxed the watch; he fuddled himself at taverns; he was no
better than a Mohock. The chronicles of that day contain accounts of many
a mad prank which he played, as we have legends of a still earlier date
of the lawless freaks of the wild Prince and Poins. Our people has never
looked very unkindly on these frolics. A young nobleman, full of life and
spirits, generous of his money, jovial in his humour, ready with his
sword, frank, handsome, prodigal, courageous, always finds favour. Young
Scapegrace rides a steeplechase or beats a bargeman, and the crowd
applauds him. Sages and seniors shake their heads, and look at him not
unkindly; even stern old female moralists are disarmed at the sight of
youth and gallantry, and beauty. I know very well that Charles Surface is
a sad dog, and Tom Jones no better than he should be; but, in spite of
such critics as Dr. Johnson and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a
sneaking regard for honest Tom, and hope Sophia will be happy, and Tom
will end well at last.

Five-and-twenty years ago the young Earl of Kew came upon the town, which
speedily rang with the feats of his lordship. He began life time enough
to enjoy certain pleasures from which our young aristocracy of the
present day seem, alas! to be cut off. So much more peaceable and
polished do we grow, so much does the spirit of the age appear to
equalise all ranks; so strongly has the good sense of society, to which
in the end gentlemen of the very highest fashion must bow, put its veto
upon practices and amusements with which our fathers were familiar. At
that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports
of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English
custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the noble
science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the heroic
times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went eagerly to
Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet's head, or the Negro beat the
Jew's nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the tooting horns and
rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in merry England
in those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and
chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to drive coaches, to know coachmen
and guards, to be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the
jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the pretty chambermaid under the chin,
were the delight of men who were young not very long ago. Who ever
thought of writing to the Times then? "Biffin," I warrant, did not grudge
his money, and "A Thirsty Soul" paid cheerfully for his drink. The road
was an institution, the ring was an institution. Men rallied round them;
and, not without a kind conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with
which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they
should be no more:--decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin
of the breed of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a
black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a
stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is there any
young fellow of the present time who aspires to take the place of a
stoker? You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a
lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling
Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and
swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has
died away.

Just at the ending of that old time, Lord Kew's life began. That kindly
middle-aged gentleman whom his county knows that good landlord, and
friend of all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and
indefatigable visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers
of his shire, so full of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at
agricultural shows, and even lectures at county town institutes in his
modest, pleasant way, was the wild young Lord Kew of a quarter of a
century back; who kept racehorses, patronised boxers, fought a duel,
thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at Crockford's, and did who
knows what besides?

His mother, a devout lady, nursed her son and his property carefully
during the young gentleman's minority: keeping him and his younger
brother away from all mischief, under the eyes of the most careful
pastors and masters. She learnt Latin with the boys, she taught them to
play on the piano: she enraged old Lady Kew, the children's grandmother,
who prophesied that her daughter-in-law would make milksops of her sons,
to whom the old lady was never reconciled until after my lord's entry at
Christchurch, where he began to distinguish himself very soon after his
first term. He drove tandems, kept hunters, gave dinners, scandalised the
Dean, screwed up the tutor's door, and agonised his mother at home by his
lawless proceedings. He quitted the University after a very brief sojourn
at that seat of learning. It may be the Oxford authorities requested his
lordship to retire; let bygones be bygones. His youthful son, the present
Lord Walham, is now at Christchurch, reading with the greatest assiduity.
Let us not be too particular in narrating his father's unedifying frolics
of a quarter of a century ago.

Old Lady Kew, who, in conjunction with Mrs. Newcome, had made the
marriage between Mr. Brian Newcome and her daughter, always despised her
son-in-law; and being a frank, open person, uttering her mind always,
took little pains to conceal her opinion regarding him or any other
individual. "Sir Brian Newcome," she would say, "is one of the most
stupid and respectable of men; Anne is clever, but has not a grain of
common sense. They make a very well assorted couple. Her flightiness
would have driven any man crazy who had an opinion of his own. She would
have ruined any poor man of her own rank; as it is, I have given her a
husband exactly suited for her. He pays the bills, does not see how
absurd she is, keeps order in the establishment, and checks her follies.
She wanted to marry her cousin, Tom Poyntz, when they were both very
young, and proposed to die of a broken heart when I arranged her match
with Mr. Newcome. A broken fiddlestick! she would have ruined Tom Poyntz
in a year; and has no more idea of the cost of a leg of mutton, than I
have of algebra."

The Countess of Kew loved Brighton, and preferred living there even at
the season when Londoners find such especial charms in their own city.
"London after Easter," the old lady said, "was intolerable. Pleasure
becomes a business, then so oppressive, that all good company is
destroyed by it. Half the men are sick with the feasts which they eat day
after day. The women are thinking of the half-dozen parties they have to
go to in the course of the night. The young girls are thinking of their
partners and their toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and quiet
enjoyment of life. On the other hand, the crowd of bourgeois has not
invaded Brighton. The drive is not blocked up by flys full of
stockbrokers' wives and children; and you can take the air in your chair
upon the chain-pier, without being stifled by the cigars of the odious
shop-boys from London." So Lady Kew's name was usually amongst the
earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded amongst the arrivals.

Her only unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, lived with her ladyship. Poor
Lady Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her
for many years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her mother's
eyes, she was the old lady's victim, her pincushion, into which Lady Kew
plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As children are
sometimes brought before magistrates, and their poor little backs and
shoulders laid bare, covered with bruises and lashes which brutal parents
have inflicted, so, I dare say, if there had been any tribunal or judge,
before whom this poor patient lady's heart could have been exposed, it
would have been found scarred all over with numberless ancient wounds,
and bleeding from yesterday's castigation. Old Lady Kew's tongue was a
dreadful thong which made numbers of people wince. She was not altogether
cruel, but she knew the dexterity with which she wielded her lash, and
liked to exercise it. Poor Lady Julia was always at hand, when her mother
was minded to try her powers.

Lady Kew had just made herself comfortable at Brighton, when her little
grandson's illness brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the
sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the
water to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. "Why did not Anne carry
the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see
that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me out
of the world--which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to you,
I know, and my death would be a release to you."

"You see Doctor H., who visits the child every day," cries poor
Pincushion; "you are not afraid when he comes."

"Doctor H.? Doctor H. comes to cure me, or to tell me the news, or to
flatter me, or to feel my pulse and to pretend to prescribe, or to take
his guinea; of course Dr. H. must go to see all sorts of people in all
sorts of diseases. You would not have me be such a brute as to order him
not to attend my own grandson? I forbid you to go to Anne's house. You
will send one of the men every day to inquire. Let the groom go--yes,
Charles--he will not go into the house. He will ring the bell and wait
outside. He had better ring the bell at the area--I suppose there is an
area--and speak to the servants through the bars, and bring us word how
Alfred is." Poor Pincushion felt fresh compunctions; she had met the
children, and kissed the baby, and held kind Ethel's hand in hers, that
day, as she was out in her chair. There was no use, however, to make this
confession. Is she the only good woman or man of whom domestic tyranny
has made a hypocrite?

Charles, the groom, brings back perfectly favourable reports of Master
Alfred's health that day, which Doctor H., in the course of his visit,
confirms. The child is getting well rapidly; eating like a little ogre.
His cousin Lord Kew has been to see him. He is the kindest of men, Lord
Kew; he brought the little man Tom and Jerry with the pictures. The boy
is delighted with the pictures.

"Why has not Kew come to see me? When did he come? Write him a note, and
send for him instantly, Julia. Did you know he was here?"

Julia says, that she had but that moment read in the Brighton papers the
arrival of the Earl of Kew and the Honourable J. Belsize at the Albion.

"I am sure they are here for some mischief," cries the old lady,
delighted. "Whenever George and John Belsize are together, I know there
is some wickedness planning. What do you know, Doctor? I see by your face
you know something. Do tell it me, that I may write it to his odious
psalm-singing mother."

Doctor H.'s face does indeed wear a knowing look. He simpers and says, "I
did see Lord Kew driving this morning, first with the Honourable Mr.
Belsize, and afterwards"--here he glances towards Lady Julia, as if to
say, "Before an unmarried lady, I do not like to tell your ladyship with
whom I saw Lord Kew driving, after he had left the Honourable Mr.
Belsize, who went to play a match with Captain Huxtable at tennis."

"Are you afraid to speak before Julia?" cries the elder lady. "Why, bless
my soul, she is forty years old, and has heard everything that can be
heard. Tell me about Kew this instant, Doctor H."

The Doctor blandly acknowledges that Lord Kew had been driving Madame
Pozzoprofondo, the famous contralto of the Italian Opera, in his phaeton,
for two hours, in the face of all Brighton.

"Yes, Doctor," interposes Lady Julia, blushing; "but Signor Pozzoprofondo
was in the carriage too--a-a-sitting behind with the groom. He was
indeed, mamma."

"Julia, vous n'etes qu'une panache," says Lady Kew, shrugging her
shoulders, and looking at her daughter from under her bushy black
eyebrows. Her ladyship, a sister of the late lamented Marquis of Steyne,
possessed no small share of the wit and intelligence, and a considerable
resemblance to the features, of that distinguished nobleman.

Lady Kew bids her daughter take a pen and write:--"Monsieur le Mauvais
Sujet,--Gentlemen who wish to take the sea air in private, or to avoid
their relations, had best go to other places than Brighton, where their
names are printed in the newspapers. If you are not drowned in a pozzo--"

"Mamma!" interposes the secretary.

"--in a pozzo-profondo, you will please come to dine with two old women,
at half-past seven. You may bring Mr. Belsize, and must tell us a hundred
stories.--Yours, etc.,             L. Kew."

Julia wrote all the letter as her mother dictated it, save only one
sentence, and the note was sealed and despatched to my Lord Kew, who came
to dinner with Jack Belsize. Jack Belsize liked to dine with Lady Kew. He
said, "she was an old dear, and the wickedest old woman in all England;"
and he liked to dine with Lady Julia, who was "a poor suffering dear, and
the best woman in all England." Jack Belsize liked every one, and every
one liked him.

Two evenings afterwards the young men repeated their visit to Lady Kew,
and this time Lord Kew was loud in praises of his cousins of the house of
Newcome.

"Not of the eldest, Barnes, surely, my dear?" cries Lady Kew.

"No, confound him! not Barnes."

"No, d--- it, not Barnes. I beg your pardon, Lady Julia," broke in Jack
Belsize. "I can get on with most men; but that little Barney is too
odious a little snob."

"A little what--Mr. Belsize?"

"A little snob, ma'am. I have no other word, though he is your grandson.
I never heard him say a good word of any mortal soul, or do a kind
action."

"Thank you, Mr. Belsize," says the lady.

"But the others are capital. There is that little chap who has just had
the measles--he's a clear little brick. And as for Miss Ethel----"

"Ethel is a trump, ma'am," says Lord Kew, slapping his hand on his knee.

"Ethel is a brick, and Alfred is a trump, I think you say," remarks Lady
Kew, nodding approval; "and Barnes is a snob. This is very satisfactory
to know."

"We met the children out to-day," cries the enthusiastic Kew, "as I was
driving Jack in the drag, and I got out and talked to 'em."

"Governess an uncommonly nice woman--oldish, but--I beg your pardon, Lady
Julia," cries the inopportune Jack Belsize--"I'm always putting my foot
in it."

"Putting your foot into what? Go on, Kew."

"Well, we met the whole posse of children; and the little fellow wanted a
drive, and I said I would drive him and Ethel too, if she would come.
Upon my word she is as pretty a girl as you can see on a summer's day.
And the governess said 'No,' of course. Governesses always do. But I said
I was her uncle, and Jack paid her such a fine compliment, that the young
woman was mollified, and the children took their seats beside me, and
Jack went behind."

"Where Monsieur Pozzoprofondo sits, bon."

"We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My horses
are young, and when they get on the grass they are as if they were mad.
It was very wrong; I know it was."

"D----d rash," interposes Jack. "He had nearly broken all our necks."

"And my brother Frank would have been Lord Kew," continued the young
Earl, with a quiet smile. "What an escape for him! The horses ran away--
ever so far--and I thought the carriage must upset. The poor little boy,
who has lost his pluck in the fever, began to cry; but that young girl,
though she was as white as a sheet, never gave up for a moment, and sate
in her place like a man. We met nothing, luckily; and I pulled the horses
in after a mile or two, and I drove 'em into Brighton as quiet as if I
had been driving a hearse. And that little trump of an Ethel, what do you
think she said? She said, 'I was not frightened, but you must not tell
mamma.' My aunt, it appears, was in a dreadful commotion--I ought to have
thought of that."

"Lady Anne is a ridiculous old dear. I beg your pardon, Lady Kew," here
breaks in Jack the apologiser.

"There is a brother of Sir Brian Newcome's staying with them," Lord Kew
proceeds; "an East India Colonel--a very fine-looking old boy."

"Smokes awfully, row about it in the hotel. Go on, Kew; beg your----"

"This gentleman was on the look-out for us, it appears, for when we came
in sight he despatched a boy who was with him, running like a lamplighter
back to my aunt, to say all was well. And he took little Alfred out of
the carriage, and then helped out Ethel, and said, 'My dear, you are too
pretty to scold; but you have given us all a belle peur.' And then he
made me and Jack a low bow, and stalked into the lodgings."

"I think you do deserve to be whipped, both of you," cries Lady Kew.

"We went up and made our peace with my aunt, and were presented in form
to the Colonel and his youthful cub."

"As fine a fellow as ever I saw: and as fine a boy as ever I saw," cries
Jack Belsize. "The young chap is a great hand at drawing--upon my life
the best drawings I ever saw. And he was making a picture for little
What-d'you-call-'em. And Miss Newcome was looking over them. And Lady
Anne pointed out the group to me, and said how pretty it was. She is
uncommonly sentimental, you know, Lady Anne."

"My daughter Anne is the greatest fool in the three kingdoms," cried Lady
Kew, looking fiercely over her spectacles. And Julia was instructed to
write that night to her sister, and desire that Ethel should be sent to
see her grandmother:--Ethel, who rebelled against her grandmother, and
always fought on her Aunt Julia's side, when the weaker was oppressed by
the older and stronger lady.




CHAPTER XI

At Mrs. Ridley's


Saint Peter of Alcantara, as I have read in a life of St. Theresa,
informed that devout lady that he had passed forty years of his life
sleeping only an hour and a half each day; his cell was but four feet and
a half long, so that he never lay down: his pillow was a wooden log in
the stone wall: he ate but once in three days: he was for three years in
a convent of his order without knowing any one of his brethren except by
the sound of their voices, for he never during this period took his eyes
off the ground: he always walked barefoot, and was but skin and bone when
he died. The eating only once in three days, so he told his sister Saint,
was by no means impossible, if you began the regimen in your youth. To
conquer sleep was the hardest of all austerities which he practised:--I
fancy the pious individual so employed, day after day, night after night,
on his knees, or standing up in devout meditation in the cupboard--his
dwelling-place; bareheaded and barefooted, walking over rocks, briars,
mud, sharp stones (picking out the very worst places, let us trust, with
his downcast eyes), under the bitter snow, or the drifting rain, or the
scorching sunshine--I fancy Saint Peter of Alcantara, and contrast him
with such a personage as the Incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's Chapel,
Mayfair.

His hermitage is situated in Walpole Street, let us say, on the second
floor of a quiet mansion, let out to hermits by a nobleman's butler,
whose wife takes care of the lodgings. His cells consist of a refectory,
a dormitory, and an adjacent oratory where he keeps his shower-bath and
boots--the pretty boots trimly stretched on boot-trees and blacked to a
nicety (not varnished) by the boy who waits on him. The barefooted
business may suit superstitious ages and gentlemen of Alcantara, but does
not become Mayfair and the nineteenth century. If St. Pedro walked the
earth now with his eyes to the ground he would know fashionable divines
by the way in which they were shod. Charles Honeyman's is a sweet foot. I
have no doubt as delicate and plump and rosy as the white hand with its
two rings, which he passes in impassioned moments through his slender
flaxen hair.

A sweet odour pervades his sleeping apartment--not that peculiar and
delicious fragrance with which the Saints of the Roman Church are said to
gratify the neighbourhood where they repose--but oils, redolent of the
richest perfumes of Macassar, essences (from Truefitt's or Delcroix's)
into which a thousand flowers have expressed their sweetest breath, await
his meek head on rising; and infuse the pocket-handkerchief with which he
dries and draws so many tears. For he cries a good deal in his sermons,
to which the ladies about him contribute showers of sympathy.

By his bedside are slippers lined with blue silk and worked of an
ecclesiastical pattern, by some of the faithful who sit at his feet. They
come to him in anonymous parcels: they come to him in silver paper: boys
in buttons (pages who minister to female grace!) leave them at the door
for the Rev. C. Honeyman, and slip away without a word. Purses are sent
to him--penwipers--a portfolio with the Honeyman arms; yea, braces have
been known to reach him by the post (in his days of popularity); and
flowers, and grapes, and jelly when he was ill, and throat comforters,
and lozenges for his dear bronchitis. In one of his drawers is the rich
silk cassock presented to him by his congregation at Leatherhead (when
the young curate quitted that parish for London duty), and on his
breakfast-table the silver teapot, once filled with sovereigns and
presented by the same devotees. The devo-teapot he has, but the
sovereigns, where are they?

What a different life this is from our honest friend of Alcantara, who
eats once in three days! At one time if Honeyman could have drunk tea
three times in an evening, he might have had it. The glass on his
chimneypiece is crowded with invitations, not merely cards of ceremony
(of which there are plenty), but dear little confidential notes from
sweet friends of his congregation. "Ob, dear Mr. Honeyman," writes
Blanche, "what a sermon that was! I cannot go to bed to-night without
thanking you for it." "Do, do, dear Mr. Honeyman," writes Beatrice, "lend
me that delightful sermon. And can you come and drink tea with me and
Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always
your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic
accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious
second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand
anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness,
you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his
conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his
clear voice better than the loudest roar of their stupid sons-in-law),
mature spinsters, young beauties dancing through the season, even rosy
little slips out of the nursery, who cluster round his beloved feet.
Societies fight for him to preach their charity sermon. You read in the
papers, "The Wapping Hospital for Wooden-legged Seamen.--On Sunday the
23rd, Sermons will be preached in behalf of this charity, by the Lord
Bishop of Tobago in the morning, in the afternoon by the Rev. C.
Honeyman, A.M., Incumbent of," etc. "Clergymen's Grandmothers' Fund.--
Sermons in aid of this admirable institution will be preached on Sunday,
4th May, by the Very Rev. the Dean of Pimlico, and the Rev. C. Honeyman,
A.M." When the Dean of Pimlico has his illness, many people think
Honeyman will have the Deanery; that he ought to have it, a hundred
female voices vow and declare: though it is said that a right reverend
head at headquarters shakes dubiously when his name is mentioned for
preferment. His name is spread wide, and not only women but men come to
hear him. Members of Parliament, even Cabinet Ministers, sit under him.
Lord Dozeley of course is seen in a front pew: where was a public meeting
without Lord Dozeley? The men come away from his sermons and say, "It's
very pleasant, but I don't know what the deuce makes all you women crowd
so to hear the man." "Oh, Charles! if you would but go oftener!" sighs
Lady Anna Maria. "Can't you speak to the Home Secretary? Can't you do
something for him?" "We can ask him to dinner next Wednesday if you
like," Says Charles. "They say he's a pleasant fellow out of the wood.
Besides there is no use in doing anything for him," Charles goes on. "He
can't make less than a thousand a year out of his chapel, and that is
better than anything any one can give him. A thousand a year, besides the
rent of the wine-vaults below the chapel."

"Don't, Charles!" says his wife, with a solemn look. "Don't ridicule
things in that way.

"Confound it! there are wine-vaults under the chapel!" answers downright
Charles. "I saw the name, Sherrick and Co.; offices, a green door, and a
brass plate. It's better to sit over vaults with wine in them than
coffins. I wonder whether it's the Sherrick with whom Kew and Jack
Belsize had that ugly row?"

"What ugly row?--don't say ugly row. It is not a nice word to hear the
children use. Go on, my darlings. What was the dispute of Lord Kew and
Mr. Belsize, and this Mr. Sherrick?"

"It was all about pictures, and about horses, and about money, and about
one other subject which enters into every row that I ever heard of."

"And what is that, dear?" asks the innocent lady, hanging on her
husband's arm, and quite pleased to have led him to church and brought
him thence. "And what is it, that enters into every row, as you call it,
Charles?"

"A woman, my love," answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been in
imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman's church on a Sunday in
June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh
bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon;
as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and
footmen's sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and
potatoes pass from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses
with pots of beer; as the Reverend Charles Honeyman, who has been drawing
tears in the sermon, and has seen, not without complacent throbs, a
Secretary of State in the pew beneath him, divests himself of his rich
silk cassock in the vestry, before he walks away to his neighbouring
hermitage--where have we placed it?--in Walpole Street. I wish St. Pedro
of Alcantara could have some of that shoulder of mutton with the baked
potatoes, and a drink of that frothing beer. See, yonder trots little
Lord Dozeley, who has been asleep for an hour with his head against the
wood, like St. Pedro of Alcantara.

An East Indian gentleman and his son wait until the whole chapel is
clear, and survey Lady Whittlesea's monument at their leisure, and other
hideous slabs erected in memory of defunct frequenters of the chapel.
Whose was that face which Colonel Newcome thought he recognised--that of
a stout man who came down from the organ-gallery? Could it be Broff the
bass singer, who delivered the "Red Cross Knight" with such applause at
the Cave of Melody, and who has been singing in this place? There are
some chapels in London, where, the function over, one almost expects to
see the sextons put brown hollands over the pews and galleries, as they
do at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.

The writer of these veracious pages was once walking through a splendid
English palace, standing amidst parks and gardens, than which none more
magnificent has been seen since the days of Aladdin, in company with a
melancholy friend, who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy eyes.
The housekeeper, pattering on before us from chamber to chamber, was
expatiating upon the magnificence of this picture; the beauty of that
statue; the marvellous richness of these hangings and carpets; the
admirable likeness of the late Marquis by Sir Thomas; of his father, the
fifth Earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on; when, in the very richest room of
the whole castle, Hicks--such was my melancholy companion's name--stopped
the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a hollow voice, "And now, madam,
will you show us the closet where the skeleton is?" The seared
functionary paused in the midst of her harangue; that article was not
inserted in the catalogue which she daily utters to visitors for their
half-crown. Hicks's question brought a darkness down upon the hall where
we were standing. We did not see the room: and yet I have no doubt there
is such an one; and ever after, when I have thought of the splendid
castle towering in the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled deer
are browsing; of the terraces gleaming with statues, and bright with a
hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers
wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls
are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the
sound of music;--always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:--it is
to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the
lordly owner opens shuddering--after midnight--when he is sleepless and
must go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties are sleeping
around him unconscious, and revellers are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper:
all the other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not!

Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the noble
Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don't
you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up
gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her
ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her dark depository.
Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long before she knew
you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his
house to the closest and dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet
or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over
at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a
closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the
key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing over this very sentence
in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to
him, innocently administering sandwiches to their little boy--I am trying
to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see--I feel it is growing too
dreadful, too serious.

And to what, pray, do these serious, these disagreeable, these almost
personal observations tend? To this simply, that Charles Honeyman, the
beloved and popular preacher, the elegant divine to whom Miss Blanche
writes sonnets, and whom Miss Beatrice invites to tea; who comes with
smiles on his lip, gentle sympathy in his tones, innocent gaiety in his
accent; who melts, rouses, terrifies in the pulpit; who charms over the
tea-urn and the bland bread-and-butter: Charles Honeyman has one or two
skeleton closets in his lodgings, Walpole Street, Mayfair; and many a
wakeful night, whilst Mrs. Ridley, his landlady, and her tired husband,
the nobleman's major-domo, whilst the lodger on the first floor, whilst
the cook and housemaid and weary little bootboy are at rest (mind you,
they have all got their closets, which they open with their
skeleton-keys); he wakes up, and looks at the ghastly occupant of that
receptacle. One of the Reverend Charles Honeyman's grisly night-haunters
is--but stop; let us give a little account of the lodgings, and of some
of the people frequenting the same.

First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly
gentleman;--dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and
Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into
society, except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they give
great entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great country
dons who dwell near him in the country. Is not of very good family; was,
in fact, an apothecary: married a woman with money, much older than
himself, who does not like London, and stops at home at Hummingham, not
much to the displeasure of Bagshot; gives every now and then nice little
quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley cooks admirably, to exceedingly stupid
jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who absorb, with much silence and
cheerfulness, a vast quantity of wine. They have just begun to drink '24
claret now, that of '15 being scarce, and almost drunk up. Writes daily,
and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does not read her letters
always: does not rise till long past eleven o'clock of a Sunday, and has
John Bull and Bell's Life, in bed: frequents the Blue Posts sometimes;
rides a stout cob out of his county, and pays like the Bank of England.

The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great
Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to
such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams
still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who
recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best
land in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a
billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house, which
used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless you! the
Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England come in and go out,
and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord's father of the present day
was sweeping a counting-house.

The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in the
season it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from Bayhams,
having been a governess there to the young lady who is dead, and who now
makes such a livelihood as she can best raise, by going out as a daily
teacher. Miss Cann dines with Mrs. Ridley in the adjoining little
back-parlour. Ridley but seldom can be spared to partake of the family
dinner, his duties in the house and about the person of my Lord Todmorden
keeping him constantly near that nobleman. How little Miss Cann can go on
and keep alive on the crumb she eats for breakfast, and the scrap she
picks at dinner, du astonish Mrs. Ridley, that it du! She declares that
the two canary-birds encaged in her window (whence is a cheerful prospect
of the back of Lady Whittlesea's Chapel) eat more than Miss Cann. The two
birds set up a tremendous singing and chorussing when Miss Cann, spying
the occasion of the first-floor lodger's absence, begins practising her
music-pieces. Such trills, roulades, and flourishes go on from the birds
and the lodger! it is a wonder how any fingers can move over the jingling
ivory so quickly as Miss Cann's. Excellent a woman as she is, admirably
virtuous, frugal, brisk, honest, and cheerful, I would not like to live
in lodgings where there was a lady so addicted to playing variations. No
more does Honeyman. On a Saturday, when he is composing his valuable
sermons (the rogue, you may be sure, leaves his work to the last day, and
there are, I am given to understand, among the clergy many better men
than Honeyman, who are as dilatory as he), he begs, he entreats with
tears in his eyes, that Miss Cann's music may cease. I would back little
Cann to write a sermon against him, for all his reputation as a popular
preacher.

Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it is
wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a
Saturday evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and to
a lad, who listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his great
eyes, with crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at his heart,
as the artist plies her humble instrument. She plays old music of Handel
and Haydn, and the little chamber anon swells into a cathedral, and he
who listens beholds altars lighted, priests ministering, fair children
swinging censers, great oriel windows gleaming in sunset, and seen
through arched columns and avenues of twilight marble. The young fellow
who hears her has been often and often to the opera and the theatres. As
she plays Don Juan, Zerlina comes tripping over the meadows, and Masetto
after her, with a crowd of peasants and maidens: and they sing the
sweetest of all music, and the heart beats with happiness, and kindness,
and pleasure. Piano, pianissimo! the city is hushed. The towers of the
great cathedral rise in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad
moon. The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the
pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella
for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre
street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo?--or is it the Corso?--
or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial
where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street--Poetry Street--
Imagination Street--the street where lovely ladies look from balconies,
where cavaliers strike mandolins and draw swords and engage, where long
processions pass, and venerable hermits, with long beards, bless the
kneeling people: where the rude soldiery, swaggering through the place
with flags and halberts, and fife and dance, seize the slim waists of the
daughters of the people, and bid the pifferari play to their dancing.
Blow, bagpipes, a storm of harmony! become trumpets, trombones,
ophicleides, fiddles, and bassoons! Fire, guns sound, tocsins! Shout,
people! Louder, shriller and sweeter than all, sing thou, ravishing
heroine! And see, on his cream-coloured charger Massaniello prances in,
and Fra Diavolo leaps down the balcony, carabine in hand; and Sir Huon of
Bordeaux sails up to the quay with the Sultan's daughter of Babylon. All
these delights and sights, and joys and glories, these thrills of
sympathy, movements of unknown longing, and visions of beauty, a young
sickly lad of eighteen enjoys in a little dark room where there is a bed
disguised in the shape of a wardrobe, and a little old woman is playing
under a gas-lamp on the jingling keys of an old piano.

For a long time Mr. Samuel Ridley, butler and confidential valet to the
Right Honourable John James Baron Todmorden, was in a state of the
greatest despair and gloom about his only son, the little John James,--a
sickly and almost deformed child "of whom there was no making nothink,"
as Mr. Ridley said. His figure precluded him from following his father's
profession, and waiting upon the British nobility, who naturally require
large and handsome men to skip up behind their rolling carriages, and
hand their plates at dinner. When John James was six years old his father
remarked, with tears in his eyes, he wasn't higher than a plate-basket.
The boys jeered at him in the streets--some whopped him, spite of his
diminutive size. At school he made but little progress. He was always
sickly and dirty, and timid and crying, whimpering in the kitchen away
from his mother; who, though she loved him, took Mr. Ridley's view of his
character, and thought him little better than an idiot until such time as
little Miss Cann took him in hand, when at length there was some hope of
him.

"Half-witted, you great stupid big man," says Miss Cann, who had a fine
spirit of her own. "That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his
little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very good
man, Ridley, very good-natured I'm sure, and bear with the teasing of a
waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don't
tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper
still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write them in my
nice little hand? I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell you that one
day the world will hear of him. His heart is made of pure gold. You think
that all the wit belongs to the big people. Look at me, you great tall
man! Am I not a hundred times cleverer than you are? Yes, and John James
is worth a thousand such insignificant little chits as I am; and he is as
tall as me too, sir. Do you hear that! One day I am determined he shall
dine at Lord Todmorden's table, and he shall get the prize at the Royal
Academy, and be famous, sir--famous!"

"Well, Miss C., I wish he may get it; that's all I say," answers Mr.
Ridley. "The poor fellow does no harm, that I acknowledge; but I never
see the good he was up to yet. I wish he'd begin it; I du wish he would
now." And the honest gentleman relapses into the study of his paper.

All those beautiful sounds and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him
out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into
forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and
splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of
feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson
tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the
dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the favourite weapon with which
these whiskered ruffians do battle; wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young
countesses with oh, such large eyes and the lips!--all these splendid
forms of war and beauty crowd to the young draughtsman's pencil, and
cover letter-backs, copybooks, without end. If his hand strikes off some
face peculiarly lovely, and to his taste, some fair vision that has shone
on his imagination, some houri of a dancer, some bright young lady of
fashion in an opera-box, whom he has seen, or fancied he has seen (for
the youth is short-sighted, though he hardly as yet knows his
misfortune)--if he has made some effort extraordinarily successful, our
young Pygmalion hides away the masterpiece, and he paints the beauty with
all his skill; the lips a bright carmine, the eyes a deep, deep cobalt,
the cheeks a dazzling vermilion, the ringlets of a golden hue; and he
worships this sweet creature of his in secret, fancies a history for her;
a castle to storm, a tyrant usurper who keeps her imprisoned, and a
prince in black ringlets and a spangled cloak, who scales the tower, who
slays the tyrant, and then kneels gracefully at the princess's feet, and
says, "Lady, wilt thou be mine?"

There is a kind lady in the neighbourhood, who takes in dressmaking for
the neighbouring maid-servants, and has a small establishment of
lollipops, theatrical characters, and ginger-beer for the boys in Little
Craggs Buildings, hard by the Running Footman public-house, where father
and other gentlemen's gentlemen have their club: this good soul also
sells Sunday newspapers to the footmen of the neighbouring gentry; and
besides, has a stock of novels for the ladies of the upper servants'
table. Next to Miss Cann, Miss Flinders is John James's greatest friend
and benefactor. She has remarked him when he was quite a little man, and
used to bring his father's beer of a Sunday. Out of her novels he has
taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and
always the last in his class, there. Hours, happy hours, has he spent
cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books under his pinafore when
he had leave to carry them home. The whole library has passed through his
hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, and under his eager eyes. He has
made illustrations to every one of those books, and been frightened at
his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed Monk, Abellino the
Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of Robbers. How
he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and drawn him in his
Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of
Scotland, how nobly he has depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy
ostrich plumes!--in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his
legs, laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of
King Edward's prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr. Honeyman comes to
lodge in Walpole Street, and brings a set of Scott's novels, for which he
subscribed when at Oxford; and young John James, who at first waits upon
him and does little odd jobs for the reverend gentleman, lights upon the
volumes, and reads them with such a delight and passion of pleasure as
all the delights of future days will scarce equal. A fool, is he?--an
idle feller, out of whom no good will ever come, as his father says.
There was a time when, in despair of any better chance for him, his
parents thought of apprenticing him to a tailor, and John James was waked
up from a dream of Rebecca and informed of the cruelty meditated against
him. I forbear to describe the tears and terror, and frantic desperation
in which the poor boy was plunged. Little Miss Cann rescued him from that
awful board, and Honeyman likewise interceded for him, and Mr. Bagshot
promised that, as soon as his party came in, he would ask the Minister
for a tide-waitership for him; for everybody liked the solemn,
soft-hearted, willing little lad, and no one knew him less than his
pompous and stupid and respectable father.

Miss Cann painted flowers and card-screens elegantly, and "finished"
pencil-drawings most elaborately for her pupils. She could copy prints,
so that at a little distance you would scarcely know that the copy in
stumped chalk was not a bad mezzotinto engraving. She even had a little
old paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory miniatures out of the
drawer. She gave John James what little knowledge of drawing she had, and
handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing water-colours--"for
trees in foregrounds, burnt sienna and indigo"--"for very dark foliage,
ivory black and gamboge"--"for flesh-colour," etc. etc. John James went
through her poor little course, but not so brilliantly as she expected.
She was forced to own that several of her pupils' "pieces" were executed
much more dexterously than Johnny Ridley's. Honeyman looked at the boy's
drawings from time to time, and said, "Hm, ha!--very clever--a great deal
of fancy, really." But Honeyman knew no more of the subject than a deaf
and dumb man knows of music. He could talk the art cant very glibly, and
had a set of Morghens and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of
taste; but he saw not with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had
endowed the humble little butler's boy, to whom splendours of Nature were
revealed to vulgar sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms,
colours, shadows of common objects, where most of the world saw only what
was dull, and gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of
a charm or a flower which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer
to see the fairies. O enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the
possessor the hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which the
strongest and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To others
it is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art-world; and
tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or driven by
necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and the light of
common day.

The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows
the discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in
Queen Anne's and George the First's time; and while some of the
neighbouring streets, to wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street,
and others, contain mansions fairly coped with stone, with little
obelisks before the doors, and great extinguishers wherein the torches of
the nobility's running footmen were put out a hundred and thirty or forty
years ago:--houses which still remain abodes of the quality, and where
you shall see a hundred carriages gather of a public night; Walpole
Street has quite faded away into lodgings, private hotels, doctors'
houses, and the like; nor is No. 23 (Ridley's) by any means the best
house in the street. The parlour, furnished and tenanted by Miss Cann as
has been described; the first floor, Bagshot, Esq., M.P.; the second
floor, Honeyman; what remains but the garrets, and the ample staircase
and the kitchens? and the family being all put to bed, how can you
imagine there is room for any more inhabitants?

And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the other
personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you have no
idea yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At night,
when Honeyman comes in, he finds on the hall-table three wax bedroom
candles--his own, Bagshot's, and another. As for Miss Cann, she is locked
into the parlour in bed long ago, her stout little walking-shoes being on
the mat at the door. At 12 o'clock at noon, sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and
3--long after Bagshot is gone to his committees, and little Cann to her
pupils--a voice issues from the very topmost floor, from a room where
there is no bell; a voice of thunder calling out "Slavey! Julia! Julia,
my love! Mrs. Ridley!" And this summons not being obeyed, it will not
unfrequently happen that a pair of trousers enclosing a pair of boots
with iron heels, and known by the name of the celebrated Prussian General
who came up to help the other christener of boots at Waterloo, will be
flung down from the topmost story, even to the marble floor of the
resounding hall. Then the boy Thomas, otherwise called Slavey, may say,
"There he goes again;" or Mrs. Ridley's own back-parlour bell rings
vehemently, and Julia the cook will exclaim, "Lor, it's Mr. Frederick."

If the breeches and boots are not understood, the owner himself appears
in great wrath dancing on the upper story; dancing down to the lower
floor; and loosely enveloped in a ragged and flowing robe de chambre. In
this costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman's apartment, where
that meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel or a
newspaper; dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it, and
warm himself there; dance up to the cupboard where his reverence keeps
his sherry, and help himself to a glass.

"Salve, spes fidei, lumen ecclesiae," he will say; "here's towards you,
my buck. I knows the tap. Sherrick's Marsala bottled three months after
date, at two hundred and forty-six shillings the dozen."

"Indeed, indeed it's not" (and now we are coming to an idea of the
skeleton in poor Honeyman's closet--not that this huge handsome jolly
Fred Bayham is the skeleton, far from it. Mr. Frederick weighs fourteen
stone). "Indeed, indeed it isn't, Fred, I'm sure," sighs the other. "You
exaggerate, indeed you do. The wine is not dear, not by any means so
expensive as you say."

"How much a glass, think you?" says Fred, filling another bumper. "A
half-crown, think ye?--a half-crown, Honeyman? By cock and pye, it is not
worth a bender." He says this in the manner of the most celebrated
tragedian of the day. He can imitate any actor, tragic or comic; any
known Parliamentary orator or clergyman; any saw, cock, cloop of a cork
wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter afterwards,
bee buzzing, little boy up a chimney, etc. He imitates people being ill
on board a steam-packet so well that he makes you die of laughing: his
uncle the Bishop could not resist this comic exhibition, and gave Fred a
cheque for a comfortable sum of money; and Fred, getting cash for the
cheque at the Cave of Harmony, imitated his uncle the Bishop and his
Chaplain, winding up with his Lordship and Chaplain being unwell at sea--
the Chaplain and Bishop quite natural and distinct.

"How much does a glass of this sack cost thee, Charley?" resumes Fred,
after this parenthesis. "You say it is not dear. Charles Honeyman, you
had, even from your youth up, a villainous habit. And I perfectly well
remember, sir, in boyhood's breezy hour, when I was the delight of his
school, that you used to tell lies to your venerable father. You did,
Charles. Excuse the frankness of an early friend, it's my belief you'd
rather lie than not. Hm"--he looks at the cards in the chimney-glass
"Invitations to dinner, proffers of muffins. Do lend me your sermon. Oh,
you old impostor! you hoary old Ananias! I say, Charley, why haven't you
picked out some nice girl for yours truly? One with lauds and beeves,
with rents and consols, mark you? I have no money, 'tis true, but then I
don't owe as much as you. I am a handsomer man than you are. Look at this
chest" (he slaps it), "these limbs; they are manly, sir, manly."

"For Heaven's sake, Bayham," cries Mr. Honeyman, white with terror; "if
anybody were to come----"

"What did I say anon, sir? that I was manly, ay, manly. Let any ruffian,
save a bailiff, come and meet the doughty arm of Frederick Bayham."

"Oh, Lord, Lord, here's somebody coming into the room!" cries Charles,
sinking back on the sofa, as the door opens.

"Ha! dost thou come with murderous intent?" and he now advances in an
approved offensive attitude. "Caitiff, come on, come on!" and he walks
off with a tragic laugh, crying, "Ha, ha, ha, 'tis but the slavey!"

The slavey has Mr. Frederick's hot water, and a bottle of sodawater on
the same tray. He has been instructed to bring soda whenever he hears the
word slavey pronounced from above. The bottle explodes, and Frederick
drinks, and hisses after his drink as though he had been all hot within.

"What's o'clock now, slavey--half-past three? Let me see, I breakfasted
exactly ten hours ago, in the rosy morning, off a modest cup of coffee in
Covent Garden Market. Coffee, a penny; bread, a simple halfpenny. What
has Mrs. Ridley for dinner?"

"Please, sir, roast pork."

"Get me some. Bring it into my room, unless, Honeyman, you insist upon my
having it here, kind fellow!"

At the moment a smart knock comes to the door, and Fred says, "Well,
Charles, it may be a friend or a lady come to confess, and I'm off; I
knew you'd be sorry I was going. Tom, bring up my things; brush 'em
gently, you scoundrel, and don't take the nap off. Bring up the roast
pork, and plenty of apple-sauce, tell Mrs. Ridley, with my love; and one
of Mr. Honeyman's shirts, and one of his razors. Adieu, Charles! Amend!
Remember me." And he vanishes into the upper chambers.




CHAPTER XII

In which everybody is asked to Dinner


John James had opened the door hastening to welcome a friend and patron,
the sight of whom always gladdened the youth's eyes; no other than Clive
Newcome--in young Ridley's opinion, the most splendid, fortunate,
beautiful, high-born, and gifted youth this island contained. What
generous boy in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female
enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony
of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation, whom he
cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in
after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if
need be: who is his hero. Clive was John James's youthful divinity: when
he wanted to draw Thaddeus of Warsaw, a Prince, Ivanhoe, or some one
splendid and egregious, it was Clive he took for a model. His heart leapt
when he saw the young fellow. He would walk cheerfully to Grey Friars,
with a letter or message for Clive, on the chance of seeing him, and
getting a kind word from him, or a shake of the hand. An ex-butler of
Lord Todmorden was a pensioner in the Grey Friars Hospital (it has been
said that at that ancient establishment is a college for old men as well
as for boys), and this old man would come sometimes to his successor's
Sunday dinner, and grumble from the hour of that meal until nine o'clock,
when he was forced to depart, so as to be within Grey Friars' gates
before ten; grumble about his dinner--grumble about his beer--grumble
about the number of chapels he had to attend, about the gown he wore,
about the master's treatment of him, about the want of plums in the
pudding, as old men and schoolboys grumble. It was wonderful what a
liking John James took to this odious, querulous, graceless, stupid, and
snuffy old man, and how he would find pretexts for visiting him at his
lodging in the old hospital. He actually took that journey that he might
have a chance of seeing Clive. He sent Clive notes and packets of
drawings; thanked him for books lent, asked advice about future reading--
anything, so that he might have a sight of his pride, his patron, his
paragon.

I am afraid Clive Newcome employed him to smuggle rum-shrub and cigars
into the premises; giving him appointments in the school precincts, where
young Clive would come and stealthily receive the forbidden goods. The
poor lad was known by the boys, and called Newcome's Punch. He was all
but hunchbacked; long and lean in the arm; sallow, with a great forehead,
and waving black hair, and large melancholy eyes.

"What, is it you, J. J.?" cries Clive gaily, when his humble friend
appears at the door. "Father, this is my friend Ridley. This is the
fellow what can draw."

"I know who I will back against any young man of his size at that," says
the Colonel, looking at Clive fondly. He considered there was not such a
genius in the world; and had already thought of having some of Clive's
drawings published by M'Lean of the Haymarket.

"This is my father just come from India--and Mr. Pendennis, an old Grey
Friars' man. Is my uncle at home?" Both these gentlemen bestow rather
patronising nods of the head on the lad introduced to them as J. J. His
exterior is but mean-looking. Colonel Newcome, one of the humblest-minded
men alive, has yet his old-fashioned military notions; and speaks to a
butler's son as to a private soldier, kindly, but not familiarly.

"Mr Honeyman is at home, gentlemen," the young lad says, humbly. "Shall I
show you up to his room?" And we walk up the stairs after our guide. We
find Mr. Honeyman deep in study on his sofa, with Pearson on the Creed
before him. The novel has been whipped under the pillow. Clive found it
there some short time afterwards, during his uncle's temporary absence in
his dressing-room. He has agreed to suspend his theological studies, and
go out with his brother-in-law to dine.

As Clive and his friends were at Honeyman's door, and just as we were
entering to see the divine seated in state before his folio, Clive
whispers, "J. J., come along, old fellow, and show us some drawings. What
are you doing?"

"I was doing some Arabian Nights," says J. J., "up in my room; and
hearing a knock which I thought was yours, I came down."

"Show us the pictures. Let's go up into your room," cries Clive. "What--
will you?" says the other. "It is but a very small place."

"Never mind, come along," says Clive; and the two lads disappear
together, leaving the three grown gentlemen to discourse together, or
rather two of us to listen to Honeyman, who expatiates upon the beauty of
the weather, the difficulties of the clerical calling, the honour Colonel
Newcome does him by a visit, etc., with his usual eloquence.

After a while Clive comes down without J. J., from the upper regions. He
is greatly excited. "Oh, sir," he says to his father, "you talk about my
drawings--you should see J. J.'s! By Jove, that fellow is a genius. They
are beautiful, sir. You seem actually to read the Arabian Nights, you
know, only in pictures. There is Scheherazade telling the stories, and--
what do you call her?--Dinarzade and the Sultan sitting in bed and
listening. Such a grim old cove! You see he has cut off ever so many of
his wives' heads. I can't think where that chap gets his ideas from. I
can beat him in drawing horses, I know, and dogs; but I can only draw
what I see. Somehow he seems to see things we don't, don't you know? Oh,
father, I'm determined I'd rather be a painter than anything." And he
falls to drawing horses and dogs at his uncle's table, round which the
elders are seated.

"I've settled it upstairs with J. J.," says Clive, working away with his
pen. "We shall take a studio together; perhaps we will go abroad
together. Won't that be fun, father?"

"My dear Clive," remarks Mr. Honeyman, with bland dignity, "there are
degrees in society which we must respect. You surely cannot think of
being a professional artist. Such a profession is very well for your
young protege; but for you----"

"What for me?" cries Clive. "We are no such great folks that I know of;
and if we were, I say a painter is as good as a lawyer, or a doctor, or
even a soldier. In Dr. Johnston's Life--which my father is always
reading--I like to read about Sir Joshua Reynolds best: I think he is the
best gentleman of all in the book. My! wouldn't I like to paint a picture
like Lord Heathfield in the National Gallery! Wouldn't I just! I think I
would sooner have done that, than have fought at Gibraltar. And those
Three Graces--oh, aren't they graceful! And that Cardinal Beaufort at
Dulwich!--it frightens me so, I daren't look at it. Wasn't Reynolds a
clipper, that's all! and wasn't Rubens a brick! He was an ambassador, and
Knight of the Bath; so was Vandyck. And Titian, and Raphael, and
Velasquez?--I'll just trouble you to show me better gentlemen than them,
Uncle Charles."

"Far be it from me to say that the pictorial calling is not honourable,"
says Uncle Charles; "but as the world goes there are other professions in
greater repute; and I should have thought Colonel Newcome's son----"

"He shall follow his own bent," said the Colonel; "as long as his calling
is honest it becomes a gentleman; and if he were to take a fancy to play
on the fiddle--actually on the fiddle--I shouldn't object."

"Such a rum chap there was upstairs!" Clive resumes, looking up
from his scribbling. "He was walking up and down on the landing in a
dressing-gown, with scarcely any other clothes on, holding a plate in one
hand, and a pork-chop he was munching with the other. Like this" (and
Clive draws a figure). "What do you think, sir? He was in the Cave of
Harmony, he says, that night you flared up about Captain Costigan. He
knew me at once; and he says, 'Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a
Christian, and a man of honour. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him
my compliments. I don't know his highly respectable name.' His highly
respectable name," says Clive, cracking with laughter--"those were his
very words. 'And inform him that I am an orphan myself--in needy
circumstances'--he said he was in needy circumstances; 'and I heartily
wish he'd adopt me.'"

The lad puffed out his face, made his voice as loud and as deep as he
could; and from his imitation and the picture he had drawn, I knew at
once that Fred Bayham was the man he mimicked.

"And does the Red Rover live here," cried Mr. Pendennis, "and have we
earthed him at last?"

"He sometimes comes here," Mr. Honeyman said with a careless manner. "My
landlord and landlady were butler and housekeeper to his father, Bayham
of Bayham, one of the oldest families in Europe. And Mr. Frederick
Bayham, the exceedingly eccentric person of whom you speak, was a private
pupil of my own dear father in our happy days at Borehambury."

He had scarcely spoken when a knock was heard at the door, and before the
occupant of the lodgings could say "Come in!" Mr. Frederick Bayham made
his appearance, arrayed in that peculiar costume which he affected. In
those days we wore very tall stocks, only a very few poetic and eccentric
persons venturing on the Byron collar; but Fred Bayham confined his neck
by a simple ribbon, which allowed his great red whiskers to curl freely
round his capacious jowl. He wore a black frock and a large broad-brimmed
hat, and looked somewhat like a Dissenting preacher. At other periods you
would see him in a green coat and a blue neckcloth, as if the turf or the
driving of coaches was his occupation.

"I have heard from the young man of the house who you were, Colonel
Newcome," he said with the greatest gravity, "and happened to be present,
sir, the other night; for I was aweary, having been toiling all the day
in literary labour, and needed some refreshment. I happened to be
present, sir, at a scene which did you the greatest honour, and of which
I spoke, not knowing you, with something like levity to your son. He is
an ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris--Pendennis, how are you? And I
thought, sir, I would come down and tender an apology if I had said any
words that might savour of offence to a gentleman who was in the right,
as I told the room when you quitted it, as Mr. Pendennis, I am sure, will
remember."

Mr. Pendennis looked surprise and perhaps negation.

"You forget, Pendennis? Those who quit that room, sir, often forget on
the morrow what occurred during the revelry of the night. You did right in
refusing to return to that scene. We public men are obliged often to seek
our refreshment at hours when luckier individuals are lapt in slumber."

"And what may be your occupation, Mr. Bayham?" asks the Colonel, rather
gloomily, for he had an idea that Bayham was adopting a strain of
persiflage which the Indian gentleman by no means relished. Never saying
aught but a kind word to any one, he was on fire at the notion that any
should take a liberty with him.

"A barrister, sir, but without business--a literary man, who can but
seldom find an opportunity to sell the works of his brains--a gentleman,
sir, who has met with neglect, perhaps merited, perhaps undeserved, from
his family. I get my bread as best I may. On that evening I had been
lecturing on the genius of some of our comic writers, at the
Parthenopoeon, Hackney. My audience was scanty, perhaps equal to my
deserts. I came home on foot to an egg and a glass of beer after
midnight, and witnessed the scene which did you so much honour. What is
this? I fancy a ludicrous picture of myself"--he had taken up the sketch
which Clive had been drawing--"I like fun, even at my own expense; and
can afford to laugh at a joke which is meant in good-humour." This speech
quite reconciled the honest Colonel. "I am sure the author of that, Mr.
Bayham, means you or any man no harm. Why! the rascal, sir, has drawn me,
his own father; and I have sent the drawing to Major Hobbs, who is in
command of my regiment. Chinnery himself, sir, couldn't hit off a
likeness better; he has drawn me on horseback, and he has drawn me on
foot, and he has drawn my friend, Mr. Binnie, who lives with me. We have
scores of his drawings at my lodgings; and if you will favour us by
dining with us to-day, and these gentlemen, you shall see that you are
not the only person caricatured by Clive here."

"I just took some little dinner upstairs, sir. I am a moderate man, and
can live, if need be, like a Spartan; but to join such good company I
will gladly use the knife and fork again. You will excuse the traveller's
dress? I keep a room here, which I use only occasionally, and am at
present lodging--in the country."

When Honeyman was ready, the Colonel, who had the greatest respect for
the Church, would not hear of going out of the room before the clergyman,
and took his arm to walk. Bayham then fell to Mr. Pendennis's lot, and
they went together. Through Hill Street and Berkeley Square their course
was straight enough; but at Hay Hill, Mr. Bayham made an abrupt tack
larboard, engaging in a labyrinth of stables, and walking a long way
round from Clifford Street, whither we were bound. He hinted at a cab,
but Pendennis refused to ride, being, in truth, anxious to see which way
his eccentric companion would steer. "There are reasons," growled Bayham,
"which need not be explained to one of your experience, why Bond Street
must be avoided by some men peculiarly situated. The smell of Truefitt's
pomatum makes me ill. Tell me, Pendennis, is this Indian warrior a rajah
of large wealth? Could he, do you think, recommend me to a situation in
the East India Company? I would gladly take any honest post in which
fidelity might be useful, genius might be appreciated, and courage
rewarded. Here we are. The hotel seems comfortable. I never was in it
before."

When we entered the Colonel's sitting-room at Nerot's, we found the
waiter engaged in extending the table. "We are a larger party than I
expected," our host said. "I met my brother Brian on horseback leaving
cards at that great house in ------ Street."

"The Russian Embassy," says Mr. Honeyman, who knew the town quite well.

"And he said he was disengaged, and would dine with us," continues the
Colonel.

"Am I to understand, Colonel Newcome," says Mr. Frederick Bayham, "that
you are related to the eminent banker, Sir Brian Newcome, who gives such
uncommonly swell parties in Park Lane?"

"What is a swell party?" asks the Colonel, laughing. "I dined with my
brother last Wednesday; and it was a very grand dinner certainly. The
Governor-General himself could not give a more splendid entertainment.
But, do you know, I scarcely had enough to eat? I don't eat side dishes;
and as for the roast beef of Old England, why, the meat was put on the
table and whisked away like Sancho's inauguration feast at Barataria. We
did not dine till nine o'clock. I like a few glasses of claret and a cosy
talk after dinner; but--well, well"--(no doubt the worthy gentleman was
accusing himself of telling tales out of school and had come to a timely
repentance). "Our dinner, I hope, will be different. Jack Binnie will
take care of that. That fellow is full of anecdote and fun. You will meet
one or two more of our service; Sir Thomas de Boots, who is not a bad
chap over a glass of wine; Mr. Pendennis's chum, Mr. Warrington, and my
nephew, Barnes Newcome--a dry fellow at first, but I dare say he has good
about him when you know him; almost every man has," said the good-natured
philosopher. "Clive, you rogue, mind and be moderate with the champagne,
sir!"

"Champagne's for women," says Clive. "I stick to claret."

"I say, Pendennis," here Bayham remarked, "it is my deliberate opinion
that F. B. has got into a good thing."

Mr. Pendennis seeing there was a great party was for going home to his
chambers to dress. "Hm!" says Mr. Bayham, "don't see the necessity. What
right-minded man looks at the exterior of his neighbour? He looks here,
sir, and examines there," and Bayham tapped his forehead, which was
expansive, and then his heart, which he considered to be in the right
place.

"What is this I hear about dressing?" asks our host. "Dine in your frock,
my good friend, and welcome, if your dress-coat is in the country."

"It is at present at an uncle's," Mr. Bayham said, with great gravity,
"and I take your hospitality as you offer it, Colonel Newcome, cordially
and frankly."

Honest Mr. Binnie made his appearance a short time before the appointed
hour for receiving the guests, arrayed in a tight little pair of
trousers, and white silk stockings and pumps, his bald head shining like
a billiard-ball, his jolly gills rosy with good-humour. He was bent on
pleasure. "Hey, lads!" says he; "but we'll make a night of it. We haven't
had a night since the farewell dinner off Plymouth."

"And a jolly night it was, James," ejaculates the Colonel.

"Egad, what a song that Tom Norris sings!"

"And your 'Jock o' Hazeldean' is as good as a play, Jack."

"And I think you beat iny one I iver hard in 'Tom Bowling,' yourself,
Tom!" cries the Colonel's delighted chum. Mr. Pendennis opened the eyes
of astonishment at the idea of the possibility of renewing these
festivities, but he kept the lips of prudence closed. And now the
carriages began to drive up, and the guests of Colonel Newcome to arrive.




CHAPTER XIII

In which Thomas Newcome sings his Last Song


The earliest comers were the first mate and the medical officer of the
ship in which the two gentlemen had come to England. The mate was a
Scotchman: the doctor was a Scotchman; of the gentlemen from the Oriental
Club, three were Scotchmen.

The Southrons, with one exception, were the last to arrive, and for a
while we stood looking out of the windows awaiting their coming. The
first mate pulled out a penknife and arranged his nails. The doctor and
Mr. Binnie talked of the progress of medicine. Binnie had walked the
hospitals of Edinburgh before getting his civil appointment to India. The
three gentlemen from Hanover Square and the Colonel had plenty to say
about Tom Smith of the Cavalry, and Harry Hall of the Engineers: how
Topham was going to marry poor little Bob Wallis's widow; how many lakhs
Barber had brought home, and the like. The tall grey-headed Englishman,
who had been in the East too, in the King's service, joined for a while
in this conversation, but presently left it, and came and talked with
Clive; "I knew your father in India," said the gentleman to the lad;
"there is not a more gallant or respected officer in that service. I have
a boy too, a stepson, who has just gone into the army; he is older than
you, he was born at the end of the Waterloo year, and so was a great
friend of his and mine, who was at your school, Sir Rawdon Crawley."

"He was in Gown Boys, I know," says the boy; "succeeded his uncle Pitt,
fourth Baronet. I don't know how his mother--her who wrote the hymns, you
know, and goes to Mr. Honeyman's chapel--comes to be Rebecca, Lady
Crawley. His father, Colonel Rawdon Crawley, died at Coventry Island, in
August, 182-, and his uncle, Sir Pitt, not till September here. I
remember, we used to talk about it at Grey Friars, when I was quite a
little chap; and there were bets whether Crawley, I mean the young one,
was a Baronet or not."

"When I sailed to Rigy, Cornel," the first mate was speaking--nor can any
spelling nor combination of letters of which I am master, reproduce this
gentleman's accent when he was talking his best--"I racklackt they used
always to sairve us a drem before denner. And as your frinds are kipping
the denner, and as I've no watch to-night, I'll jist do as we used to do
at Rigy. James, my fine fellow, jist look alive and breng me a small
glass of brandy, will ye? Did ye iver try a brandy cocktail, Cornel? Whin
I sailed on the New York line, we used jest to make bits before denner
and--thank ye, James:" and he tossed off a glass of brandy.

Here a waiter announces, in a loud voice, "Sir Thomas de Boots," and the
General enters, scowling round the room according to his fashion, very
red in the face, very tight in the girth, splendidly attired with a
choking white neckcloth, a voluminous waistcoat, and his orders on.

"Stars and garters, by jingo!" cries Mr. Frederick Bayham; "I say,
Pendennis, have you any idea, is the Duke coming? I wouldn't have come in
these Bluchers if I had known it. Confound it, no--Hoby himself, my own
bootmaker, wouldn't have allowed poor F. B. to appear in Bluchers, if he
had known that I was going to meet the Duke. My linen's all right,
anyhow;"

F. B. breathed a thankful prayer for that. Indeed, who but the very
curious could tell that not F. B.'s, but C. H.'s--Charles Honeyman's--was
the mark upon that decorous linen?

Colonel Newcome introduced Sir Thomas to every one in the room, as he had
introduced us all to each other previously, and as Sir Thomas looked at
one after another, his face was kind enough to assume an expression which
seemed to ask, "And who the devil are you, sir?" as clearly as though the
General himself had given utterance to the words. With the gentleman in
the window talking to Clive he seemed to have some acquaintance, and said
not unkindly, "How d'you do, Dobbin?"

The carriage of Sir Brian Newcome now drove up, from which the Baronet
descended in state, leaning upon the arm of the Apollo in plush and
powder, who closed the shutters of the great coach, and mounted by the
side of the coachman, laced and periwigged. The Bench of Bishops has
given up its wigs; cannot the box, too, be made to resign that insane
decoration? Is it necessary for our comfort, that the men who do our work
in stable or household should be dressed like Merry-Andrews? Enter Sir
Brian Newcome, smiling blandly: he greets his brother affectionately, Sir
Thomas gaily; he nods and smiles to Clive, and graciously permits Mr.
Pendennis to take hold of two fingers of his extended right hand. That
gentleman is charmed, of course, with the condescension. What man could
be otherwise than happy to be allowed a momentary embrace of two such
precious fingers? When a gentleman so favours me, I always ask, mentally,
why he has taken the trouble at all, and regret that I have not had the
presence of mind to poke one finger against his two. If I were worth ten
thousand a year, I cannot help inwardly reflecting, and kept a large
account in Threadneedle Street, I cannot help thinking he would have
favoured me with the whole palm.

The arrival of these two grandees has somehow cast a solemnity over the
company. The weather is talked about: brilliant in itself, it does not
occasion very brilliant remarks among Colonel Newcome's guests. Sir Brian
really thinks it must be as hot as it is in India. Sir Thomas de Boots,
swelling in his white waistcoat, in the armholes of which his thumbs are
engaged, smiles scornfully, and wishes Sir Brian had ever felt a good
sweltering day in the hot winds in India. Sir Brian withdraws the
untenable proposition that London is as hot as Calcutta. Mr. Binnie looks
at his watch, and at the Colonel. "We have only your nephew, Tom, to wait
for," he says; "I think we may make so bold as to order the dinner,"--a
proposal heartily seconded by Mr. Frederick Bayham.

The dinner appears steaming, borne by steaming waiters. The grandees take
their places, one on each side of the Colonel. He begs Mr. Honeyman to
say grace, and stands reverentially during that brief ceremony, while de
Boots looks queerly at him from over his napkin. All the young men take
their places at the farther end of the table, round about Mr. Binnie; and
at the end of the second course Mr. Barnes Newcome makes his appearance.

Mr. Barnes does not show the slightest degree of disturbance, although he
disturbs all the company. Soup and fish are brought for him, and meat,
which he leisurely eats, while twelve other gentlemen are kept waiting.
We mark Mr. Binnie's twinkling eyes, as they watch the young man. "Eh,"
he seems to say, "but that's just about as free-and-easy a young chap as
ever I set eyes on." And so Mr. Barnes was a cool young chap. That dish
is so good, he must really have some more. He discusses the second supply
leisurely; and turning round simpering to his neighbour, says, "I really
hope I'm not keeping everybody waiting."

"Hem!" grunts the neighbour, Mr. Bayham; "it doesn't much matter, for we
had all pretty well done dinner." Barnes takes a note of Mr. Bayham's
dress--his long frock-coat, the ribbon round his neck; and surveys him
with an admirable impudence. "Who are these people," thinks he, "my uncle
has got together?" He bows graciously to the honest Colonel, who asks him
to take wine. He is so insufferably affable, that every man near him
would like to give him a beating.

All the time of the dinner the host was challenging everybody to drink
wine, in his honest old-fashioned way, and Mr. Binnie seconding the chief
entertainer. Such was the way in England and Scotland when they were
young men. And when Binnie, asking Sir Brian, receives for reply from the
Baronet--"Thank you, no, my dear sir. I have exceeded already, positively
exceeded," the poor discomfited gentleman hardly knows whither to apply:
but, luckily, Tom Norris, the first mate, comes to his rescue, and cries
out, "Mr. Binnie, I've not had enough, and I'll drink a glass of anything
ye like with ye." The fact is, that Mr. Norris has had enough. He has
drunk bumpers to the health of every member of the company; his glass has
been filled scores of times by watchful waiters. So has Mr. Bayham
absorbed great quantities of drink; but without any visible effect on
that veteran toper. So has young Clive taken more than is good for him.
His cheeks are flushed and burning; he is chattering and laughing loudly
at his end of the table. Mr. Warrington eyes the lad with some curiosity;
and then regards Mr. Barnes with a look of scorn, which does not scorch
that affable young person.

I am obliged to confess that the mate of the Indiaman, at an early period
of the dessert, and when nobody had asked him for any such public
expression of his opinion, insisted on rising and proposing the health of
Colonel Newcome, whose virtues he lauded outrageously, and whom he
pronounced to be one of the best of mortal men. Sir Brian looked very
much alarmed at the commencement of this speech, which the mate delivered
with immense shrieks and gesticulation: but the Baronet recovered during
the course of the rambling oration, and at its conclusion gracefully
tapped the table with one of those patronising fingers; and lifting up a
glass containing at least a thimbleful of claret, said, "My dear brother,
I drink your health with all my heart, I'm su-ah." The youthful Barnes
had uttered many "Hear, hears!" during the discourse, with an irony
which, with every fresh glass of wine he drank, he cared less to conceal.
And though Barnes had come late he had drunk largely, making up for lost
time.

Those ironical cheers, and all his cousin's behaviour during dinner, had
struck young Clive, who was growing very angry. He growled out remarks
uncomplimentary to Barnes. His eyes, as he looked towards his kinsman,
flashed out challenges, of which we who were watching him could see the
warlike purport. Warrington looked at Bayham and Pendennis with glances
of apprehension. We saw that danger was brooding, unless the one young
man could be restrained from his impertinence, and the other from his
wine.

Colonel Newcome said a very few words in reply to his honest friend the
chief mate, and there the matter might have ended: but I am sorry to say
Mr. Binnie now thought it necessary to rise and deliver himself of some
remarks regarding the King's service, coupled with the name of
Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots, K.C.B., etc.--the receipt of which
that gallant officer was obliged to acknowledge in a confusion amounting
almost to apoplexy. The glasses went whack whack upon the hospitable
board; the evening set in for public speaking. Encouraged by his last
effort, Mr. Binnie now proposed Sir Brian Newcome's health; and that
Baronet rose and uttered an exceedingly lengthy speech, delivered with
his wine-glass on his bosom.

Then that sad rogue Bayham must get up, and call earnestly and
respectfully for silence and the chairman's hearty sympathy, for the few
observations which he had to propose. "Our armies had been drunk with
proper enthusiasm--such men as he beheld around him deserved the applause
of all honest hearts, and merited the cheers with which their names had
been received. ('Hear, hear!' from Barnes Newcome sarcastically. 'Hear,
hear, HEAR!' fiercely from Clive.) But whilst we applauded our army,
should we forget a profession still more exalted? Yes, still more
exalted, I say in the face of the gallant General opposite; and that
profession, I need not say, is the Church. (Applause.) Gentlemen, we have
among us one who, while partaking largely of the dainties on this festive
board, drinking freely of the sparkling wine-cup which our gallant
hospitality administers to us, sanctifies by his presence the feast of
which he partakes, inaugurates with appropriate benedictions, and graces
it, I may say, both before and after meat. Gentlemen, Charles Honeyman
was the friend of my childhood, his father the instructor of my early
days. If Frederick Bayham's latter life has been chequered by misfortune,
it may be that I have forgotten the precepts which the venerable parent
of Charles Honeyman poured into an inattentive ear. He too, as a child,
was not exempt from faults; as a young man, I am told, not quite free
from youthful indiscretions. But in this present Anno Domini, we hail
Charles Honeyman as a precept and an example, as a decus fidei and a
lumen ecclesiae (as I told him in the confidence of the private circle
this morning, and ere I ever thought to publish my opinion in this
distinguished company). Colonel Newcome and Mr. Binnie! I drink to the
health of the Reverend Charles Honeyman, A.M. May we listen to many more
of his sermons, as well as to that admirable discourse with which I am
sure he is about to electrify us now. May we profit by his eloquence; and
cherish in our memories the truths which come mended from his tongue!" He
ceased; poor Honeyman had to rise on his legs, and gasp out a few
incoherent remarks in reply. Without a book before him, the Incumbent of
Lady Whittlesea's Chapel was no prophet, and the truth is he made poor
work of his oration.

At the end of it, he, Sir Brian, Colonel Dobbin, and one of the Indian
gentlemen quitted the room, in spite of the loud outcries of our generous
host, who insisted that the party should not break up. "Close up,
gentlemen," called out honest Newcome, "we are not going to part just
yet. Let me fill your glass, General. You used to have no objection to a
glass of wine." And he poured out a bumper for his friend, which the old
campaigner sucked in with fitting gusto. "Who will give us a song?
Binnie, give us the 'Laird of Cockpen.' It's capital, my dear General.
Capital," the Colonel whispered to his neighbour.

Mr. Binnie struck up the "Laird of Cockpen," without, I am bound to say,
the least reluctance. He bobbed to one man, and he winked to another, and
he tossed his glass, and gave all the points of his song in a manner
which did credit to his simplicity and his humour. You haughty
Southerners little know how a jolly Scotch gentleman can desipere in
loco, and how he chirrups over his honest cups. I do not say whether it
was with the song or with Mr. Binnie that we were most amused. It was a
good commonty, as Christopher Sly says; nor were we sorry when it was
done.

Him the first mate succeeded; after which came a song from the redoubted
F. Bayham, which he sang with a bass voice which Lablache might envy, and
of which the chorus was frantically sung by the whole company. The cry
was then for the Colonel; on which Barnes Newcome, who had been drinking
much, started up with something like an oath, crying, "Oh, I can't stand
this."

"Then leave it, confound you!" said young Clive, with fury in his face.
"If our company is not good for you, why do you come into it?"

"What's that?" asks Barnes, who was evidently affected by wine. Bayham
roared "Silence!" and Barnes Newcome, looking round with a tipsy toss of
the head, finally sate down.

The Colonel sang, as we have said, with a very high voice, using freely
the falsetto, after the manner of the tenor singers of his day. He chose
one of his maritime songs, and got through the first verse very well,
Barnes wagging his head at the chorus, with a "Bravo!" so offensive that
Fred Bayham, his neighbour, gripped the young man's arm, and told him to
hold his confounded tongue.

The Colonel began his second verse: and here, as will often happen to
amateur singers, his falsetto broke down. He was not in the least
annoyed, for I saw him smile very good-naturedly; and he was going to try
the verse again, when that unlucky Barnes first gave a sort of crowing
imitation of the song, and then burst into a yell of laughter. Clive
dashed a glass of wine in his face at the next minute, glass and all; and
no one who had watched the young man's behaviour was sorry for the
insult.

I never saw a kind face express more terror than Colonel Newcome's. He
started back as if he had himself received the blow from his son.
"Gracious God!" he cried out. "My boy insult a gentleman at my table!"

"I'd like to do it again," says Clive, whose whole body was trembling
with anger.

"Are you drunk, sir?" shouted his father.

"The boy served the young fellow right, sir," growled Fred Bayham in his
deepest voice. "Come along, young man. Stand up straight, and keep a
civil tongue in your head next time, mind you, when you dine with
gentlemen. It's easy to see," says Fred, looking round with a knowing
air, "that this young man hasn't got the usages of society--he's not been
accustomed to it:" and he led the dandy out.

Others had meanwhile explained the state of the case to the Colonel--
including Sir Thomas de Boots, who was highly energetic and delighted
with Clive's spirit; and some were for having the song to continue; but
the Colonel, puffing his cigar, said, "No. My pipe is out. I will never
sing again." So this history will record no more of Thomas Newcome's
musical performances.




CHAPTER XIV

Park Lane


Clive woke up the next morning to be aware of a racking headache, and, by
the dim light of his throbbing eyes, to behold his father with solemn
face at his bed-foot--a reproving conscience to greet his waking.

"You drank too much wine last night, and disgraced yourself, sir," the
old soldier said. "You must get up and eat humble pie this morning, my
boy."

"Humble what, father?" asked the lad, hardly aware of his words, or the
scene before him. "Oh, I've got such a headache!"

"Serve you right, sir. Many a young fellow has had to go on parade in the
morning, with a headache earned overnight. Drink this water. Now, jump
up. Now, dash the water well over your head. There you come! Make your
toilette quickly; and let us be off, and find cousin Barnes before he has
left home."

Clive obeyed the paternal orders; dressed himself quickly; and
descending, found his father smoking his morning cigar in the apartment
where they had dined the night before, and where the tables still were
covered with the relics of yesterday's feast--the emptied bottles, the
blank lamps, the scattered ashes and fruits, the wretched heel-taps that
have been lying exposed all night to the air. Who does not know the
aspect of an expired feast?

"The field of action strewed with the dead, my boy," says Clive's father.
"See, here's the glass on the floor yet, and a great stain of claret on
the carpet."

"Oh, father!" says Clive, hanging his head down, "I know I shouldn't have
done it. But Barnes Newcome would provoke the patience of Job; and I
couldn't bear to have my father insulted."

"I am big enough to fight my own battles, my boy," the Colonel said
good-naturedly, putting his hand on the lad's damp head. "How your head
throbs! If Barnes laughed at my singing, depend upon it, sir, there was
something ridiculous in it, and he laughed because he could not help it.
If he behaved ill, we should not; and to a man who is eating our salt
too, and is of our blood."

"He is ashamed of our blood, father," cries Clive, still indignant.

"We ought to be ashamed of doing wrong. We must go and ask his pardon.
Once when I was a young man in India," the father continued very gravely,
"some hot words passed at mess--not such an insult as that of last night;
I don't think I could have quite borne that--and people found fault with
me for forgiving the youngster who had uttered the offensive expressions
over his wine. Some of my acquaintance sneered at my courage, and that is
a hard imputation for a young fellow of spirit to bear. But
providentially, you see, it was war-time, and very soon after I had the
good luck to show that I was not a poule mouillee, as the French call it;
and the man who insulted me, and whom I forgave, became my fastest
friend, and died by my side--it was poor Jack Cutler--at Argaum. We must
go and ask Barnes Newcome's pardon, sir, and forgive other people's
trespasses, my boy, if we hope forgiveness of our own." His voice sank
down as he spoke, and he bowed his honest head reverently. I have heard
his son tell the simple story years afterwards, with tears in his eyes.

Piccadilly was hardly yet awake the next morning, and the sparkling dews
and the poor homeless vagabonds still had possession of the grass of Hyde
Park, as the pair walked up to Sir Brian Newcome's house, where the
shutters were just opening to let in the day. The housemaid, who was
scrubbing the steps of the house, and washing its trim feet in a manner
which became such a polite mansion's morning toilet, knew Master Clive,
and smiled at him from under her blousy curl-papers, admitting the two
gentlemen into Sir Brian's dining-room, where they proposed to wait until
Mr. Barnes should appear. There they sate for an hour looking at
Lawrence's picture of Lady Anne, leaning over a harp, attired in white
muslin; at Harlowe's portrait of Mrs. Newcome, with her two sons
simpering at her knees, painted at a time when the Newcome Brothers were
not the bald-headed, red-whiskered British merchants with whom the reader
has made acquaintance, but chubby children with hair flowing down their
backs, and quaint little swallow-tailed jackets and nankeen trousers. A
splendid portrait of the late Earl of Kew in his peer's robes hangs
opposite his daughter and her harp. We are writing of George the Fourth's
reign; I dare say there hung in the room a fine framed print of that
great sovereign. The chandelier is in a canvas bag; the vast sideboard,
whereon are erected open frames for the support of Sir Brian Newcome's
grand silver trays, which on dinner days gleam on that festive board, now
groans under the weight of Sir Brian's bluebooks. An immense receptacle
for wine, shaped like a Roman sarcophagus, lurks under the sideboard. Two
people sitting at that large dining-table must talk very loud so as to
make themselves heard across those great slabs of mahogany covered with
damask. The butler and servants who attend at the table take a long time
walking round it. I picture to myself two persons of ordinary size
sitting in that great room at that great table, far apart, in neat
evening costume, sipping a little sherry, silent, genteel, and glum; and
think the great and wealthy are not always to be envied, and that there
may be more comfort and happiness in a snug parlour, where you are served
by a brisk little maid, than in a great dark, dreary dining-hall, where a
funereal major-domo and a couple of stealthy footmen minister to you
your mutton-chops. They come and lay the cloth presently, wide as the
main-sheet of some tall ammiral. A pile of newspapers and letters for the
master of the house; the Newcome Sentinel, old county paper, moderate
conservative, in which our worthy townsman and member is praised, his
benefactions are recorded, and his speeches given at full length; the
Newcome Independent, in which our precious member is weekly described as
a ninny, and informed almost every Thursday morning that he is a bloated
aristocrat, as he munches his dry toast. Heaps of letters, county papers,
Times and Morning Herald for Sir Brian Newcome; little heaps of letters
(dinner and soiree cards most of these) and Morning Post for Mr. Barnes.
Punctually as eight o'clock strikes, that young gentleman comes to
breakfast; his father will lie yet for another hour; the Baronet's
prodigious labours in the House of Commons keeping him frequently out of
bed till sunrise.

As his cousin entered the room, Clive turned very red, and perhaps a
faint blush might appear on Barnes's pallid countenance. He came in, a
handkerchief in one hand, a pamphlet in the other, and both hands being
thus engaged, he could offer neither to his kinsmen.

"You are come to breakfast, I hope," he said--calling it "weakfast," and
pronouncing the words with a most languid drawl--"or, perhaps, you want
to see my father? He is never out of his room till half-past nine.
Harper, did Sir Brian come in last night before or after me?" Harper, the
butler, thinks Sir Brian came in after Mr. Barnes.

When that functionary had quitted the room, Barnes turned round to his
uncle in a candid, smiling way, and said, "The fact is, sir, I don't know
when I came home myself very distinctly, and can't, of course, tell about
my father. Generally, you know, there are two candles left in the hall,
you know; and if there are two, you know, I know of course that my father
is still at the House. But last night, after that capital song you sang,
hang me if I know what happened to me. I beg your pardon, sir, I'm
shocked at having been so overtaken. Such a confounded thing doesn't
happen to me once in ten years. I do trust I didn't do anything rude to
anybody, for I thought some of your friends the pleasantest fellows I
ever met in my life; and as for the claret, 'gad, as if I hadn't had
enough after dinner, I brought a quantity of it away with me on my
shirt-front and waistcoat!"

"I beg your pardon, Barnes," Clive said, blushing deeply, "and I'm very
sorry indeed for what passed; I threw it."

The Colonel, who had been listening with a queer expression of wonder and
doubt on his face, here interrupted Mr. Barnes. "It was Clive that--that
spilled the wine over you last night," Thomas Newcome said; "the young
rascal had drunk a great deal too much wine, and had neither the use of
his head nor his hands, and this morning I have given him a lecture, and
he has come to ask your pardon for his clumsiness; and if you have
forgotten your share in the night's transaction, I hope you have
forgotten his, and will accept his hand and his apology."

"Apology: There's no apology," cries Barnes, holding out a couple of
fingers of his hand, but looking towards the Colonel. "I don't know what
happened any more than the dead. Did we have a row? Were there any
glasses broken? The best way in such cases is to sweep 'em up. We can't
mend them."

The Colonel said gravely--"that he was thankful to find that the
disturbance of the night before had no worse result." He pulled the tail
of Clive's coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble
his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his
talk. "The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy," he said,
"and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself.
Wine has given you a warning too, which I hope you will remember all your
life; no one has seen me the worse for drink these forty years, and I
hope both you young gentlemen will take counsel by an old soldier, who
fully preaches what he practises, and beseeches you to beware of the
bottle."

After quitting their kinsman, the kind Colonel further improved the
occasion with his son; and told him out of his own experience many
stories of quarrels, and duels, and wine;--how the wine had occasioned
the brawls, and the foolish speech overnight the bloody meeting at
morning; how he had known widows and orphans made by hot words uttered in
idle orgies: how the truest honour was the manly confession of wrong; and
the best courage the courage to avoid temptation. The humble-minded
speaker, whose advice contained the best of all wisdom, that which comes
from a gentle and reverent spirit, and a pure and generous heart, never
for once thought of the effect which he might be producing, but uttered
his simple say according to the truth within him. Indeed, he spoke out
his mind pretty resolutely on all subjects which moved or interested him;
and Clive, his son, and his honest chum, Mr. Binnie, who had a great deal
more reading and much keener intelligence than the Colonel, were amused
often at his naive opinion about men, or books, or morals. Mr. Clive had
a very fine natural sense of humour, which played perpetually round his
father's simple philosophy with kind and smiling comments. Between this
pair of friends the superiority of wit lay, almost from the very first,
on the younger man's side; but, on the other hand, Clive felt a tender
admiration for his father's goodness, a loving delight in contemplating
his elder's character, which he has never lost, and which in the trials
of their future life inexpressibly cheered and consoled both of them!
Beati illi! O man of the world, whose wearied eyes may glance over this
page, may those who come after you so regard you! O generous boy, who
read in it, may you have such a friend to trust and cherish in youth, and
in future days fondly and proudly to remember!

Some four or five weeks after the quasi-reconciliation between Clive and
his kinsman, the chief part of Sir Brian Newcome's family were assembled
at the breakfast-table together, where the meal was taken in common, and
at the early hour of eight (unless the senator was kept too late in the
House of Commons overnight); and Lady Anne and her nursery were now
returned to London again, little Alfred being perfectly set up by a month
of Brighton air. It was a Thursday morning; on which day of the week, it
has been said, the Newcome Independent and the Newcome Sentinel both made
their appearance upon the Baronet's table. The household from above and
from below; the maids and footmen from the basement; the nurses,
children, and governesses from the attics; all poured into the room at
the sound of a certain bell.

I do not sneer at the purpose for which, at that chiming eight-o'clock
bell, the household is called together. The urns are hissing, the plate
is shining; the father of the house, standing up, reads from a gilt book
for three or four minutes in a measured cadence. The members of the
family are around the table in an attitude of decent reverence; the
younger children whisper responses at their mother's knees; the governess
worships a little apart; the maids and the large footmen are in a cluster
before their chairs, the upper servants performing their devotion on the
other side of the sideboard; the nurse whisks about the unconscious
last-born, and tosses it up and down during the ceremony. I do not sneer
at that--at the act at which all these people are assembled--it is at the
rest of the day I marvel; at the rest of the day, and what it brings. At
the very instant when the voice has ceased speaking and the gilded book
is shut, the world begins again, and for the next twenty-three hours and
fifty-seven minutes all that household is given up to it. The servile
squad rises up and marches away to its basement, whence, should it happen
to be a gala-day, those tall gentlemen at present attired in Oxford
mixture will issue forth with flour plastered on their heads, yellow
coats, pink breeches, sky-blue waistcoats, silver lace, buckles in their
shoes, black silk bags on their backs, and I don't know what insane
emblems of servility and absurd bedizenments of folly. Their very manner
of speaking to what we call their masters and mistresses will be a like
monstrous masquerade. You know no more of that race which inhabits the
basement floor, than of the men and brethren of Timbuctoo, to whom some
among us send missionaries. If you met some of your servants in the
streets (I respectfully suppose for a moment that the reader is a person
of high fashion and a great establishment), you would not know their
faces. You might sleep under the same roof for half a century and know
nothing about them. If they were ill, you would not visit them, though
you would send them an apothecary and of course order that they lacked
for nothing. You are not unkind, you are not worse than your neighbours.
Nay, perhaps, if you did go into the kitchen, or to take the tea in the
servants'-hall, you would do little good, and only bore the folks
assembled there. But so it is. With those fellow-Christians who have been
just saying Amen to your prayers, you have scarcely the community of
Charity. They come, you don't know whence; they think and talk, you don't
know what; they die, and you don't care, or vice versa. They answer the
bell for prayers as they answer the bell for coals: for exactly three
minutes in the day you all kneel together on one carpet--and, the desires
and petitions of the servants and masters over, the rite called family
worship is ended.

Exeunt servants, save those two who warm the newspaper, administer the
muffins, and serve out the tea. Sir Brian reads his letters, and chumps
his dry toast. Ethel whispers to her mother, she thinks Eliza is looking
very ill. Lady Anne asks, which is Eliza? Is it the woman that was ill
before they left town? If she is ill, Mrs. Trotter had better send her
away. Mrs. Trotter is only a great deal too good-natured. She is always
keeping people who are ill. Then her ladyship begins to read the Morning
Post, and glances over the names of the persons who were present at
Baroness Bosco's ball, and Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns's soiree dansante in
Belgrave Square.

"Everybody was there," says Barnes, looking over from his paper.

"But who is Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns?" asks mamma. "Who ever heard of a Mrs.
Toddle Tompkyns? What do people mean by going to such a person?"

"Lady Popinjoy asked the people," Barnes says gravely. "The thing was
really doosed well done. The woman looked frightened; but she's pretty,
and I am told the daughter will have a great lot of money."

"Is she pretty, and did you dance with her?" asks Ethel.

"Me dance!" says Mr. Barnes. We are speaking of a time before casinos
were, and when the British youth were by no means so active in dancing
practice as at this present period. Barnes resumed the reading of his
county paper, but presently laid it down, with an execration so brisk and
loud, that his mother gave a little outcry, and even his father looked up
from his letters to ask the meaning of an oath so unexpected and
ungenteel.

"My uncle, the Colonel of sepoys, and his amiable son have been paying a
visit to Newcome--that's the news which I have the pleasure to announce
to you," says Mr. Barnes.

"You are always sneering about our uncle," breaks in Ethel, with
impetuous voice, "and saying unkind things about Clive. Our uncle is a
dear, good, kind man, and I love him. He came to Brighton to see us, and
went out every day for hours and hours with Alfred; and Clive, too, drew
pictures for him. And he is good, and kind, and generous, and honest as
his father. And Barnes is always speaking ill of him behind his back."

"And his aunt lets very nice lodgings, and is altogether a most desirable
acquaintance," says Mr. Barnes. "What a shame it is that we have not
cultivated that branch of the family!"

"My dear fellow," cries Sir Brian, "I have no doubt Miss Honeyman is a
most respectable person. Nothing is so ungenerous as to rebuke a
gentleman or a lady on account of their poverty, and I coincide with
Ethel in thinking that you speak of your uncle and his son in terms
which, to say the least, are disrespectful."

"Miss Honeyman is a dear little old woman," breaks in Ethel. "Was not she
kind to Alfred, mamma, and did not she make him nice jelly? And a Doctor
of Divinity--you know Clive's grandfather was a Doctor of Divinity,
mamma, there's a picture of him in a wig--is just as good as a banker,
you know he is."

"Did you bring some of Miss Honeyman's lodging-house cards with you,
Ethel?" says her brother, "and had we not better hang up one or two in
Lombard Street; hers and our other relation's, Mrs. Mason?"

"My darling love, who is Mrs. Mason?" asks Lady Anne.

"Another member of the family, ma'am. She was cousin----"

"She was no such thing, sir," roars Sir Brian.

"She was relative and housemaid of my grandfather during his first
marriage. She acted, I believe, as dry nurse to the distinguished Colonel
of sepoys, my uncle. She has retired into private life in her native town
of Newcome, and occupies her latter days by the management of a mangle.
The Colonel and young pothouse have gone down to spend a few days with
their elderly relative. It's all here in the paper, by Jove!" Mr. Barnes
clenched his fist, and stamped upon the newspaper with much energy.

"And so they should go down and see her, and so the Colonel should love
his nurse, and not forget his relations if they are old and poor," cries
Ethel, with a flush on her face, and tears starting into her eyes.

"Hear what the Newcome papers say about it," shrieks out Mr. Barnes, his
voice quivering, his little eyes flashing out scorn. "It's in both the
papers, I dare say. It will be in the Times to-morrow. By --- it's
delightful. Our paper only mentions the gratifying circumstance; here is
the paragraph. 'Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C.B., a distinguished Indian
officer, and younger brother of our respected townsman and representative
Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., has been staying for the last week at the
King's Arms, in our city. He has been visited by the principal
inhabitants and leading gentlemen of Newcome, and has come among us, as
we understand, in order to pass a few days with an elderly relative, who
has been living for many years past in great retirement in this place.'"

"Well, I see no great harm in that paragraph," says Sir Brian. "I wish my
brother had gone to the Roebuck, and not to the King's Arms, as the
Roebuck is our house: but he could not be expected to know much about the
Newcome inns, as he is a new comer himself. And I think it was very right
of the people to call on him."

"Now hear what the Independent says, and see if you like that, sir,"
cries Barnes, grinning fiercely; and he began to read as follows:--

"'Mr. Independent--I was born and bred a Screwcomite, and am naturally
proud of everybody and everything which bears the revered name of
Screwcome. I am a Briton and a man, though I have not the honour of a
vote for my native borough; if I had, you may be sure I would give it to
our admired and talented representative, Don Pomposo Lickspittle
Grindpauper, Poor House Agincourt, Screwcome, whose ancestors fought with
Julius Caesar against William the Conqueror, and whose father certainly
wielded a cloth yard shaft in London not fifty years ago.

"' Don Pomposo, as you know, seldom favours the town o Screwcome with a
visit.--Our gentry are not of ancient birth enough to be welcome to a
Lady Screwcome. Our manufacturers make their money by trade. Oh, fie I
how can it be supposed that such vulgarians should be received among the,
aristocratic society of Screwcome House? Two balls in the season, and ten
dozen o gooseberry, are enough for them.'"

"It's that scoundrel Parrot," burst out Sir Brian; "because I wouldn't
have any more wine of him--No, it's Vidler, the apothecary. By heavens!
Lady Anne, I told you it would be so. Why didn't you ask the Miss Vidlers
to your ball?"

"They were on the list," cries Lady Anne, "three of them; I did
everything I could; I consulted Mr. Vidler for poor Alfred, and he
actually stopped and saw the dear child take the physic. Why were they
not asked to the ball?" cries her ladyship bewildered; "I declare to
gracious goodness I don't know."

"Barnes scratched their names," cries Ethel, "out of the list, mamma. You
know you did, Barnes; you said you had gallipots enough."

"I don't think it is like Vidler's writing," said Mr. Barnes, perhaps
willing to turn the conversation. "I think it must be that villain Duff
the baker, who made the song about us at the last election;--but hear the
rest of the paragraph," and he continued to read:--

"'The Screwcomites are at this moment favoured with a visit from a
gentleman of the Screwcome family, who, having passed all his life
abroad, is somewhat different from his relatives, whom we all so love and
honour! This distinguished gentleman, this gallant soldier, has come
among us, not merely to see our manufactures--in which Screwcome can vie
with any city in the North--but an old servant and relation of his
family, whom he is not above recognising; who nursed him in his early
days; who has been living in her native place for many years, supported
by the generous bounty of Colonel N------. The gallant officer,
accompanied by his son, a fine youth, has taken repeated drives round our
beautiful environs in one of friend Taplow's (of the King's Arms) open
drags, and accompanied by Mrs. ------, now an aged lady, who speaks, with
tears in her eyes, of the goodness and gratitude of her gallant soldier!

"'One day last week they drove to Screwcome House. Will it be believed
that, though the house is only four miles distant from our city--though
Don Pomposo's family have inhabited it these twelve years for four or
five months every year--Mrs. M----- saw her cousin's house for the first
time; has never set eyes upon those grandees, except in public places,
since the day when they honoured the county by purchasing the estate
which they own?

"'I have, as I repeat, no vote for the borough; but if I had, oh,
wouldn't I show my respectful gratitude at the next election, and plump
for Pomposo! I shall keep my eye upon him, and am, Mr. Independent,--Your
Constant Reader,                             Peeping Tom.'"

"The spirit of radicalism abroad in this country," said Sir Brian
Newcome, crushing his egg-shell desperately, "is dreadful, really
dreadful. We are on the edge of a positive volcano." Down went the
egg-spoon into its crater. "The worst sentiments are everywhere publicly
advocated; the licentiousness of the press has reached a pinnacle which
menaces us with ruin; there is no law which these shameless newspapers
respect; no rank which is safe from their attacks; no ancient landmark
which the lava-flood of democracy does not threaten to overwhelm and
destroy."

"When I was at Spielburg," Barnes Newcome remarked kindly, "I saw three
long-bearded, putty-faced blaguards pacin up and down a little courtyard,
and Count Keppenheimer told me they were three damned editors of Milanese
newspapers, who had had seven years of imprisonment already; and last
year when Keppenheimer came to shoot at Newcome, I showed him that old
thief, old Batters, the proprietor of the Independent, and Potts, his
infernal ally, driving in a dogcart; and I said to him, Keppenheimer, I
wish we had a place where we could lock up some of our infernal radicals
of the press, or that you could take off those two villains to Spielburg;
and as we were passin, that infernal Potts burst out laughin in my face,
and cut one of my pointers over the head with his whip. We must do
something with that Independent, sir."

"We must," says the father, solemnly, "we must put it down, Barnes, we
must put it down."

"I think," says Barnes, "we had best give the railway advertisements to
Batters."

"But that makes the man of the Sentinel so angry," says the elder
persecutor of the press.

"Then let us give Tom Potts some shootin at any rate; the ruffian is
always poachin about our covers as it is. Speers should be written to,
sir, to keep a look-out upon Batters and that villain his accomplice, and
to be civil to them, and that sort of thing; and, damn it, to be down
upon them whenever he sees the opportunity."

During the above conspiracy for bribing or crushing the independence of a
great organ of British opinion, Miss Ethel Newcome held her tongue; but
when her papa closed the conversation by announcing solemnly that he
would communicate with Speers, Ethel turning to her mother said, "Mamma,
is it true that grandpapa has a relation living at Newcome who is old and
poor?"

"My darling child, how on earth should I know?" says Lady Anne. "I
daresay Mr. Newcome had plenty of poor relations."

"I am sure some on your side, Anne, have been good enough to visit me at
the bank," said Sir Brian, who thought his wife's ejaculation was a
reflection upon his family, whereas it was the statement of a simple fact
in natural history. "This person was no relation of my father's at all.
She was remotely connected with his first wife, I believe. She acted as
servant to him, and has been most handsomely pensioned by the Colonel."

"Who went to her, like a kind, dear, good, brave uncle as he is," cried
Ethel; "the very day I go to Newcome I'll go to see her." She caught a
look of negation in her father's eye--"I will go--that is, if papa will
give me leave," says Miss Ethel.

"By Gad, sir," says Barnes, "I think it is the very best thing she could
do; and the best way of doing it, Ethel can go with one of the boys and
take Mrs. What-do-you-call'em a gown, or a, tract, or that sort of thing,
and stop that infernal Independent's mouth."

"If we had gone sooner," said Miss Ethel, simply, "there would not have
been all this abuse of us in the paper." To which statement her worldly
father and brother perforce agreeing, we may congratulate good old Mrs.
Mason upon the new and polite acquaintances she is about to make.




CHAPTER XV

The Old Ladies


The above letter and conversation will show what our active Colonel's
movements and history had been since the last chapter in which they were
recorded. He and Clive took the Liverpool mail, and travelled from
Liverpool to Newcome with a post-chaise and a pair of horses, which
landed them at the King's Arms. The Colonel delighted in post-chaising--
the rapid transit through the country amused him and cheered his spirits.
Besides, had he not Dr. Johnson's word for it, that a swift journey in a
post-chaise was one of the greatest enjoyments in life, and a sojourn in
a comfortable inn one of its chief pleasures? In travelling he was as
happy and noisy as a boy. He talked to the waiters, and made friends with
the landlord; got all the information which he could gather regarding the
towns into which he came; and drove about from one sight or curiosity to
another with indefatigable good-humour and interest. It was good for
Clive to see men and cities; to visit mills, manufactories, country
seats, cathedrals. He asked a hundred questions regarding all things
round about him; and any one caring to know who Thomas Newcome was, and
what his rank and business, found no difficulty in having his questions
answered by the simple and kindly traveller.

Mine host of the King's Arms, Mr. Taplow aforesaid, knew in five minutes
who his guest was, and the errand on which he came. Was not Colonel
Newcome's name painted on all his trunks and boxes? Was not his servant
ready to answer all questions regarding the Colonel and his son? Newcome
pretty generally introduced Clive to my landlord, when the latter brought
his guest his bottle of wine. With old-fashioned cordiality, the Colonel
would bid the landlord drink a glass of his own liquor, and seldom failed
to say to him, "This is my son, sir. We are travelling together to see
the country. Every English gentleman should see his own country first,
before he goes abroad, as we intend to do afterwards--to make the Grand
Tour. And I will thank you to tell me what there is remarkable in your
town, and what we ought to see--antiquities, manufactures, and seats in
the neighbourhood. We wish to see everything, sir--everything. Elaborate
diaries of these home tours are still extant, in Clive's boyish
manuscript and the Colonel's dashing handwriting--quaint records of
places visited, and alarming accounts of inn bills paid."

So Mr. Taplow knew in five minutes that his guest was a brother of Sir
Brian, their member; and saw the note despatched by an ostler to "Mrs.
Sarah Mason, Jubilee Row," announcing that the Colonel had arrived, and
would be with her after his dinner. Mr. Taplow did not think fit to tell
his guest that the house Sir Brian used--the Blue house--was the Roebuck,
not the King's Arms. Might not the gentlemen be of different politics?
Mr. Taplow's wine knew none.

Some of the jolliest fellows in all Newcome use the Boscawen Room at the
King's Arms as their club, and pass numberless merry evenings and crack
countless jokes there.

Duff, the baker; old Mr. Vidler, when he can get away from his medical
labours (and his hand shakes, it must be owned, very much now, and his
nose is very red); Parrot, the auctioneer; and that amusing dog, Tom
Potts, the talented reporter of the Independent--were pretty constant
attendants at the King's Arms; and Colonel Newcome's dinner was not over
before some of these gentlemen knew what dishes he had had; how he had
called for a bottle of sherry and a bottle of claret, like a gentleman;
how he had paid the postboys, and travelled with a servant like a
top-sawyer; that he was come to shake hands with an old nurse and
relative of his family. Every one of those jolly Britons thought well of
the Colonel for his affectionateness and liberality, and contrasted it
with the behaviour of the Tory Baronet--their representative.

His arrival made a sensation in the place. The Blue Club at the Roebuck
discussed it, as well as the uncompromising Liberals at the King's Arms.
Mr. Speers, Sir Brian's agent, did not know how to act, and advised Sir
Brian by the next night's mail, The Reverend Dr. Bulders, the rector,
left his card.

Meanwhile it was not gain or business, but only love and gratitude, which
brought Thomas Newcome to his father's native town. Their dinner over,
away went the Colonel and Clive, guided by the ostler, their previous
messenger, to the humble little tenement which Thomas Newcome's earliest
friend inhabited. The good old woman put her spectacles into her Bible,
and flung herself into her boy's arms--her boy who was more than fifty
years old. She embraced Clive still more eagerly and frequently than she
kissed his father. She did not know her Colonel with them whiskers. Clive
was the very picture of the dear boy as he had left her almost twoscore
years ago. And as fondly as she hung on the boy, her memory had ever
clung round that early time when they were together. The good soul told
endless tales of her darling's childhood, his frolics and beauty. To-day
was uncertain to her, but the past was still bright and clear. As they
sat prattling together over the bright tea-table, attended by the trim
little maid, whose services the Colonel's bounty secured for his old
nurse, the kind old creature insisted on having Clive by her side. Again
and again she would think he was actually her own boy, forgetting, in
that sweet and pious hallucination, that the bronzed face, and thinned
hair, and melancholy eyes of the veteran before her, were those of her
nursling of old days. So for near half the space of man's allotted life
he had been absent from her, and day and night wherever he was, in
sickness or health, in sorrow or danger, her innocent love and prayers
had attended the absent darling. Not in vain, not in vain, does he live
whose course is so befriended. Let us be thankful for our race, as we
think of the love that blesses some of us. Surely it has something of
Heaven in it, and angels celestial may rejoice in it, and admire it.

Having nothing whatever to do, our Colonel's movements are of course
exceedingly rapid, and he has the very shortest time to spend in any
single place. That evening, Saturday, and the next day, Sunday, when he
will faithfully accompany his dear old nurse to church. And what a
festival is that day for her, when she has her Colonel and that beautiful
brilliant boy of his by her side, and Mr. Hicks, the curate, looking at
him, and the venerable Dr. Bulders himself eyeing him from the pulpit,
and all the neighbours fluttering and whispering, to be sure, who can be
that fine military gentleman, and that splendid young man sitting by old
Mrs. Mason, and leading her so affectionately out of church? That
Saturday and Sunday the Colonel will pass with good old Mason, but on
Monday he must be off; on Tuesday he must be in London, he has important
business in London,--in fact, Tom Hamilton, of his regiment, comes up for
election at the Oriental on that day, and on such an occasion could
Thomas Newcome be absent? He drives away from the King's Arms through a
row of smirking chambermaids, smiling waiters, and thankful ostlers,
accompanied to the post-chaise, of which the obsequious Taplow shuts the
door; and the Boscawen Room pronounces him that night to be a trump; and
the whole of the busy town, ere the next day is over, has heard of his
coming and departure, praised his kindliness and generosity, and no doubt
contrasted it with the different behaviour of the Baronet, his brother,
who has gone for some time by the ignominious sobriquet of Screwcome, in
the neighbourhood of his ancestral hall.

Dear old nurse Mason will have a score of visits to make and to receive,
at all of which you may be sure that triumphal advent of the Colonel's
will be discussed and admired. Mrs. Mason will show her beautiful new
India shawl, and her splendid Bible with the large print, and the
affectionate inscription, from Thomas Newcome to his dearest old friend;
her little maid will exhibit her new gown; the curate will see the Bible,
and Mrs. Bulders will admire the shawl; and the old friends and humble
companions of the good old lady, as they take their Sunday walks by the
pompous lodge-gates of Newcome Park, which stand with the Baronet's
new-fangled arms over them, gilded, and filagreed, and barred, will tell
their stories, too, about the kind Colonel and his hard brother. When did
Sir Brian ever visit a poor old woman's cottage, or his bailiff exempt
from the rent? What good action, except a few thin blankets and beggarly
coal and soup tickets, did Newcome Park ever do for the poor? And as for
the Colonel's wealth, Lord bless you, he's been in India these
five-and-thirty years; the Baronet's money is a drop in the sea to his.
The Colonel is the kindest, the best, the richest of men. These facts and
opinions, doubtless, inspired the eloquent pen of "Peeping Tom," when he
indited the sarcastic epistle to the Newcome Independent, which we
perused over Sir Brian Newcome's shoulder in the last chapter.

And you may be sure Thomas Newcome had not been many weeks in England
before good little Miss Honeyman, at Brighton, was favoured with a visit
from her dear Colonel. The envious Gawler scowling out of his bow-window,
where the fly-blown card still proclaimed that his lodgings were
unoccupied, had the mortification to behold a yellow post-chaise drive up
to Miss Honeyman's door, and having discharged two gentlemen from within,
trot away with servant and baggage to some house of entertainment other
than Gawler's. Whilst this wretch was cursing his own ill fate, and
execrating yet more deeply Miss Honeyman's better fortune, the worthy
little lady was treating her Colonel to a sisterly embrace and a solemn
reception. Hannah, the faithful housekeeper, was presented, and had a
shake of the hand. The Colonel knew all about Hannah: ere he had been in
England a week, a basket containing pots of jam of her confection, and a
tongue of Hannah's curing, had arrived for the Colonel. That very night
when his servant had lodged Colonel Newcome's effects at the neighbouring
hotel, Hannah was in possession of one of the Colonel's shirts, she and
her mistress having previously conspired to make a dozen of those
garments for the family benefactor.

All the presents which Newcome had ever transmitted to his sister-in-law
from India had been taken out of the cotton and lavender in which the
faithful creature kept them. It was a fine hot day in June, but I promise
you Miss Honeyman wore her blazing scarlet Cashmere shawl; her great
brooch, representing the Taj of Agra, was in her collar; and her
bracelets (she used to say, I am given to understand they are called
bangles, my dear, by the natives) decorated the sleeves round her lean
old hands, which trembled with pleasure as they received the kind grasp
of the Colonel of colonels. How busy those hands had been that morning!
What custards they had whipped!--what a triumph of pie-crusts they had
achieved! Before Colonel Newcome had been ten minutes in the house, the
celebrated veal-cutlets made their appearance. Was not the whole house
adorned in expectation of his coming? Had not Mr. Kuhn, the affable
foreign gentleman of the first-floor lodgers, prepared a French dish? Was
not Betty on the look-out, and instructed to put the cutlets on the fire
at the very moment when the Colonel's carriage drove up to her mistress's
door? The good woman's eyes twinkled, the kind old hand and voice shook,
as, holding up a bright glass of Madeira, Miss Honeyman drank the
Colonel's health. "I promise you, my dear Colonel," says she, nodding her
head, adorned with a bristling superstructure of lace and ribbons, "I
promise you, that I can drink your health in good wine!" The wine was of
his own sending, and so were the China fire-screens, and the sandalwood
workbox, and the ivory cardcase, and those magnificent pink and white
chessmen, carved like little sepoys and mandarins, with the castles on
elephants' backs, George the Third and his queen in pink ivory, against
the Emperor of China and lady in white--the delight of Clive's childhood,
the chief ornament of the old spinster's sitting-room.

Miss Honeyman's little feast was pronounced to be the perfection of
cookery; and when the meal was over, came a noise of little feet at the
parlour door, which being opened, there appeared, first, a tall nurse
with a dancing baby; second and third, two little girls with little
frocks, little trousers, long ringlets, blue eyes, and blue ribbons to
match; fourth, Master Alfred, now quite recovered from his illness, and
holding by the hand, fifth, Miss Ethel Newcome, blushing like a rose.

Hannah, grinning, acted as mistress of the ceremonies, calling out the
names of "Miss Newcomes, Master Newcomes, to see the Colonel, if you
please, ma'am," bobbing a curtsey, and giving a knowing nod to Master
Clive, as she smoothed her new silk apron. Hannah, too, was in new
attire, all crisp and rustling, in the Colonel's honour. Miss Ethel did
not cease blushing as she advanced towards her uncle; and the honest
campaigner started up, blushing too. Mr. Clive rose also, as little
Alfred, of whom he was a great friend, ran towards him. Clive rose,
laughed, nodded at Ethel, and ate gingerbread nuts all at the same time.
As for Colonel Thomas Newcome and his niece, they fell in love with each
other instantaneously, like Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess of
China.

I have turned away one artist: the poor creature was utterly incompetent
to depict the sublime, graceful, and pathetic personages and events with
which this history will most assuredly abound, and I doubt whether even
the designer engaged in his place can make such a portrait of Miss Ethel
Newcome as shall satisfy her friends and her own sense of justice. That
blush which we have indicated, he cannot render. How are you to copy it
with a steel point and a ball of printer's ink? That kindness which
lights up the Colonel's eyes; gives an expression to the very wrinkles
round about them; shines as a halo round his face;--what artist can paint
it? The painters of old, when they portrayed sainted personages, were
fain to have recourse to compasses and gold leaf--as if celestial
splendour could be represented by Dutch metal! As our artist cannot come
up to this task, the reader will be pleased to let his fancy paint for
itself the look of courtesy for a woman, admiration for a young beauty,
protection for an innocent child, all of which are expressed upon the
Colonel's kind face, as his eyes are set upon Ethel Newcome.

"Mamma has sent us to bid you welcome to England, uncle," says Miss
Ethel, advancing, and never thinking for a moment of laying aside that
fine blush which she brought into the room, and which is her pretty
symbol of youth, and modesty, and beauty.

He took a little slim white hand and laid it down on his brown palm,
where it looked all the whiter: he cleared the grizzled mustachio from
his mouth, and stooping down he kissed the little white hand with a great
deal of grace and dignity. There was no point of resemblance, and yet a
something in the girl's look, voice, and movements, which caused his
heart to thrill, and an image out of the past to rise up and salute him.
The eyes which had brightened his youth (and which he saw in his dreams
and thoughts for faithful years afterwards, as though they looked at him
out of heaven) seemed to shine upon him after five-and-thirty years. He
remembered such a fair bending neck and clustering hair, such a light
foot and airy figure, such a slim hand lying in his own--and now parted
from it with a gap of ten thousand long days between. It is an old
saying, that we forget nothing; as people in fever begin suddenly to talk
the language of their infancy we are stricken by memory sometimes, and
old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our
daily talk, when their presence gladdened our eyes, when their accents
thrilled in our ears, when with passionate tears and grief we flung
ourselves upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death, at least as far
as life is concerned. A passion comes to an end; it is carried off in a
coffin, or weeping in a post-chaise; it drops out of life one way or
other, and the earthclods close over it, and we see it no more. But it
has been part of our souls, and it is eternal. Does a mother not love her
dead infant? a man his lost mistress? with the fond wife nestling at his
side,--yes, with twenty children smiling round her knee. No doubt, as the
old soldier held the girl's hand in his, the little talisman led him back
to Hades, and he saw Leonora.----

"How do you do, uncle?" say girls Nos. 2 and 3 in a pretty little
infantile chorus. He drops the talisman, he is back in common life again
--the dancing baby in the arms of the bobbing nurse babbles a welcome.
Alfred looks up for a while at his uncle in the white trousers, and then
instantly proposes that Clive should make him some drawings; and is on
his knees at the next moment. He is always climbing on somebody or
something, or winding over chairs, curling through banisters, standing on
somebody's head, or his own head,--as his convalescence advances, his
breakages are fearful. Miss Honeyman and Hannah will talk about his
dilapidations for years after the little chap has left them. When he is a
jolly young officer in the Guards, and comes to see them at Brighton,
they will show him the blue-dragon Chayny jar, on which he would sit, and
which he cried so fearfully upon breaking.

When this little party has gone out smiling to take its walk on the
sea-shore, the Colonel sits down and resumes the interrupted dessert.
Miss Honeyman talks of the children and their mother, and the merits of
Mr. Kuhn, and the beauty of Miss Ethel, glancing significantly towards
Clive, who has had enough of gingerbread nuts and dessert and wine, and
whose youthful nose is by this time at the window. What kind-hearted
woman, young or old, does not love match-making?

The Colonel, without lifting his eyes from the table, says "she reminds
him of--of somebody he knew once."

"Indeed?" cries Miss Honeyman, and thinks Emma must have altered very
much after going to India, for she had fair hair, and white eyelashes,
and not a pretty foot certainly--but, my dear good lady, the Colonel is
not thinking of the late Mrs. Casey.

He has taken a fitting quantity of the Madeira, the artless greeting of
the people here, young and old, has warmed his heart, and he goes
upstairs to pay a visit to his sister-in-law, to whom he makes his most
courteous bow as becomes a lady of her rank. Ethel takes her place quite
naturally beside him during his visit. Where did he learn those fine
manners which all of us who knew him admired in him? He had a natural
simplicity, an habitual practice of kind and generous thoughts; a pure
mind, and therefore above hypocrisy and affectation--perhaps those French
people with whom he had been intimate in early life had imparted to him
some of the traditional graces of their vieille tour--certainly his
half-brothers had inherited none such. "What is this that Barnes has
written about his uncle, that the Colonel is ridiculous?" Lady Anne said
to her daughter that night. "Your uncle is adorable. I have never seen a
more perfect grand Seigneur. He puts me in mind of my grandfather, though
grandpapa's grand manner was more artificial, and his voice spoiled by
snuff. See the Colonel. He smokes round the garden, but with what perfect
grace! This is the man Uncle Hobson, and your poor dear papa, have
represented to us as a species of bear! Mr. Newcome, who has himself the
ton of a waiter! The Colonel is perfect. What can Barnes mean by
ridiculing him? I wish Barnes had such a distinguished air; but he is
like his poor dear papa. Que voulez-vous, my love? The Newcomes are
honourable: the Newcomes are wealthy: but distinguished--no. I never
deluded myself with that notion when I married your poor dear papa. At
once I pronounce Colonel Newcome a person to be in every way
distinguished by us. On our return to London I shall present him to all
our family: poor good man! let him see that his family have some
presentable relations besides those whom he will meet at Mrs. Newcome's,
in Bryanstone Square. You must go to Bryanstone Square immediately we
return to London. You must ask your cousins and their governess, and we
will give them a little party. Mrs. Newcome is insupportable, but we must
never forsake our relatives, Ethel. When you come out you will have to
dine there, and to go to her ball. Every young lady in your position in
the world has sacrifices to make, and duties to her family to perform.
Look at me. Why did I marry your poor dear papa? From duty. Has your Aunt
Fanny, who ran away with Captain Canonbury, been happy? They have eleven
children, and are starving at Boulogne. Think of three of Fanny's boys in
yellow stockings at the Bluecoat School. Your papa got them appointed. I
am sure my papa would have gone mad if he had seen that day! She came
with one of the poor wretches to Park Lane: but I could not see them. My
feelings would not allow me. When my maid,--I had a French maid then,
Louise, you remember; her conduct was abominable: so was Preville's--when
she came and said that my Lady Fanny was below with a young gentleman,
qui portait des bas jaunes, I could not see the child. I begged her to
come up in my room: and, absolutely that I might not offend her, I went
to bed. That wretch Louise met her at Boulogne and told her afterwards.
Good night, we must not stand chattering here any more. Heaven bless you,
my darling! Those are the Colonel's windows! Look, he is smoking on his
balcony--that must be Clive's room. Clive is a good kind boy. It was very
kind of him to draw so many pictures for Alfred. Put the drawings away,
Ethel. Mr. Smee saw some in Park Lane, and said they showed remarkable
genius. What a genius your Aunt Emily had for drawing; but it was
flowers! I had no genius in particular, so mamma used to say--and Doctor
Belper said, 'My dear Lady Walham' (it was before my grandpapa's death),
'has Miss Anne a genius for sewing buttons and making puddens?'--puddens
he pronounced it. Goodnight, my own love. Blessings, blessings, on my
Ethel!"

The Colonel from his balcony saw the slim figure of the retreating girl,
and looked fondly after her: and as the smoke of his cigar floated in the
air, he formed a fine castle in it, whereof Clive was lord, and that
pretty Ethel, lady. "What a frank, generous, bright young creature is
yonder!" thought he. "How cheery and gay she is; how good to Miss
Honeyman, to whom she behaved with just the respect that was the old
lady's due--how affectionate with her brothers and sisters! What a sweet
voice she has! What a pretty little white hand it is! When she gave it
me, it looked like a little white bird lying in mine. I must wear gloves,
by Jove I must, and my coat is old-fashioned, as Binnie says; what a fine
match might be made between that child and Clive! She reminds me of a
pair of eyes I haven't seen these forty years. I would like to have Clive
married to her; to see him out of the scrapes and dangers that young
fellows encounter, and safe with such a sweet girl as that. If God had so
willed it, I might have been happy myself, and could have made a woman
happy. But the Fates were against me. I should like to see Clive happy,
and then say Nunc dimittis. I shan't want anything more to-night, Kean,
and you can go to bed."

"Thank you, Colonel," says Kean, who enters, having prepared his master's
bedchamber, and is retiring when the Colonel calls after him:

"I say, Kean, is that blue coat of mine very old?"

"Uncommon white about the seams, Colonel," says the man.

"Is it older than other people's coats?"--Kean is obliged gravely to
confess that the Colonel's coat is very queer.

"Get me another coat, then--see that I don't do anything or wear anything
unusual. I have been so long out of Europe, that I don't know the customs
here, and am not above learning."

Kean retires, vowing that his master is an old trump; which opinion he
had already expressed to Mr. Kuhn, Lady Hanne's man, over a long potation
which those two gentlemen had taken together. And, as all of us, in one
way or another, are subject to this domestic criticism, from which not
the most exalted can escape, I say, lucky is the man whose servants speak
well of him.




CHAPTER XVI

In which Mr. Sherrick lets his House in Fitzroy Square


In spite of the sneers of the Newcome Independent, and the Colonel's
unlucky visit to his nurse's native place, he still remained in high
favour in Park Lane; where the worthy gentleman paid almost daily visits,
and was received with welcome and almost affection, at least by the
ladies and the children of the house. Who was it that took the children
to Astley's but Uncle Newcome? I saw him there in the midst of a cluster
of these little people, all children together. He laughed delighted at
Mr. Merryman's jokes in the ring. He beheld the Battle of Waterloo  with
breathless interest, and was amazed--amazed, by Jove, sir--at the
prodigious likeness of the principal actor to the Emperor Napoleon; whose
tomb he had visited on his return from India, as it pleased him to tell
his little audience who sat clustering round him: the little girls, Sir
Brian's daughters, holding each by a finger of his honest hands; young
Masters Alfred and Edward clapping and hurrahing by his side; while Mr.
Clive and Miss Ethel sat in the back of the box enjoying the scene, but
with that decorum which belonged to their superior age and gravity. As
for Clive, he was in these matters much older than the grizzled old
warrior his father. It did one good to hear the Colonel's honest laughs
at clown's jokes, and to see the tenderness and simplicity with which he
watched over this happy brood of young ones. How lavishly did he supply
them with sweetmeats between the acts! There he sat in the midst of them,
and ate an orange himself with perfect satisfaction. I wonder what sum of
money Mr. Barnes Newcome would have taken to sit for five hours with his
young brothers and sisters in a public box at the theatre and eat an
orange in the face of the audience? When little Alfred went to Harrow,
you may be sure Colonel Newcome and Clive galloped over to see the little
man, and tipped him royally. What money is better bestowed than that of a
schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after
days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes. Remember how happy
such benefactions made you in your own early time, and go off on the very
first fine day and tip your nephew at school!

The Colonel's organ of benevolence was so large, that he would have liked
to administer bounties to the young folks his nephews and nieces in
Bryanstone Square, as well as to their cousins in Park Lane; but Mrs.
Newcome was a great deal too virtuous to admit of such spoiling of
children. She took the poor gentleman to task for an attempt upon her
boys when those lads came home for their holidays, and caused them
ruefully to give back the shining gold sovereign with which their uncle
had thought to give them a treat.

"I do not quarrel with other families," says she; "I do not allude to
other families;" meaning, of course, that she did not allude to Park
Lane. "There may be children who are allowed to receive money from their
father's grown-up friends. There may be children who hold out their hands
for presents, and thus become mercenary in early life. I make no
reflections with regard to other households. I only look, and think, and
pray for the welfare of my own beloved ones. They want for nothing.
Heaven has bounteously furnished us with every comfort, with every
elegance, with every luxury. Why need we be bounden to others, who have
been ourselves so amply provided? I should consider it ingratitude,
Colonel Newcome, want of proper spirit, to allow my boys to accept money.
Mind, I make no allusions. When they go to school they receive a
sovereign a-piece from their father, and a shilling a week, which is
ample pocket-money. When they are at home, I desire that they may have
rational amusements: I send them to the Polytechnic with Professor
Hickson, who kindly explains to them some of the marvels of science and
the wonders of machinery. I send them to the picture-galleries and the
British Museum. I go with them myself to the delightful lectures at the
institution in Albemarle Street. I do not desire that they should attend
theatrical exhibitions. I do not quarrel with those who go to plays; far
from it! Who am I that I should venture to judge the conduct of others?
When you wrote from India, expressing a wish that your boy should be made
acquainted with the works of Shakspeare, I gave up my own opinion at
once. Should I interpose between a child and his father? I encouraged the
boy to go to the play, and sent him to the pit with one of our footmen."

"And you tipped him very handsomely, my dear Maria, too," said the
good-natured Colonel, breaking in upon her sermon; but Virtue was not to
be put off in that way.

"And why, Colonel Newcome," Virtue exclaimed, laying a pudgy little hand
on its heart; "why did I treat Clive so? Because I stood towards him in
loco parentis; because he was as a child to me, and I to him as a mother.
I indulged him more than my own. I loved him with a true maternal
tenderness. Then he was happy to come to our house: then perhaps Park
Lane was not so often open to him as Bryanstone Square: but I make no
allusions. Then he did not go six times to another house for once that he
came to mine. He was a simple, confiding, generous boy, was not dazzled
by worldly rank or titles of splendour. He could not find these in
Bryanstone Square. A merchant's wife, a country lawyer's daughter--I
could not be expected to have my humble board surrounded by titled
aristocracy; I would not if I could. I love my own family too well; I am
too honest, too simple,--let me own it at once, Colonel Newcome, too
proud! And now, now his father has come to England, and I have resigned
him, and he meets with no titled aristocrats at my house, and he does not
come here any more."

Tears rolled out of her little eyes as she spoke, and she covered her
round face with her pocket-handkerchief.

Had Colonel Newcome read the paper that morning, he might have seen
amongst what are called the fashionable announcements, the cause,
perhaps, why his sister-in-law had exhibited so much anger and virtue.
The Morning Post stated, that yesterday Sir Brian and Lady Newcome
entertained at dinner His Excellency the Persian Ambassador and
Bucksheesh Bey; the Right Honourable Cannon Rowe, President of the Board
of Control, and Lady Louisa Rowe; the Earl of H------, the Countess of
Kew, the Earl of Kew, Sir Currey Baughton, Major-General and Mrs. Hooker,
Colonel Newcome, and Mr. Horace Fogey. Afterwards her ladyship had an
assembly, which was attended by, etc. etc.

This catalogue of illustrious names had been read by Mr. Newcome to her
spouse at breakfast, with such comments as she was in the habit of
making.

"The President of the Board of Control, the Chairman of the Court of
Directors, and Ex-Governor-General of India, and a whole regiment of
Kews. By Jove, Maria, the Colonel is in good company," cries Mr. Newcome,
with a laugh. "That's the sort of dinner you should have given him. Some
people to talk about India. When he dined with us he was put between old
Lady Wormely and Professor Roots. I don't wonder at his going to sleep
after dinner. I was off myself once or twice during that confounded long
argument between Professor Roots and Dr. Windus. That Windus is the deuce
to talk."

"Dr. Windus is a man of science, and his name is of European celebrity!"
says Maria solemnly. "Any intellectual person would prefer such company
to the titled nobodies into whose family your brother has married."

"There you go, Polly; you are always having a shy at Lady Anne and her
relations," says Mr. Newcome, good-naturedly.

"A shy! How can you use such vulgar words, Mr. Newcome? What have I to do
with Sir Brian's titled relations? I do not value nobility. I prefer
people of science--people of intellect--to all the rank in the world."

"So you do," says Hobson her spouse. "You have your party--Lady Anne has
her party. You take your line--Lady Anne takes her line. You are a
superior woman, my dear Polly; every one knows that. I'm a plain country
farmer, I am. As long as you are happy, I am happy too. The people you
get to dine here may talk Greek or algebra for what I care. By Jove, my
dear, I think you can hold your own with the best of them."

"I have endeavoured by assiduity to make up for time lost, and an early
imperfect education," says Mrs. Newcome. "You married a poor country
lawyer's daughter. You did not seek a partner in the Peerage, Mr.
Newcome."

"No, no. Not such a confounded flat as that," cries Mr. Newcome,
surveying his plump partner behind her silver teapot, with eyes of
admiration.

"I had an imperfect education, but I knew its blessings, and have, I
trust, endeavoured to cultivate the humble talents which Heaven has given
me, Mr. Newcome."

"Humble, by Jove!" exclaims the husband. "No gammon of that sort, Polly.
You know well enough that you are a superior woman. I ain't a superior
man. I know that: one is enough in a family. I leave the reading to you,
my dear. Here comes my horses. I say, I wish you'd call on Lady Anne
to-day. Do go and see her, now that's a good girl. I know she is flighty,
and that; and Brian's back is up a little. But he ain't a bad fellow; and
I wish I could see you and his wife better friends."

On his way to the City, Mr. Newcome rode to look at the new house, No.
120 Fitzroy Square, which his brother, the Colonel, had taken in
conjunction with that Indian friend of his, Mr. Binnie. Shrewd old cock,
Mr. Binnie. Has brought home a good bit of money from India. Is looking
out for safe investments. Has been introduced to Newcome Brothers. Mr.
Newcome thinks very well of the Colonel's friend.

The house is vast, but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not long since it
was a ladies' school, in an unprosperous condition. The scar left by
Madame Latour's brass plate may still be seen on the tall black door,
cheerfully ornamented in the style of the end of the last century, with a
funereal urn in the centre of the entry, and garlands, and the skulls of
rams at each corner. Madame Latour, who at one time actually kept a large
yellow coach, and drove her parlour young ladies in the Regent's Park,
was an exile from her native country (Islington was her birthplace, and
Grigson her paternal name), and an outlaw at the suit of Samuel Sherrick:
that Mr. Sherrick whose wine-vaults undermine Lady Whittlesea's Chapel
where the eloquent Honeyman preaches.

The house is Mr. Sherrick's house. Some say his name is Shadrach, and
pretend to have known him as an orange-boy, afterwards as a chorus-singer
in the theatres, afterwards as secretary to a great tragedian. I know
nothing of these stories. He may or he may not be a partner of Mr.
Campion, of Shepherd's Inn: he has a handsome villa, Abbey Road, St.
John's Wood, entertains good company, rather loud, of the sporting sort,
rides and drives very showy horses, has boxes at the Opera whenever he
likes, and free access behind the scenes: is handsome, dark, bright-eyed,
with a quantity of jewellery, and a tuft to his chin; sings sweetly
sentimental songs after dinner. Who cares a fig what was the religion of
Mr. Sherrick's ancestry, or what the occupation of his youth? Mr.
Honeyman, a most respectable man surely, introduced Sherrick to the
Colonel and Binnie.

Mr. Sherrick stocked their cellar with some of the wine over which
Honeyman preached such lovely sermons. It was not dear; it was not bad
when you dealt with Mr. Sherrick for wine alone. Going into his market
with ready money in your hand, as our simple friends did, you were pretty
fairly treated by Mr. Sherrick.

The house being taken, we may be certain there was fine amusement for
Clive, Mr. Binnie, and the Colonel, in frequenting the sales, in the
inspection of upholsterers' shops, and the purchase of furniture for the
new mansion. It was like nobody else's house. There were three masters
with four or five servants over them. Kean for the Colonel and his son; a
smart boy with boots for Mr. Binnie; Mrs. Kean to cook and keep house,
with a couple of maids under her. The Colonel, himself, was great at
making hash mutton, hot-pot, curry, and pillau. What cosy pipes did we
not smoke in the dining-room, in the drawing-room, or where we would!
What pleasant evenings did we not have with Mr Binnie's books and
Schiedam! Then there were the solemn state dinners, at most of which the
writer of this biography had a corner.

Clive had a tutor--Cirindey of Corpus--whom we recommended to him, and
with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but
his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he
sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the
rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean's niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was
always calling to come downstairs. He drew his father in all postures--
asleep, on foot, on horseback; and jolly little Mr. Binnie, with his
plump legs on a chair, or jumping briskly on the back of the cob which he
rode. He should have drawn the pictures for this book, but that he no
longer condescends to make sketches. Young Ridley was his daily friend
now; and Grindley, his classics and mathematics over in the morning, and
the ride with father over, this pair of young men would constantly attend
Gandish's Drawing Academy, where, to be sure, Ridley passed many hours at
work on his art, before his young friend and patron could be spared from
his books to his pencil.

"Oh," says Clive, "if you talk to him now about those early days, it was a
jolly time! I do not believe there was any young fellow in London so
happy." And there hangs up in his painting-room now, a head, painted at
one sitting, of a man rather bald, with hair touched with grey, with a
large moustache, and a sweet mouth half smiling beneath it, and
melancholy eyes; and Clive shows that portrait of their grandfather to
his children, and tells them that the whole world never saw a nobler
gentleman.




CHAPTER XVII

A School of Art


British art either finds her peculiar nourishment in melancholy, and
loves to fix her abode in desert places; or it may be her purse is but
slenderly furnished, and she is forced to put up with accommodations
rejected by more prosperous callings. Some of the most dismal quarters of
the town are colonised by her disciples and professors. In walking
through streets which may have been gay and polite when ladies' chairmen
jostled each other on the pavement, and linkboys with their torches
lighted the beaux over the mud, who has not remarked the artist's
invasion of those regions once devoted to fashion and gaiety?  Centre
windows of drawing-rooms are enlarged so as to reach up into bedrooms--
bedrooms where Lady Betty has had her hair powdered, and where the
painter's north-light now takes possession of the place which her
toilet-table occupied a hundred years ago. There are degrees in
decadence: after the Fashion chooses to emigrate, and retreats from Soho
or Bloomsbury, let us say, to Cavendish Square, physicians come and
occupy the vacant houses, which still have a respectable look, the
windows being cleaned, and the knockers and plates kept bright, and the
doctor's carriage rolling round the square, almost as fine as the
countess's, which has whisked away her ladyship to other regions. A
boarding-house mayhap succeeds the physician, who has followed after his
sick folks into the new country; and then Dick Tinto comes with his dingy
brass plate, and breaks in his north window, and sets up his sitters'
throne. I love his honest moustache, and jaunty velvet jacket; his queer
figure, his queer vanities, and his kind heart. Why should he not suffer
his ruddy ringlets to fall over his shirt-collar? Why should he deny
himself his velvet? it is but a kind of fustian which costs him
eighteenpence a yard. He is naturally what he is, and breaks out into
costume as spontaneously as a bird sings, or a bulb bears a tulip. And as
Dick, under yonder terrific appearance of waving cloak, bristling beard,
and shadowy sombrero, is a good kindly simple creature, got up at a very
cheap rate, his life is so consistent with his dress; he gives his genius
a darkling swagger, and a romantic envelope, which, being removed, you
find, not a bravo, but a kind chirping soul; not a moody poet avoiding
mankind for the better company of his own great thoughts, but a jolly
little chap who has an aptitude for painting brocade gowns, a bit of
armour (with figures inside them), or trees and cattle, or gondolas and
buildings, or what not; an instinct for the picturesque, which exhibits
itself in his works, and outwardly on his person; beyond this, a gentle
creature loving his friends, his cups, feasts, merrymakings, and all good
things. The kindest folks alive I have found among those scowling
whiskeradoes. They open oysters with their yataghans, toast muffins on
their rapiers, and fill their Venice glasses with half-and-half. If they
have money in their lean purses, be sure they have a friend to share it.
What innocent gaiety, what jovial suppers on threadbare cloths, and
wonderful songs after; what pathos, merriment, humour does not a man
enjoy who frequents their company! Mr. Clive Newcome, who has long since
shaved his beard, who has become a family man, and has seen the world in
a thousand different phases, avers that his life as an art-student at
home and abroad was the pleasantest part of his whole existence. It may
not be more amusing in the telling than the chronicle of a feast, or the
accurate report of two lovers' conversation; but the biographer, having
brought his hero to the period of his life, is bound to relate it, before
passing to other occurrences which are to be narrated in their turn.

We may be sure the boy had many conversations with his affectionate
guardian as to the profession which he should follow. As regarded
mathematical and classical learning, the elder Newcome was forced to
admit, that out of every hundred boys, there were fifty as clever as his
own, and at least fifty more industrious; the army in time of peace
Colonel Newcome thought a bad trade for a young fellow so fond of ease
and pleasure as his son: his delight in the pencil was manifest to all.
Were not his school-books full of caricatures of the masters? Whilst his
tutor, Grindley, was lecturing him, did he not draw Grindley
instinctively under his very nose? A painter Clive was determined to be,
and nothing else; and Clive, being then some sixteen years of age, began
to study the art, en regle, under the eminent Mr. Gandish, of Soho.

It was that well-known portrait-painter, Alfred Smee, Esq., R.A., who
recommended Gandish to Colonel Newcome, one day when the two gentlemen
met at dinner at Lady Anne Newcome's table. Mr. Smee happened to examine
some of Clive's drawings, which the young fellow had executed for his
cousins. Clive found no better amusement than in making pictures for
them, and would cheerfully pass evening after evening in that diversion.
He had made a thousand sketches of Ethel before a year was over; a year,
every day of which seemed to increase the attractions of the fair young
creature, develop her nymph-like form, and give her figure fresh graces.
He also of course drew Alfred and the nursery in general, Aunt Anne and
the Blenheim spaniels, and Mr. Kuhn and his earrings, the majestic John
bringing in the coal-scuttle, and all persons or objects in that
establishment with which he was familiar. "What a genius the lad has,"
the complimentary Mr. Smee averred; "what a force and individuality there
is in all his drawings! Look at his horses! capital, by Jove, capital!
and Alfred on his pony, and Miss Ethel in her Spanish bat, with her hair
flowing in the wind! I must take this sketch, I positively must now, and
show it to Landseer." And the courtly artist daintily enveloped the
drawing in a sheet of paper, put it away in his hat, and vowed
subsequently that the great painter had been delighted with the young
man's performance. Smee was not only charmed with Clive's skill as an
artist, but thought his head would be an admirable one to paint. Such a
rich complexion, such fine turns in his hair! such eyes! to see real blue
eyes was so rare nowadays! And the Colonel too, if the Colonel would but
give him a few sittings, the grey uniform of the Bengal Cavalry, the
silver lace, the little bit of red ribbon just to warm up the picture! it
was seldom, Mr. Smee declared, that an artist could get such an
opportunity for colour. With our hideous vermilion uniforms there was no
chance of doing anything; Rubens himself could scarcely manage scarlet.
Look at the horseman in Cuyp's famous picture at the Louvre: the red was
a positive blot upon the whole picture. There was nothing like French
grey and silver! All which did not prevent Mr. Smee from painting Sir
Brian in a flaring deputy-lieutenant's uniform, and entreating all
military men whom he met to sit to him in scarlet. Clive Newcome the
Academician succeeded in painting, of course for mere friendship's sake,
and because he liked the subject, though he could not refuse the cheque
which Colonel Newcome sent him for the frame and picture; but no
cajoleries could induce the old campaigner to sit to any artist save one.
He said he should be ashamed to pay fifty guineas for the likeness of his
homely face; he jocularly proposed to James Binnie to have his head put
on the canvas, and Mr. Smee enthusiastically caught at the idea; but
honest James winked his droll eyes, saying his was a beauty that did not
want any paint; and when Mr. Smee took his leave after dinner in Fitzroy
Square, where this conversation was held, James Binnie hinted that the
Academician was no better than an old humbug, in which surmise he was
probably not altogether incorrect. Certain young men who frequented the
kind Colonel's house were also somewhat of this opinion; and made endless
jokes at the painter's expense. Smee plastered his sitters with adulation
as methodically as he covered his canvas. He waylaid gentlemen at dinner;
he inveigled unsuspecting folks into his studio, and had their heads off
their shoulders before they were aware. One day, on our way from the
Temple, through Howland Street, to the Colonel's house, we beheld
Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots, in full uniform, rushing from Smee's
door to his brougham. The coachman was absent refreshing himself at a
neighbouring tap: the little street-boys cheered and hurrayed Sir Thomas,
as, arrayed in gold and scarlet, he sate in his chariot. He blushed
purple when he beheld us. No artist would have dared to imitate those
purple tones: he was one of the numerous victims of Mr. Smee.

One day, then, day to be noted with a white stone, Colonel Newcome, with
his son and Mr. Smee, R.A., walked from the Colonel's house to Gandish's,
which was not far removed thence; and young Clive, who was a perfect
mimic, described to his friends, and illustrated, as was his wont, by
diagrams, the interview which he had with that professor. "By Jove, you
must see Gandish, pa!" cries Clive: "Gandish is worth the whole world.
Come and be an art-student. You'll find such jolly fellows there! Gandish
calls it hart-student, and says, 'Hars est celare Hartem'--by Jove he
does! He treated us to a little Latin, as he brought out a cake and a
bottle of wine, you know."

"The governor was splendid, sir. He wore gloves: you know he only puts
them on on parade days; and turned out for the occasion spick and span.
He ought to be a general officer. He looks like a field-marshal--don't
he? You should have seen him bowing to Mrs. Gandish and the Miss
Gandishes, dressed all in their best, round the cake-tray! He takes his
glass of wine, and sweeps them all round with a bow. 'I hope, young
ladies,' says he, 'you don't often go to the students' room. I'm afraid
the young gentlemen would leave off looking at the statues if you came
in.' And so they would: for you never saw such guys; but the dear old boy
fancies every woman is a beauty.

"'Mr. Smee, you are looking at my picture of 'Boadishia?'' says Gandish.
Wouldn't he have caught it for his quantities at Grey Friars, that's all.

"'Yes--ah--yes,' says Mr. Smee, putting his hand over his eyes, and
standing before it, looking steady, you know, as if he was going to see
whereabouts he should hit Boadishia.

"'It was painted when you were a young man, four years before you were an
associate, Smee. Had some success in its time, and there's good pints
about that picture,' Gandish goes on. 'But I never could get my price for
it; and here it hangs in my own room. Igh art won't do in this country,
Colonel--it's a melancholy fact.'

"'High art! I should think it is high art!' whispers old Smee; 'fourteen
feet high, at least!" And then out loud he says 'The picture has very
fine points in it, Gandish, as you say. Foreshortening of that arm,
capital! That red drapery carried off into the right of the picture very
skilfully managed!'

"'It's not like portrait-painting, Smee--Igh art,' says Gandish. 'The
models of the hancient Britons in that pictur alone cost me thirty pound
--when I was a struggling man, and had just married my Betsey here. You
reckonise Boadishia, Colonel, with the Roman elmet, cuirass, and javeling
of the period--all studied from the hantique, sir, the glorious
hantique.'

"'All but Boadicea,' says father. 'She remains always young.' And he
began to speak the lines out of Cowper, he did--waving his stick like an
old trump--and famous they are," cries the lad:

   "When the British warrior queen,
    Bleeding from the Roman rods"--

"Jolly verses! Haven't I translated them into alcaics?" says Clive, with
a merry laugh, and resumes his history.

"'Oh, I must have those verses in my album,' cries one of the young
ladies. 'Did you compose them, Colonel Newcome?' But Gandish, you see, is
never thinking about any works but his own, and goes on, 'Study of my
eldest daughter, exhibited 1816.'

"'No, pa, not '16,' cries Miss Gandish. She don't look like a chicken, I
can tell you.

"'Admired,' Gandish goes on, never heeding her,--'I can show you what the
papers said of it at the time--Morning Chronicle and Examiner--spoke most
ighly of it. My son as an infant Ercules, stranglin the serpent over the
piano. Fust conception of my picture of 'Non Hangli said Hangeli.''

"'For which I can guess who were the angels that sat,' says father. Upon
my word, that old governor! He is a little too strong. But Mr. Gandish
listened no more to him than to Mr. Smee, and went on, buttering himself
all over, as I have read the Hottentots do. 'Myself at thirty-three years
of age!' says he, pointing to a portrait of a gentleman in leather
breeches and mahogany boots; 'I could have been a portrait-painter, Mr.
Smee.'

"'Indeed it was lucky for some of us you devoted yourself to high art,
Gandish,' Mr. Smee says, and sips the wine and puts it down again, making
a face. It was not first-rate tipple, you see.

"'Two girls,' continues that indomitable Mr. Gandish. 'Hidea for 'Babes
in the Wood.' 'View of Paestum,' taken on the spot by myself, when
travelling with the late lamented Earl of Kew. 'Beauty, Valour, Commerce,
and Liberty, condoling with Britannia on the death of Admiral Viscount
Nelson,'--allegorical piece drawn at a very early age after Trafalgar.
Mr. Fuseli saw that piece, sir, when I was a student of the Academy, and
said to me, 'Young man, stick to the antique. There's nothing like it.'
Those were 'is very words. If you do me the favour to walk into the
Hatrium, you'll remark my great pictures also from English istry. An
English historical painter, sir, should be employed chiefly in English
istry. That's what I would have done. Why ain't there temples for us,
where the people might read their history at a glance, and without
knowing how to read? Why is my 'Alfred' 'anging up in this 'all? Because
there is no patronage for a man who devotes himself to Igh art. You know
the anecdote, Colonel? King Alfred flying from the Danes, took refuge in
a neaterd's 'ut. The rustic's wife told him to bake a cake, and the
fugitive sovering set down to his ignoble task, and forgetting it in the
cares of state, let the cake burn, on which the woman struck him. The
moment chose is when she is lifting her 'and to deliver the blow. The
king receives it with majesty mingled with meekness. In the background
the door of the 'ut is open, letting in the royal officers to announce
the Danes are defeated. The daylight breaks in at the aperture,
signifying the dawning of 'Ope. That story, sir, which I found in my
researches in istry, has since become so popular, sir, that hundreds of
artists have painted it, hundreds! I who discovered the legend, have my
picture--here!'

"'Now, Colonel,' says the showman, 'let me--let me lead you through the
statue gallery. 'Apollo,' you see. The 'Venus Hanadyomene,' the glorious
Venus of the Louvre, which I saw in 1814, Colonel, in its glory--the
'Laocoon'--my friend Gibson's 'Nymth,' you see, is the only figure I
admit among the antiques. Now up this stair to the students' room, where
I trust my young friend, Mr. Newcome, will labour assiduously. Ars longa
est, Mr. Newcome. Vita----'"

"I trembled," Clive said, "lest my father should introduce a certain
favourite quotation, beginning 'ingenuas didicisse'--but he refrained,
and we went into the room, where a score of students were assembled, who
all looked away from their drawing-boards as we entered.

"'Here will be your place, Mr. Newcome,' says the Professor, 'and here
that of your young friend--what did you say was his name?' I told him
Rigby, for my dear old governor has promised to pay for J. J. too, you
know. 'Mr. Chivers is the senior pupil and custos of the room in the
absence of my son. Mr. Chivers, Mr. Newcome; gentlemen, Mr. Newcome, a
new pupil. My son, Charles Gandish, Mr. Newcome. Assiduity, gentlemen,
assiduity. Ars longa. Vita brevis, et linea recta brevissima est. This
way, Colonel, down these steps, across the courtyard, to my own studio.
There, gentlemen,'--and pulling aside a curtain, Gandish says 'There!'"

"And what was the masterpiece behind it?" we ask of Clive, after we have
done laughing at his imitation.

"Hand round the hat, J. J.!" cries Clive. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, pay
your money. Now walk in, for the performance is 'just a-going to begin.'"
Nor would the rogue ever tell us what Gandish's curtained picture was.

Not a successful painter, Mr. Gandish was an excellent master, and
regarding all artists save one perhaps a good critic. Clive and his
friend J. J. came soon after and commenced their studies under him. The
one took his humble seat at the drawing-board, a poor mean-looking lad,
with worn clothes, downcast features, and a figure almost deformed; the
other adorned by good health, good looks, and the best of tailors;
ushered into the studio with his father and Mr. Smee as his aides-de-camp
on his entry; and previously announced there with all the eloquence of
honest Gandish. "I bet he's 'ad cake and wine," says one youthful
student, of an epicurean and satirical turn. "I bet he might have it
every day if he liked." In fact Gandish was always handing him sweetmeats
of compliments and cordials of approbation. He had coat-sleeves with silk
linings--he had studs in his shirt. How different was the texture and
colour of that garment, to the sleeves Bob Grimes displayed when he took
his coat off to put on his working jacket! Horses used actually to come
for him to Gandish's door (which was situated in a certain lofty street
in Soho). The Miss G.'s would smile at him from the parlour window as he
mounted and rode splendidly off; and those opposition beauties, the Miss
Levisons, daughters of the professor of dancing over the way, seldom
failed to greet the young gentleman with an admiring ogle from their
great black eyes. Master Clive was pronounced an 'out-and-outer,' a
'swell and no mistake,' and complimented with scarce one dissentient
voice by the simple academy at Gandish's. Besides, he drew very well.
There could be no doubt about that. Caricatures of the students of course
were passing constantly among them, and in revenge for one which a huge
red-haired Scotch student, Mr. Sandy M'Collop, had made of John James,
Clive perpetrated a picture of Sandy which set the whole room in a roar;
and when the Caledonian giant uttered satirical remarks against the
assembled company, averring that they were a parcel of sneaks, a set of
lick-spittles, and using epithets still more vulgar, Clive slipped off
his fine silk-sleeved coat in an instant, invited Mr. M'Collop into the
back-yard, instructed him in a science which the lad himself had acquired
at Grey Friars, and administered two black eyes to Sandy, which prevented
the young artist from seeing for some days after the head of the
'Laocoon' which he was copying. The Scotchman's superior weight and age
might have given the combat a different conclusion, had it endured long
after Clive's brilliant opening attack with his right and left; but
Professor Gandish came out of his painting-room at the sound of battle,
and could scarcely credit his own eyes when he saw those of poor M'Collop
so darkened. To do the Scotchman justice, he bore Clive no rancour. They
became friends there, and afterwards at Rome, whither they subsequently
went to pursue their studies. The fame of Mr. M'Collop as an artist has
long since been established. His pictures of 'Lord Lovat in Prison,' and
'Hogarth painting him,' of the 'Blowing up of the Kirk of Field' (painted
for M'Collop of M'Collop), of the 'Torture of the Covenanters,' the
'Murder of the Regent,' the 'Murder of Rizzio,' and other historical
pieces, all of course from Scotch history, have established his
reputation in South as well as in North Britain. No one would suppose
from the gloomy character of his works that Sandy M'Collop is one of the
most jovial souls alive. Within six months after their little difference,
Clive and he were the greatest of friends, and it was by the former's
suggestion that Mr. James Binnie gave Sandy his first commission, who
selected the cheerful subject of 'The Young Duke of Rothsay starving in
Prison.'

During this period, Mr. Clive assumed the toga virilis, and beheld with
inexpressible satisfaction the first growth of those mustachios which
have since given him such a marked appearance.

Being at Gandish's, and so near the dancing academy, what must he do but
take lessons in the terpsichorean art too?--making himself as popular
with the dancing folks as with the drawing folks, and the jolly king of
his company everywhere. He gave entertainments to his fellow-students in
the upper chambers in Fitzroy Square, which were devoted to his use,
inviting his father and Mr. Binnie to those parties now and then. And
songs were sung, and pipes were smoked, and many a pleasant supper eaten.
There was no stint: but no excess. No young man was ever seen to quit
those apartments the worse, as it is called, for liquor. Fred Bayham's
uncle the Bishop could not be more decorous than F. B. as he left the
Colonel's house, for the Colonel made that one of the conditions of his
son's hospitality, that nothing like intoxication should ensue from it.
The good gentleman did not frequent the parties of the juniors. He saw
that his presence rather silenced the young men; and left them to
themselves, confiding in Clive's parole, and went away to play his honest
rubber of whist at the Club. And many a time he heard the young fellows'
steps tramping by his bedchamber door, as he lay wakeful within, happy to
think his son was happy.




CHAPTER XVIII

New Companions


Clive used to give droll accounts of the young disciples at Gandish's,
who were of various ages and conditions, and in whose company the young
fellow took his place with that good temper and gaiety which have seldom
deserted him in life, and have put him at ease wherever his fate has led
him. He is, in truth, as much at home in a fine drawing-room as in a
public-house parlour; and can talk as pleasantly to the polite mistress
of the mansion, as to the jolly landlady dispensing her drinks from her
bar. Not one of the Gandishites but was after a while well inclined to
the young fellow; from Mr. Chivers, the senior pupil, down to the little
imp Harry Hooker, who knew as much mischief at twelve years old, and
could draw as cleverly as many a student of five-and-twenty; and Bob
Trotter, the diminutive fag of the studio, who ran on all the young men's
errands, and fetched them in apples, oranges, and walnuts. Clive opened
his eyes with wonder when he first beheld these simple feasts, and the
pleasure with which some of the young men partook of them. They were
addicted to polonies; they did not disguise their love for Banbury cakes;
they made bets in ginger-beer, and gave and took the odds in that
frothing liquor. There was a young Hebrew amongst the pupils, upon whom
his brother-students used playfully to press ham sandwiches, pork
sausages, and the like. This young man (who has risen to great wealth
subsequently, and was bankrupt only three months since) actually bought
cocoa-nuts, and sold them at a profit amongst the lads. His pockets were
never without pencil-cases, French chalk, garnet brooches, for which he
was willing to bargain. He behaved very rudely to Gandish, who seemed to
be afraid before him. It was whispered that the Professor was not
altogether easy in his circumstances, and that the elder Moss had some
mysterious hold over him. Honeyman and Bayham, who once came to see Clive
at the studio, seemed each disturbed at beholding young Moss seated there
(making a copy of the Marsyas). "Pa knows both those gents," he informed
Clive afterwards, with a wicked twinkle of his Oriental eyes. "Step in,
Mr. Newcome, any day you are passing down Wardour Street, and see if you
don't want anything in our way." (He pronounced the words in his own way,
saying: "Step id, Bister Doocob, ady day idto Vordor Street," etc.) This
young gentleman could get tickets for almost all the theatres, which he
gave or sold, and gave splendid accounts at Cavendish's of the brilliant
masquerades. Clive was greatly diverted at beholding Mr. Moss at one of
these entertainments, dressed in a scarlet coat and top-boots, and
calling out, "Yoicks! Hark forward!" fitfully to another Orientalist, his
younger brother, attired like a midshipman. Once Clive bought a
half-dozen of theatre tickets from Mr. Moss, which he distributed to the
young fellows of the studio. But, when this nice young man tried further
to tempt him on the next day, "Mr. Moss," Clive said to him with much
dignity, "I am very much obliged to you for your offer, but when I go to
the play, I prefer paying at the doors."

Mr. Chivers used to sit in one corner of the room, occupied over a
lithographic stone. He was an uncouth and peevish young man; for ever
finding fault with the younger pupils, whose butt he was. Next in rank
and age was M'Collop, before named: and these two were at first more than
usually harsh and captious with Clive, whose prosperity offended them,
and whose dandified manners, free-and-easy ways, and evident influence
over the younger scholars, gave umbrage to these elderly apprentices.
Clive at first returned Mr. Chivers war for war, controlment for
controlment; but when he found Chivers was the son of a helpless widow;
that be maintained her by his lithographic vignettes for the
music-sellers, and by the scanty remuneration of some lessons which he
gave at a school at Highgate;--when Clive saw, or fancied he saw, the
lonely senior eyeing with hungry eyes the luncheons of cheese and bread,
and sweetstuff, which the young lads of the studio enjoyed, I promise you
Mr. Clive's wrath against Chivers was speedily turned into compassion and
kindness, and he sought, and no doubt found, means of feeding Chivers
without offending his testy independence.

Nigh to Gandish's was, and perhaps is, another establishment for teaching
the art of design--Barker's, which had the additional dignity of a life
academy and costume; frequented by a class of students more advanced than
those of Gandish's. Between these and the Barkerites there was a constant
rivalry and emulation, in and out of doors. Gandish sent more pupils to
the Royal Academy; Gandish had brought up three medallists; and the last
R.A. student sent to Rome was a Gandishite. Barker, on the contrary,
scorned and loathed Trafalgar Square, and laughed at its art. Barker
exhibited in Pall Mall and Suffolk Street: he laughed at old Gandish and
his pictures, made mincemeat of his "Angli and Angeli," and tore "King
Alfred" and his muffins to pieces. The young men of the respective
schools used to meet at Lundy's coffee-house and billiard-room, and smoke
there, and do battle. Before Clive and his friend J. J. came to
Gandish's, the Barkerites were having the best of that constant match
which the two academies were playing. Fred Bayham, who knew every
coffee-house in town, and whose initials were scored on a thousand tavern
doors, was for a while a constant visitor at Lundy's, played pool with
the young men, and did not disdain to dip his beard into their
porter-pots, when invited to partake of their drink; treated them
handsomely when he was in cash himself; and was an honorary member of
Barker's academy. Nay, when the guardsman was not forthcoming, who was
standing for one of Barker's heroic pictures, Bayham bared his immense
arms and brawny shoulders, and stood as Prince Edward, with Philippa
sucking the poisoned wound. He would take his friends up to the picture
in the Exhibition, and proudly point to it. "Look at that biceps, sir,
and now look at this--that's Barker's masterpiece, sir, and that's the
muscle of F. B., sir." In no company was F. B. greater than in the
society of the artists, in whose smoky haunts and airy parlours he might
often be found. It was from F. B. that Clive heard of Mr. Chivers'
struggles and honest industry. A great deal of shrewd advice could F. B.
give on occasion, and many a kind action and gentle office of charity was
this jolly outlaw known to do and cause to be done. His advice to Clive
was most edifying at this time of our young gentleman's life, and he owns
that he was kept from much mischief by this queer counsellor.

A few months after Clive and J. J. had entered at Gandish's, that academy
began to hold its own against its rival. The silent young disciple was
pronounced to be a genius. His copies were beautiful in delicacy and
finish. His designs were for exquisite grace and richness of fancy. Mr.
Gandish took to himself the credit for J. J.'s genius; Clive ever and
fondly acknowledged the benefit he got from his friend's taste and bright
enthusiasm and sure skill. As for Clive, if he was successful in the
academy he was doubly victorious out of it. His person was handsome, his
courage high, his gaiety and frankness delightful and winning. His money
was plenty and he spent it like a young king. He could speedily beat all
the club at Lundy's at billiards, and give points to the redoubted F. B.
himself. He sang a famous song at their jolly supper-parties: and J. J.
had no greater delight than to listen to his fresh voice, and watch the
young conqueror at the billiard-table, where the balls seemed to obey
him.

Clive was not the most docile of Mr. Gandish's pupils. If he had not come
to the studio on horseback, several of the young students averred,
Gandish would not always have been praising him and quoting him as that
professor certainly did. It must be confessed that the young ladies read
the history of Clive's uncle in the Book of Baronets, and that Gandish
jun., probably with an eye to business, made a design of a picture, in
which, according to that veracious volume, one of the Newcomes was
represented as going cheerfully to the stake at Smithfield, surrounded by
some very ill-favoured Dominicans, whose arguments did not appear to make
the least impression upon the martyr of the Newcome family. Sandy
M'Collop devised a counter picture, wherein the barber-surgeon of King
Edward the Confessor was drawn, operating upon the beard of that monarch.
To which piece of satire Clive gallantly replied by a design,
representing Sawney Bean M'Collop, chief of the clan of that name,
descending from his mountains into Edinburgh, and his astonishment at
beholding a pair of breeches for the first time. These playful jokes
passed constantly amongst the young men of Gandish's studio. There was no
one there who was not caricatured in one way or another. He whose eyes
looked not very straight was depicted with a most awful squint. The youth
whom nature had endowed with somewhat lengthy nose was drawn by the
caricaturists with a prodigious proboscis. Little Bobby Moss, the young
Hebrew artist from Wardour Street, was delineated with three hats and an
old-clothes bag. Nor were poor J. J.'s round shoulders spared, until
Clive indignantly remonstrated at the hideous hunchback pictures which
the boys made of his friend, and vowed it was a shame to make jokes at
such a deformity.

Our friend, if the truth must be told regarding him, though one of the
most frank, generous, and kind-hearted persons, is of a nature somewhat
haughty and imperious, and very likely the course of life which he now
led and the society which he was compelled to keep, served to increase
some original defects in his character, and to fortify a certain
disposition to think well of himself, with which his enemies not unjustly
reproach him. He has been known very pathetically to lament that he was
withdrawn from school too early, where a couple of years' further course
of thrashings from his tyrant, old Hodge, he avers, would have done him
good. He laments that he was not sent to college, where if a young man
receives no other discipline, at least he acquires that of meeting with
his equals in society and of assuredly finding his betters: whereas in
poor Mr. Gandish's studio of art, our young gentleman scarcely found a
comrade that was not in one way or other his flatterer, his inferior, his
honest or dishonest admirer. The influence of his family's rank and
wealth acted more or less on all those simple folks, who would run on his
errands and vied with each other in winning the young nabob's favour. His
very goodness of heart rendered him a more easy prey to their flattery,
and his kind and jovial disposition led him into company from which he
had been much better away. I am afraid that artful young Moss, whose
parents dealt in pictures, furniture, gimcracks, and jewellery,
victimised Clive sadly with rings and chains, shirt-studs and flaming
shirt-pins, and such vanities, which the poor young rogue locked up in
his desk generally, only venturing to wear them when he was out of his
father's sight or of Mr. Binnie's, whose shrewd eyes watched him very
keenly.

Mr. Clive used to leave home every day shortly after noon, when he was
supposed to betake himself to Gandish's studio. But was the young
gentleman always at the drawing-board copying from the antique when his
father supposed him to be so devotedly engaged? I fear his place was
sometimes vacant. His friend J. J. worked every day and all day. Many a
time the steady little student remarked his patron's absence, and no
doubt gently remonstrated with him, but when Clive did come to his work
he executed it with remarkable skill and rapidity; and Ridley was too
fond of him to say a word at home regarding the shortcomings of the
youthful scapegrace. Candid readers may sometimes have heard their friend
Jones's mother lament that her darling was working too hard at college:
or Harry's sisters express their anxiety lest his too rigorous attendance
in chambers (after which he will persist in sitting up all night reading
those dreary law books which cost such an immense sum of money) should
undermine dear Henry's health; and to such acute persons a word is
sufficient to indicate young Mr. Clive Newcome's proceedings. Meanwhile
his father, who knew no more of the world than Harry's simple sisters or
Jones's fond mother, never doubted that all Clive's doings were right,
and that his boy was the best of boys.

"If that young man goes on as charmingly as he has begun," Clive's
cousin, Barnes Newcome, said of his kinsman, "he will be a paragon. I saw
him last night at Vauxhall in company with young Moss, whose father does
bills and keeps the bric-a-brac shop in Wardour Street. Two or three
other gentlemen, probably young old-clothes-men, who had concluded for
the day the labours of the bag, joined Mr. Newcome and his friend, and
they partook of rack-punch in an arbour. He is a delightful youth, cousin
Clive, and I feel sure he is about to be an honour to our family."




CHAPTER XIX

The Colonel at Home


Our good Colonel's house had received a coat of paint, which, like Madame
Latour's rouge in her latter days, only served to make her careworn face
look more ghastly. The kitchens were gloomy. The stables were gloomy.
Great black passages; cracked conservatory; dilapidated bathroom, with
melancholy waters moaning and fizzing from the cistern; the great large
blank stone staircase--were all so many melancholy features in the
general countenance of the house; but the Colonel thought it perfectly,
cheerful and pleasant, and furnished it in his rough-and-ready way. One
day a cartload of chairs; the next a waggonful of fenders, fire-irons,
and glass and crockery--a quantity of supplies, in a word, he poured into
the place. There were a yellow curtain in the back drawing-room, and
green curtains in the front. The carpet was an immense bargain, bought
dirt cheap, sir, at a sale in Euston Square. He was against the purchase
of a carpet for the stairs. What was the good of it? What did men want
with stair-carpets? His own apartment contained a wonderful assortment of
lumber. Shelves which he nailed himself, old Indian garments, camphor
trunks. What did he want with gewgaws? anything was good enough for an
old soldier. But the spare bedroom was endowed with all sorts of
splendour: a bed as big as a general's tent, a cheval glass--whereas the
Colonel shaved in a little cracked mirror, which cost him no more than
King Stephen's breeches--and a handsome new carpet; while the boards of
the Colonel's bedchamber were as bare--as bare as old Miss Scragg's
shoulders, which would be so much more comfortable were they covered up.
Mr. Binnie's bedchamber was neat, snug, and appropriate. And Clive had a
study and bedroom at the top of the house, which he was allowed to
furnish entirely according to his own taste. How he and Ridley revelled
in Wardour Street! What delightful coloured prints of hunting, racing,
and beautiful ladies, did they not purchase, mount with their own hands,
cut out for screens, frame and glaze, and hang up on the walls. When the
rooms were ready they gave a party, inviting the Colonel and Mr. Binnie
by note of hand, two gentlemen from Lamb Court, Temple, Mr. Honeyman, and
Fred Bayham. We must have Fred Bayham. Fred Bayham frankly asked, "Is Mr.
Sherrick, with whom you have become rather intimate lately--and mind you
I say nothing, but I recommend strangers in London to be cautious about
their friends--is Mr. Sherrick coming to you, young 'un? because if he
is, F. B. must respectfully decline."

Mr. Sherrick was not invited, and accordingly F. B. came. But Sherrick
was invited on other days, and a very queer society did our honest
Colonel gather together in that queer house, so dreary, so dingy, so
comfortless, so pleasant. He, who was one of the most hospitable men
alive, loved to have his friends around him; and it must be confessed
that the evening parties now occasionally given in Fitzroy Square were of
the oddest assemblage of people. The correct East India gentlemen from
Hanover Square: the artists, Clive's friends, gentlemen of all ages with
all sorts of beards, in every variety of costume. Now and again a stray
schoolfellow from Grey Friars, who stared, as well he might, at the
company in which he found himself. Sometimes a few ladies were brought to
these entertainments. The immense politeness of the good host compensated
some of them for the strangeness of his company. They had never seen such
odd-looking hairy men as those young artists, nor such wonderful women as
Colonel Newcome assembled together. He was good to all old maids and poor
widows. Retired captains with large families of daughters found in him
their best friend. He sent carriages to fetch them and bring them back
from the suburbs where they dwelt. Gandish, Mrs. Gandish, and the four
Miss Gandishes in scarlet robes, were constant attendants at the
Colonel's soirees.

"I delight, sir, in the 'ospitality of my distinguished military friend,"
Mr. Gandish would say. "The harmy has always been my passion.--I served
in the Soho Volunteers three years myself, till the conclusion of the
war, sir, till the conclusion of the war."

It was a great sight to see Mr. Frederick Bayham engaged in the waltz or
the quadrille with some of the elderly houris at the Colonel's parties.
F. B., like a good-natured F. B. as he was, always chose the plainest
women as partners, and entertained them with profound compliments and
sumptuous conversation. The Colonel likewise danced quadrilles with the
utmost gravity. Waltzing had been invented long since his time: but he
practised quadrilles when they first came in, about 1817, in Calcutta. To
see him leading up a little old maid, and bowing to her when the dance
was ended, and performing cavalier seul with stately simplicity, was a
sight indeed to remember. If Clive Newcome had not such a fine sense of
humour, he would have blushed for his father's simplicity.--As it was,
the elder's guileless goodness and childlike trustfulness endeared him
immensely to his son. "Look at the old boy, Pendennis," he would say,
"look at him leading up that old Miss Tidswell to the piano. Doesn't he
do it like an old duke? I lay a wager she thinks she is going to be my
mother-in-law; all the women are in love with him, young and old. 'Should
he upbraid?' There she goes. 'I'll own that he'll prevail, and sing as
sweetly as a nigh-tin-gale!' Oh, you old warbler! Look at father's old
head bobbing up and down! Wouldn't he do for Sir Roger de Coverley? How
do you do, Uncle Charles?--I say, M'Collop, how gets on the Duke of
What-d'ye-call-'em starving in the castle?--Gandish says it's very good."
The lad retires to a group of artists. Mr. Honeyman comes up with a faint
smile playing on his features, like moonlight on the facade of Lady
Whittlesea's Chapel.

"These parties are the most singular I have ever seen," whispers
Honeyman. "In entering one of these assemblies, one is struck with the
immensity of London: and with the sense of one's own insignificance.
Without, I trust, departing from my clerical character, nay, from my very
avocation as incumbent of a London chapel,--I have seen a good deal of
the world, and here is an assemblage no doubt of most respectable
persons, on scarce one of whom I ever set eyes till this evening. Where
does my good brother find such characters?"

"That," says Mr. Honeyman's interlocutor, "is the celebrated, though
neglected artist, Professor Gandish, whom nothing but jealousy has kept
out of the Royal Academy. Surely you have heard of the great Gandish?"

"Indeed I am ashamed to confess my ignorance, but a clergyman busy with
his duties knows little, perhaps too little, of the fine arts."

"Gandish, sir, is one of the greatest geniuses on whom our ungrateful
country ever trampled; he exhibited his first celebrated picture of
'Alfred in the Neatherd's Hut' (he says he is the first who ever touched
that subject) in 180-; but Lord Nelson's death, and victory of Trafalgar,
occupied the public attention at that time, and Gandish's work went
unnoticed. In the year 1816, he painted his great work of 'Boadicea.' You
see her before you. That lady in yellow, with a light front and a turban.
Boadicea became Mrs. Gandish in that year. So late as '27, he brought
before the world his 'Non Angli sed Angeli.' Two of the angels are yonder
in sea-green dresses--the Misses Gandish. The youth in Berlin gloves was
the little male angelus of that piece."

"How came you to know all this, you strange man?" says Mr. Honeyman.

"Simply because Gandish has told me twenty times. He tells the story to
everybody, every time he sees them. He told it to-day at dinner. Boadicea
and the angels came afterwards."

"Satire! satire! Mr. Pendennis," says the divine, holding up a reproving
finger of lavender kid, "beware of a wicked wit!--But when a man has that
tendency, I know how difficult it is to restrain. My dear Colonel, good
evening! You have a great reception to-night. That gentleman's bass voice
is very fine; Mr. Pendennis and I were admiring it. 'The Wolf' is a song
admirably adapted to show its capabilities."

Mr. Gandish's autobiography had occupied the whole time of the retirement
of the ladies from Colonel Newcome's dinner-table. Mr. Hobson Newcome had
been asleep during the performance; Sir Curry Baughton and one or two of
the Colonel's professional and military guests, silent and puzzled.
Honest Mr. Binnie, with his shrewd good-humoured face, sipping his claret
as usual, and delivering a sly joke now and again to the gentlemen at his
end of the table. Mrs. Newcome had sat by him in sulky dignity; was it
that Lady Baughton's diamonds offended her?--her ladyship and her
daughters being attired in great splendour for a Court ball, which they
were to attend that evening. Was she hurt because she was not invited to
that Royal Entertainment? As the festivities were to take place at an
early hour, the ladies bidden were obliged to quit the Colonel's house
before the evening part commenced, from which Lady Anne declared she was
quite vexed to be obliged to run away.

Lady Anne Newcome had been as gracious on this occasion as her
sister-in-law had been out of humour. Everything pleased her in the
house. She had no idea that there were such fine houses in that quarter
of the town. She thought the dinner so very nice,--that Mr Binnie such a
good-humoured-looking gentleman. That stout gentleman with his collars
turned down like Lord Byron, so exceedingly clever and full of
information. A celebrated artist was he? (courtly Mr. Smee had his own
opinion upon that point, but did not utter it). All those artists are so
eccentric and amusing and clever. Before dinner she insisted upon seeing
Clive's den with its pictures and casts and pipes. "You horrid young
wicked creature, have you begun to smoke already?" she asks, as she
admires his room. She admired everything. Nothing could exceed her
satisfaction.

The sisters-in-law kissed on meeting, with that cordiality so delightful
to witness in sisters who dwell together in unity. It was, "My dear
Maria, what an age since I have seen you!" "My dear Anne, our occupations
are so engrossing, our circles are so different," in a languid response
from the other. "Sir Brian is not coming, I suppose? Now, Colonel," she
turns in a frisky manner towards him, and taps her fan, "did I not tell
you Sir Brian would not come?"

"He is kept at the House of Commons, my dear. Those dreadful committees.
He was quite vexed at not being able to come."

"I know, I know, dear Anne, there are always excuses to gentlemen in
Parliament; I have received many such. Mr. Shaloo and Mr. M'Sheny, the
leaders of our party, often and often disappoint me. I knew Brian would
not come. My husband came down from Marble Head on purpose this morning.
Nothing would have induced us to give up our brother's party."

"I believe you. I did come down from Marble Head this morning, and I was
four hours in the hay-field before I came away, and in the City till
five, and I've been to look at a horse afterwards at Tattersall's, and
I'm as hungry as a hunter, and as tired as a hodman," says Mr. Newcome,
with his hands in his pockets. "How do you do, Mr. Pendennis? Maria, you
remember Mr. Pendennis--don't you?"

"Perfectly," replies the languid Maria. Mrs. Gandish, Colonel Topham,
Major M'Cracken. are announced, and then, in diamonds, feathers, and
splendour, Lady Baughton and Miss Baughton, who are going to the Queen's
ball, and Sir Curry Baughton, not quite in his deputy-lieutenant's
uniform as yet, looking very shy in a pair of blue trousers, with a
glittering stripe of silver down the seams. Clive looks with wonder and
delight at these ravishing ladies, rustling in fresh brocades, with
feathers, diamonds, and every magnificence. Aunt Anne has not her Court
dress on as yet; and Aunt Maria blushes as she beholds the new comers,
having thought fit to attire herself in a high dress, with a Quaker-like
simplicity, and a pair of gloves more than ordinarily dingy. The pretty
little foot she has, it is true, and sticks it out from habit; but what
is Mrs. Newcome's foot compared with that sweet little chaussure which
Miss Baughton exhibits and withdraws? The shiny white satin slipper, the
pink stocking which ever and anon peeps from the rustling folds of her
robe, and timidly retires into its covert--that foot, light as it is,
crushes Mrs. Newcome.

No wonder she winces, and is angry; there are some mischievous persons
who rather like to witness that discomfiture. All Mr. Smee's flatteries
that day failed to soothe her. She was in the state in which his
canvasses sometimes are, when he cannot paint on them.

What happened to her alone in the drawing-room, when the ladies invited
to the dinner had departed, and those convoked to the soiree began to
arrive,--what happened to her or to them I do not like to think. The
Gandishes arrived first. Boadicea and the angels. We judged from the fact
that young Mr. Gandish came blushing in to the dessert. Name after name
was announced of persons of whom Mrs. Newcome knew nothing. The young and
the old, the pretty and homely, they were all in their best dresses, and
no doubt stared at Mrs. Newcome, so obstinately plain in her attire. When
we came upstairs from dinner, we found her seated entirely by herself,
tapping her fan at the fireplace. Timid groups of persons were round
about, waiting for the irruption of the gentlemen, until the pleasure
should begin. Mr. Newcome, who came upstairs yawning, was heard to say to
his wife, "Oh, dam, let's cut!" And they went downstairs, and waited
until their carriage had arrived, when they quitted Fitzroy Square.

Mr. Barnes Newcome presently arrived, looking particularly smart and
lively, with a large flower in his button-hole, and leaning on the arm of
a friend. "How do you do, Pendennis?" he says, with a peculiarly
dandified air. "Did you dine here? You look as if you dined here" (and
Barnes, certainly, as if he had dined elsewhere). "I was only asked to
the cold soiree. Who did you have for dinner? You had my mamma and the
Baughtons, and my uncle and aunt, I know, for they are down below in the
library, waiting for the carriage: he is asleep, and she is as sulky as a
bear."

"Why did Mrs. Newcome say I should find nobody I knew up here?" asks
Barnes's companion. "On the contrary, there are lots of fellows I know.
There's Fred Bayham, dancing like a harlequin. There's old Gandish, who
used to be my drawing-master; and my Brighton friends, your uncle and
cousin, Barnes. What relations are they to me? must be some relations.
Fine fellow your cousin."

"Hm," growls Barnes. "Very fine boy,--not spirited at all,--not fond of
flattery,--not surrounded by toadies,--not fond of drink,--delightful
boy! See yonder, the young fellow is in conversation with his most
intimate friend, a little crooked fellow, with long hair. Do you know who
he is? he is the son of old Todmoreton's butler. Upon my life it's true."

"And suppose it is; what the deuce do I care!" cries Lord Kew. "Who can
be more respectable than a butler? A man must be somebody's son. When I
am a middle-aged man, I hope humbly I shall look like a butler myself.
Suppose you were to put ten of Gunter's men into the House of Lords, do
you mean to say that they would not look as well as any average ten peers
in the house? Look at Lord Westcot; he is exactly like a butler that's
why the country has such confidence in him. I never dine with him but I
fancy he ought to be at the sideboard. Here comes that insufferable
little old Smee. How do you do, Mr. Smee?"

Mr. Smee smiles his sweetest smile. With his rings, diamond shirt-studs,
and red velvet waistcoat, there are few more elaborate middle-aged bucks
than Alfred Smee. "How do you do, my dear lord?" cries the bland one.
"Who would ever have thought of seeing your lordship here?"

"Why the deuce not, Mr. Smee?" asks Lord Kew, abruptly. "Is it wrong to
come here? I have been in the house only five minutes, and three people
have said the same thing to me--Mrs. Newcome, who is sitting downstairs
in a rage waiting for her carriage, the condescending Barnes, and
yourself. Why do you come here, Since? How are you, Mr. Gandish? How do
the fine arts go?"

"Your lordship's kindness in asking for them will cheer them if anything
will," says Mr. Gandish. "Your noble family has always patronised them. I
am proud to be reckonised by your lordship in this house, where the
distinguished father of one of my pupils entertains us this evening. A
most promising young man is young Mr. Clive--talents for a hamateur
really most remarkable."

"Excellent, upon my word--excellent," cries Mr. Smee. "I'm not an animal
painter myself, and perhaps don't think much of that branch of the
profession; but it seems to me the young fellow draws horses with the
most wonderful spirit. I hope Lady Walham is very well, and that she was
satisfied with her son's portrait. Stockholm, I think, your brother is
appointed to? I wish I might be allowed to paint the elder as well as the
younger brother, my lord."

"I am an historical painter; but whenever Lord Kew is painted I hope his
lordship will think of the old servant of his lordship's family, Charles
Gandish," cries the Professor.

"I am like Susannah between the two Elders," says Lord Kew. "Let my
innocence alone, Smee. Mr. Gandish, don't persecute my modesty with your
addresses. I won't be painted. I am not a fit subject for a historical
painter, Mr. Gandish."

"Halcibiades sat to Praxiteles, and Pericles to Phridjas," remarks
Gandish.

"The cases are not quite similar," says Lord Kew, languidly. "You are no
doubt fully equal to Praxiteles; but I don't see my resemblance to the
other party. I should not look well as a hero, and Smee could not paint
me handsome enough."

"I would try, my dear lord," cries Mr. Smee.

"I know you would, my dear fellow," Lord Kew answered, looking at the
painter with a lazy scorn in his eyes. "Where is Colonel Newcome, Mr.
Gandish?" Mr. Gandish replied that our gallant host was dancing a
quadrille in the next room; and the young gentleman walked on towards
that apartment to pay his respects to the giver of the evening's
entertainment.

Newcome's behaviour to the young peer was ceremonious, but not in the
least servile. He saluted the other's superior rank, not his person, as
he turned the guard out for a general officer. He never could be brought
to be otherwise than cold and grave in his behaviour to John James; nor
was it without difficulty, when young Ridley and his son became pupils at
Gandish's, he could be induced to invite the former to his parties. "An
artist is any man's equal," he said. "I have no prejudice of that sort;
and think that Sir Joshua Reynolds and Doctor Johnson were fit company
for any person, of whatever rank. But a young man whose father may have
had to wait behind me at dinner, should not be brought into my company."
Clive compromises the dispute with a laugh. "First," says he, "I will
wait till I am asked; and then I promise I will not go to dine with Lord
Todmoreton."




CHAPTER XX

Contains more Particulars of the Colonel and his Brethren


Clive's amusements, studies, or occupations, such as they were, filled
his day pretty completely, and caused the young gentleman's time to pass
rapidly and pleasantly, his father, it must be owned, had no such
resources, and the good Colonel's idleness hung heavily upon him. He
submitted very kindly to this infliction, however, as he would have done
to any other for Clive's sake; and though he may have wished himself back
with his regiment again, and engaged in the pursuits in which his life
had been spent, he chose to consider these desires as very selfish and
blameable on his part, and sacrificed them resolutely for his son's
welfare. The young fellow, I dare say, gave his parent no more credit for
his long self-denial, than many other children award to theirs. We take
such life-offerings as our due commonly. The old French satirist avers
that, in a love affair, there is usually one person who loves, and the
other, qui se laisse aimer; it is only in later days, perhaps, when the
treasures of love are spent, and the kind hand cold which ministered
them, that we remember how tender it was; how soft to soothe; how eager
to shield; how ready to support and caress. The ears may no longer hear,
which would have received our words of thanks so delightedly. Let us hope
those fruits of love, though tardy, are yet not all too late; and though
we bring our tribute of reverence and gratitude, it may be to a
gravestone, there is an acceptance even there for the stricken heart's
oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories, and pious tears. I am
thinking of the love of Clive Newcome's father for him (and, perhaps,
young reader, that of yours and mine for ourselves); how the old man lay
awake, and devised kindnesses, and gave his all for the love of his son;
and the young man took, and spent, and slept, and made merry. Did we not
say at our tale's commencement that all stories were old? Careless
prodigals and anxious elders have been from the beginning:--and so may
love, and repentance, and forgiveness endure even till the end.

The stifling fogs, the slippery mud, the dun dreary November mornings,
when the Regent's Park, where the Colonel took his early walk, was
wrapped in yellow mist, must have been a melancholy exchange for the
splendour of Eastern sunrise, and the invigorating gallop at dawn, to
which, for so many years of his life, Thomas Newcome had accustomed
himself. His obstinate habit of early waking accompanied him to England,
and occasioned the despair of his London domestics, who, if master wasn't
so awful early, would have found no fault with him; for a gentleman as
gives less trouble to his servants; as scarcely ever rings the bell for
his self; as will brush his own clothes; as will even boil his own
shaving-water in the little hetna which he keeps up in his dressing-room;
as pays so regular, and never looks twice at the accounts; such a man
deserved to be loved by his household, and I dare say comparisons were
made between him and his son, who do ring the bells, and scold if his
boots ain't nice, and horder about like a young lord. But Clive, though
imperious, was very liberal and good-humoured, and not the worse served
because he insisted upon exerting his youthful authority. As for friend
Binnie, he had a hundred pursuits of his own, which made his time pass
very comfortably. He had all the Lectures at the British Institution; he
had the Geographical Society, the Asiatic Society, and the Political
Economy Club; and though he talked year after year of going to visit his
relations in Scotland, the months and seasons passed away, and his feet
still beat the London pavement.

In spite of the cold reception his brothers gave him, duty was duty, and
Colonel Newcome still proposed, or hoped to be well with the female
members of the Newcome family; and having, as we have said, plenty of
time on his hands, and living at no very great distance from either of
his brothers' town houses, when their wives were in London, the elder
Newcome was for paying them pretty constant visits. But after the good
gentleman had called twice or thrice upon his sister-in-law in Bryanstone
Square--bringing, as was his wont, a present for this little niece, or a
book for that--Mrs. Newcome, with her usual virtue, gave him to
understand that the occupation of an English matron, who, besides her
multifarious family duties, had her own intellectual culture to mind,
would not allow her to pass the mornings in idle gossips: and of course
took great credit to herself for having so rebuked him. "I am not above
instruction of any age," says she, thanking Heaven (or complimenting it,
rather, for having created a being so virtuous and humble-minded). "When
Professor Schroff comes, I sit with my children, and take lessons in
German,--and I say my verbs with Maria and Tommy in the same class!" Yes,
with curtsies and fine speeches she actually bowed her brother out of
doors; and the honest gentleman meekly left her, though with
bewilderment, as he thought of the different hospitality to which he had
been accustomed in the East, where no friend's house was ever closed to
him, where no neighbour was so busy but he had time to make Thomas
Newcome welcome.

When Hobson Newcome's boys came home for the holidays, their kind uncle
was for treating them to the sights of the town, but here Virtue again
interposed and laid its interdict upon pleasure. "Thank you, very much,
my dear Colonel," says Virtue, "there never was surely such a kind,
affectionate, unselfish creature as you are, and so indulgent for
children, but my boys and yours are brought up on a very different plan.
Excuse me for saying that I do not think it is advisable that they should
even see too much of each other. Clive's company is not good for them."

"Great heavens, Maria!" cries the Colonel, starting up, "do you mean that
my boy's society is not good enough for any boy alive?"

Maria turned very red: she had said not more than she meant, but more
than she meant to say. "My dear Colonel, how hot we are! how angry you
Indian gentlemen become with us poor women! Your boy is much older than
mine. He lives with artists, with all sorts of eccentric people. Our
children are bred on quite a diferent plan. Hobson will succeed his
father in the bank, and dear Samuel I trust will go into the Church. I
told you, before, the views I had regarding the boys: but it was most
kind of you to think of them--most generous and kind."

"That nabob of ours is a queer fish," Hobson Newcome remarked to his
nephew Barnes. "He is as proud as Lucifer, he is always taking huff about
one thing or the other. He went off in a fume the other night because
your aunt objected to his taking the boys to the play. She don't like
their going to the play. My mother didn't either. Your aunt is a woman
who is uncommon wideawake, I can tell you."

"I always knew, sir, that my aunt was perfectly aware of the time of the
day," says Barnes, with a bow.

"And then the Colonel flies out about his boy, and says that my wife
insulted him! I used to like that boy. Before his father came he was a
good lad enough--a jolly brave little fellow."

"I confess I did not know Mr. Clive at that interesting period of his
existence," remarks Barnes.

"But since he has taken this madcap freak of turning painter," the uncle
continues, "there is no understanding the chap. Did you ever see such a
set of fellows as the Colonel had got together at his party the other
night? Dirty chaps in velvet coats and beards? They looked like a set of
mountebanks. And this young Clive is going to turn painter!"

"Very advantageous thing for the family. He'll do our pictures for
nothing. I always said he was a darling boy," simpered Barnes.

"Darling jackass!" growled out the senior. "Confound it, why doesn't my
brother set him up in some respectable business? I ain't proud. I have
not married an earl's daughter. No offence to you, Barnes."

"Not at all, sir. I can't help it if my grandfather is a gentleman," says
Barnes, with a fascinating smile.

The uncle laughs. "I mean I don't care what a fellow is if he is a good
fellow. But a painter! hang it--a painter's no trade at all--I don't
fancy seeing one of our family sticking up pictures for sale. I don't
like it, Barnes."

"Hush! here comes his distinguished friend, Mr. Pendennis," whispers
Barnes; and the uncle growling out, "Damn all literary fellows--all
artists--the whole lot of them!" turns away. Barnes waves three languid
fingers of recognition towards Pendennis: and when the uncle and nephew
have moved out of the club newspaper room, little Tom Eaves comes up and
tells the present reporter every word of their conversation.

Very soon Mrs. Newcome announced that their Indian brother found the
society of Bryanstone Square very little to his taste, as indeed how
should he? being a man of a good harmless disposition certainly, but of
small intellectual culture. It could not be helped. She had done her
utmost to make him welcome, and grieved that their pursuits were not more
congenial. She heard that he was much more intimate in Park Lane.
Possibly the superior rank of Lady Anne's family might present charms to
Colonel Newcome, who fell asleep at her assemblies. His boy, she was
afraid, was leading the most irregular life. He was growing a pair of
mustachios, and going about with all sorts of wild associates. She found
no fault; who was she, to find fault with any one? But she had been
compelled to hint that her children must not be too intimate with him.
And so, between one brother who meant no unkindness, and another who was
all affection and goodwill, this undoubting woman created difference,
distrust, dislike, which might one day possibly lead to open rupture. The
wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they
come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very
virtuous do?

To her sister-in-law, Lady Anne, the Colonel's society was more welcome.
The affectionate gentleman never tired of doing kindnesses to his
brother's many children; and as Mr. Clive's pursuits now separated him a
good deal from his father, the Colonel, not perhaps without a sigh that
fate should so separate him from the society which he loved best in the
world, consoled himself as best he might with his nephews and nieces,
especially with Ethel, for whom his belle passion conceived at first
sight never diminished. If Uncle Newcome had a hundred children, Ethel
said, who was rather jealous of disposition, he would spoil them all. He
found a fine occupation in breaking a pretty little horse for her, of
which he made her a present, and there was no horse in the Park that was
so handsome, and surely no girl who looked more beautiful than Ethel
Newcome with her broad hat and red ribbon, with her thick black locks
waving round her bright face, galloping along the ride on Bhurtpore.
Occasionally Clive was at their riding-parties, when the Colonel would
fall back and fondly survey the young people cantering side by side over
the grass: but by a tacit convention it was arranged that the cousins
should be but seldom together; the Colonel might be his niece's companion
and no one could receive him with a more joyous welcome, but when Mr.
Clive made his appearance with his father at the Park Lane door, a
certain gene was visible in Miss Ethel, who would never mount except with
Colonel Newcome's assistance, and who, especially after Mr. Clive's
famous mustachios made their appearance, rallied him, and remonstrated
with him regarding those ornaments, and treated him with much distance
and dignity. She asked him if he was going into the army? she could not
understand how any but military men could wear mustachios; and then she
looked fondly and archly at her uncle, and said she liked none that were
not grey.

Clive set her down as a very haughty, spoiled, aristocratic young
creature. If he had been in love with her, no doubt he would have
sacrificed even those beloved new-born whiskers for the charmer. Had he
not already bought on credit the necessary implements in a fine
dressing-case, from young Moss? But he was not in love with her;
otherwise he would have found a thousand opportunities of riding with
her, walking with her, meeting her, in spite of all prohibitions tacit or
expressed, all governesses, guardians, mamma's punctilios, and kind hints
from friends. For a while, Mr. Clive thought himself in love with his
cousin; than whom no more beautiful young girl could be seen in any park,
ball, or drawing-room; and he drew a hundred pictures of her, and
discoursed about her beauties to J. J., who fell in love with her on
hearsay. But at this time Mademoiselle Saltarelli was dancing at Drury
Lane Theatre, and it certainly may be said that Clive's first love was
bestowed upon that beauty: whose picture of course he drew in most of her
favourite characters; and for whom his passion lasted until the end of
the season, when her night was announced, tickets to be had at the
theatre, or of Mademoiselle Saltarelli, Buckingham Street, Strand. Then
it was that with a throbbing heart and a five-pound note, to engage
places for the houri's benefit, Clive beheld Madame Rogomme, Mademoiselle
Saltarelli's mother, who entertained him in the French language in a
dark parlour smelling of onions. And oh! issuing from the adjoining
dining-room (where was a dingy vision of a feast and pewter pots upon a
darkling tablecloth), could that lean, scraggy, old, beetle-browed yellow
face, who cried, "Ou es tu donc, maman?" with such a shrill nasal voice--
could that elderly vixen be that blooming and divine Saltarelli? Clive
drew her picture as she was, and a likeness of Madame Rogomme, her mamma;
a Mosaic youth, profusely jewelled, and scented at once with tobacco and
eau-de-cologne, occupied Clive's stall on Mademoiselle Saltarelli's
night. It was young Mr. Moss, of Gandish's to whom Newcome ceded his
place, and who laughed (as he always did at Clive's jokes) when the
latter told the story of his interview with the dancer. "Paid five pound
to see that woman! I could have took you behind the scenes" (or "beide
the seeds," Mr. Moss said) "and showed her to you for dothing." Did he
take Clive behind the scenes? Over this part of the young gentleman's
life, without implying the least harm to him--for have not others been
behind the scenes; and can there be any more dreary object than those
whitened and raddled old women who shudder at the slips?--over this stage
of Clive Newcome's life we may surely drop the curtain.

It is pleasanter to contemplate that kind old face of Clive's father,
that sweet young blushing lady by his side, as the two ride homewards at
sunset. The grooms behind in quiet conversation about horses, as men
never tire of talking about horses. Ethel wants to know about battles;
about lovers' lamps, which she has read of in Lalla Rookh. "Have you ever
seen them, uncle, floating down the Ganges of a night?" About Indian
widows. "Did you actually see one burning, and hear her scream as you
rode up?" She wonders whether he will tell her anything about Clive's
mother: how she must have loved Uncle Newcome! Ethel can't bear, somehow,
to think that her name was Mrs. Casey, perhaps he was very fond of her;
though he scarcely ever mentions her name. She was nothing like that good
old funny Miss Honeyman at Brighton. Who could the person be?--a person
that her uncle knew ever so long ago--a French lady, whom her uncle says
Ethel often resembles? That is why he speaks French so well. He can
recite whole pages out of Racine. Perhaps it was the French lady who
taught him. And he was not very happy at the Hermitage (though grandpapa
was a very kind good man), and he upset papa in a little carriage, and
was wild, and got into disgrace, and was sent to India? He could not have
been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking at him with her honest eyes. Last
week he went to the Drawing-room, and papa presented him. His uniform of
grey and silver was quite old, yet he looked much grander than Sir Brian
in his new deputy-lieutenant's dress. "Next year, when I am presented,
you must come too, sir," says Ethel. "I insist upon it, you must come
too!"

"I will order a new uniform, Ethel," says her uncle.

The girl laughs. "When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle, and
asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the same
question in my mind; and I thought when you went to the Drawing-room,
perhaps the King will knight him. But instead he knighted mamma's
apothecary, Sir Danby Jilks: that horrid little man, and I won't have you
knighted any more."

"I hope Egbert won't ask Sir Danby Jilks how many people HE has killed,"
says the Colonel, laughing; but thinking the joke too severe upon Sir
Danby and the profession, he forthwith apologises by narrating many
anecdotes he knows to the credit of surgeons. How, when the fever broke
out on board the ship going to India, their surgeon devoted himself to
the safety of the crew, and died himself, leaving directions for the
treatment of the patients when he was gone! What heroism the doctors
showed during the cholera in India; and what courage he had seen some of
them exhibit in action: attending the wounded men under the hottest fire,
and exposing themselves as readily as the bravest troops. Ethel declares
that her uncle always will talk of other people's courage, and never say
a word about his own; "and the only reason," she says, "which made me
like that odious Sir Thomas de Boots, who laughs so, and looks so red,
and pays such horrid compliments to all ladies, was, that he praised you,
uncle, at Newcome, last year, when Barnes and he came to us at Christmas.
Why did you not come? Mamma and I went to see your old nurse; and we
found her such a nice old lady." So the pair talk kindly on, riding
homewards through the pleasant summer twilight. Mamma had gone out to
dinner; and there were cards for three parties afterwards. "Oh, how I
wish it was next year!" says Miss Ethel.

Many a splendid assembly, and many a brilliant next year, will the ardent
and hopeful young creature enjoy; but in the midst of her splendour and
triumphs, buzzing flatterers, conquered rivals, prostrate admirers, no
doubt she will think sometimes of that quiet season before the world
began for her, and that dear old friend, on whose arm she leaned while
she was yet a young girl.

The Colonel comes to Park Street early in the forenoon, when the mistress
of the house, surrounded by her little ones, is administering dinner to
them. He behaves with splendid courtesy to Miss Quigley, the governess,
and makes a point of taking wine with her, and of making a most profound
bow during that ceremony. Miss Quigley cannot help thinking Colonel
Newcome's bow very fine. She has an idea that his late Majesty must have
bowed in that way: she flutteringly imparts this opinion to Lady Anne's
maid; who tells her mistress, who tells Miss Ethel, who watches the
Colonel the next time he takes wine with Miss Quigley, and they laugh,
and then Ethel tells him; so that the gentleman and the governess have to
blush ever after when they drink wine together. When she is walking with
her little charges in the Park, or in that before-mentioned paradise nigh
to Apsley House, faint signals of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She
knows the dear Colonel amongst a thousand horsemen. If Ethel makes for
her uncle purses, guard-chains, antimacassars, and the like beautiful and
useful articles, I believe it is in reality Miss Quigley who does
four-fifths of the work, as she sits alone in the schoolroom, high, high
up in that lone house, when the little ones are long since asleep, before
her dismal little tea-tray, and her little desk containing her mother's
letters and her mementos of home.

There are, of course, numberless fine parties in Park Lane, where the
Colonel knows he would be very welcome. But if there be grand assemblies,
he does not care to come. "I like to go to the club best," he says to
Lady Anne. "We talk there as you do here about persons, and about Jack
marrying, and Tom dying, and so forth. But we have known Jack and Tom all
our lives, and so are interested in talking about them. Just as you are
in speaking of your own friends and habitual society. They are people
whose names I have sometimes read in the newspaper, but whom I never
thought of meeting until I came to your house. What has an old fellow
like me to say to your young dandies or old dowagers?"

"Mamma is very odd and sometimes very captious, my dear Colonel," said
Lady Anne, with a blush; "she suffers so frightfully from tic that we are
all bound to pardon her."

Truth to tell, old Lady Kew had been particularly rude to Colonel Newcome
and Clive. Ethel's birthday befell in the spring, on which occasion she
was wont to have a juvenile assembly, chiefly of girls of her own age and
condition; who came, accompanied by a few governesses, and they played
and sang their little duets and choruses together, and enjoyed a gentle
refection of sponge-cakes, jellies, tea, and the like.--The Colonel, who
was invited to this little party, sent a fine present to his favourite
Ethel; and Clive and his friend J. J. made a funny series of drawings,
representing the life of a young lady as they imagined it, and drawing
her progress from her cradle upwards: now engaged with her doll, then
with her dancing-master; now marching in her back-board; now crying over
her German lessons: and dressed for her first ball finally, and bestowing
her hand upon a dandy, of preternatural ugliness, who was kneeling at her
feet as the happy man. This picture was the delight of the laughing happy
girls; except, perhaps, the little cousins from Bryanstone Square, who
were invited to Ethel's party, but were so overpowered by the prodigious
new dresses in which their mamma had attired them, that they could admire
nothing but their rustling pink frocks, their enormous sashes, their
lovely new silk stockings.

Lady Kew coming to London attended on the party, and presented her
granddaughter with a sixpenny pincushion. The Colonel had sent Ethel a
beautiful little gold watch and chain. Her aunt had complimented her with
that refreshing work, Alison's History of Europe, richly bound.--Lady
Kew's pincushion made rather a poor figure among the gifts, whence
probably arose her ladyship's ill-humour.

Ethel's grandmother became exceedingly testy when, the Colonel arriving,
Ethel ran up to him and thanked him for the beautiful watch, in return
for which she gave him a kiss, which, I dare say, amply repaid Colonel
Newcome; and shortly after him Mr. Clive arrived, looking uncommonly
handsome, with that smart little beard and mustachio with which nature
had recently gifted him. As he entered, all the girls, who had been
admiring his pictures, began to clap their hands. Mr. Clive Newcome
blushed, and looked none the worse for that indication of modesty.

Lady Kew had met Colonel Newcome a half-dozen times at her daughter's
house: but on this occasion she had quite forgotten him, for when the
Colonel made her a bow, her ladyship regarded him steadily, and beckoning
her daughter to her, asked who the gentleman was who has just kissed
Ethel? Trembling as she always did before her mother, Lady Anne
explained. Lady Kew said "Oh!" and left Colonel Newcome blushing and
rather embarrasse de sa personne--before her.

With the clapping of hands that greeted Clive's arrival, the Countess was
by no means more good-humoured. Not aware of her wrath, the young fellow,
who had also previously been presented to her, came forward presently to
make her his compliments. "Pray, who are you?" she said, looking at him
very earnestly in the face. He told her his name.

"Hm," said Lady Kew, "I have heard of you, and I have heard very little
good of you."

"Will your ladyship please to give me your informant?" cried out Colonel
Newcome.

Barnes Newcome, who had condescended to attend his sister's little fete,
and had been languidly watching the frolics of the young people, looked
very much alarmed.




CHAPTER XXI

Is Sentimental, but Short


Without wishing to disparage the youth of other nations, I think a
well-bred English lad has this advantage over them, that his bearing is
commonly more modest than theirs. He does not assume the tail-coat and
the manners of manhood too early: he holds his tongue, and listens to his
elders: his mind blushes as well as his cheeks: he does not know how to
make bows and pay compliments like the young Frenchman: nor to contradict
his seniors as I am informed American striplings do. Boys, who learn
nothing else at our public schools, learn at least good manners, or what
we consider to be such; and with regard to the person at present under
consideration, it is certain that all his acquaintances, excepting
perhaps his dear cousin Barnes Newcome, agreed in considering him as a
very frank, manly, modest, and agreeable young fellow.--My friend
Warrington found a grim pleasure in his company; and his bright face,
droll humour, and kindly laughter were always welcome in our chambers.
Honest Fred Bayham was charmed to be in his society; and used
pathetically to aver that he himself might have been such a youth, had he
been blest with a kind father to watch, and good friends to guide, his
early career. In fact, Fred was by far the most didactic of Clive's
bachelor acquaintances, pursued the young man with endless advice and
sermons, and held himself up as a warning to Clive, and a touching
example of the evil consequences of early idleness and dissipation.
Gentlemen of much higher rank in the world took a fancy to the lad.
Captain Jack Belsize introduced him to his own mess, as also to the Guard
dinner at St. James's; and my Lord Kew invited him to Kewbury, his
lordship's house in Oxfordshire, where Clive enjoyed hunting, shooting,
and plenty of good company. Mrs. Newcome groaned in spirit when she heard
of these proceedings; and feared, feared very much that that unfortunate
young man was going to ruin; and Barnes Newcome amiably disseminated
reports amongst his family that the lad was plunged in all sorts of
debaucheries: that he was tipsy every night: that he was engaged, in his
sober moments, with dice, the turf, or worse amusements: and that his
head was so turned by living with Kew and Belsize, that the little
rascal's pride and arrogance were perfectly insufferable. Ethel would
indignantly deny these charges; then perhaps credit a few of them; and
she looked at Clive with melancholy eyes when he came to visit his aunt;
and I hope prayed that Heaven might mend his wicked ways. The truth is,
the young fellow enjoyed life, as one of his age and spirit might be
expected to do; but he did very little harm, and meant less; and was
quite unconscious of the reputation which his kind friends were making
for him.

There had been a long-standing promise that Clive and his father were to
go to Newcome at Christmas: and I dare say Ethel proposed to reform the
young prodigal, if prodigal he was, for she busied herself delightedly in
preparing the apartments which they were to inhabit during their stay--
speculated upon it in a hundred pleasant ways, putting off her visit to
this pleasant neighbour, or that pretty scene in the vicinage, until her
uncle should come and they should be enabled to enjoy the excursion
together. And before the arrival of her relatives, Ethel, with one of her
young brothers, went to see Mrs. Mason; and introduced herself as Colonel
Newcome's niece; and came back charmed with the old lady, and eager once
more in defence of Clive (when that young gentleman's character happened
to be called in question by her brother Barnes), for had she not seen the
kindest letter, which Clive had written to old Mrs. Mason, and the
beautiful drawing of his father on horseback and in regimentals, waving
his sword in front of the gallant the Bengal Cavalry, which the lad had
sent down to the good old woman? He could not be very bad, Ethel thought,
who was so kind and thoughtful for the poor. His father's son could not
be altogether a reprobate. When Mrs. Mason, seeing how good and beautiful
Ethel was, and thinking in her heart nothing could be too good or
beautiful for Clive, nodded her kind old head at Miss Ethel, and said she
should like to find a husband for her, Miss Ethel blushed, and looked
handsomer than ever; and at home, when she was describing the interview,
never mentioned this part of her talk with Mrs. Mason.

But the enfant terrible, young Alfred, did: announcing to all the company
at dessert, that Ethel was in love with Clive--that Clive was coming to
marry her--that Mrs. Mason, the old woman at Newcome, had told him so.

"I dare say she has told the tale all over Newcome!" shrieked out Mr.
Barnes. "I dare say it will be in the Independent next week. By Jove,
it's a pretty connexion--and nice acquaintances this uncle of ours brings
us!" A fine battle ensued upon the receipt and discussion of this
intelligence: Barnes was more than usually bitter and sarcastic: Ethel
haughtily recriminated, losing her temper, and then her firmness, until,
fairly bursting into tears, she taxed Barnes with meanness and malignity
in for ever uttering stories to his cousin's disadvantage, and pursuing
with constant slander and cruelty one of the very best of men. She rose
and left the table in great tribulation--she went to her room and wrote a
letter to her uncle, blistered with tears, in which she besought him not
to come to Newcome.--Perhaps she went and looked at the apartments which
she had adorned and prepared for his reception. It was for him and for
his company that she was eager. She had met no one so generous and
gentle, so honest and unselfish, until she had seen him.

Lady Anne knew the ways of women very well; and when Ethel that night,
still in great indignation and scorn against Barnes, announced that she
had written a letter to her uncle, begging the Colonel not to come at
Christmas, Ethel's mother soothed the wounded girl, and treated her with
peculiar gentleness and affection; and she wisely gave Mr. Barnes to
understand, that if he wished to bring about that very attachment, the
idea of which made him so angry, he could use no better means than those
which he chose to employ at present, of constantly abusing and insulting
poor Clive, and awakening Ethel's sympathies by mere opposition. And
Ethel's sad little letter was extracted from the post-bag: and her mother
brought it to her, sealed, in her own room, where the young lady burned
it: being easily brought by Lady Anne's quiet remonstrances to perceive
that it was best no allusion should take place to the silly dispute which
had occurred that evening; and that Clive and his father should come for
the Christmas holidays, if they were so minded. But when they came, there
was no Ethel at Newcome. She was gone on a visit to her sick aunt, Lady
Julia. Colonel Newcome passed the holidays sadly without his young
favourite, and Clive consoled himself by knocking down pheasants with Sir
Brian's keepers: and increased his cousin's attachment for him by
breaking the knees of Barnes's favourite mare out hunting. It was a
dreary entertainment; father and son were glad enough to get away from
it, and to return to their own humbler quarters in London.

Thomas Newcome had now been for three years in the possession of that
felicity which his soul longed after; and had any friend of his asked him
if he was happy, he would have answered in the affirmative no doubt, and
protested that he was in the enjoyment of everything a reasonable man
could desire. And yet, in spite of his happiness, his honest face grew
more melancholy: his loose clothes hung only the looser on his lean
limbs: he ate his meals without appetite: his nights were restless: and
he would sit for hours silent in the midst of his family, so that Mr.
Binnie first began jocularly to surmise that Tom was crossed in love;
then seriously to think that his health was suffering and that a doctor
should be called to see him; and at last to agree that idleness was not
good for the Colonel, and that he missed the military occupation to which
he had been for so many years accustomed.

The Colonel insisted that he was perfectly happy and contented. What
could he want more than he had--the society of his son, for the present;
and a prospect of quiet for his declining days? Binnie vowed that his
friend's days had no business to decline as yet; that a sober man of
fifty ought to be at his best; and that Newcome had grown older in three
years in Europe, than in a quarter of a century in the East--all which
statements were true, though the Colonel persisted in denying them.

He was very restless. He was always finding business in distant quarters
of England. He must go visit Tom Barker who was settled in Devonshire, or
Harry Johnson who had retired and was living in Wales. He surprised Mrs.
Honeyman by the frequency of his visits to Brighton, and always came away
much improved in health by the sea air, and by constant riding with the
harriers there. He appeared at Bath and at Cheltenham, where, as we know,
there are many old Indians. Mr. Binnie was not indisposed to accompany
him on some of these jaunts--"provided," the civilian said, "you don't
take young Hopeful, who is much better without us; and let us two old
fogies enjoy ourselves together."

Clive was not sorry to be left alone. The father knew that only too well.
The young man had occupations, ideas, associates, in whom the elder could
take no interest. Sitting below in his blank, cheerless bedroom, Newcome
could hear the lad and his friends talking, singing, and making merry
overhead. Something would be said in Clive's well-known tones, and a roar
of laughter would proceed from the youthful company. They had all sorts
of tricks, bywords, waggeries, of which the father could not understand
the jest nor the secret. He longed to share in it, but the party would be
hushed if he went in to join it--and he would come away sad at heart, to
think that his presence should be a signal for silence among them; and
that his son could not be merry in his company.

We must not quarrel with Clive and Clive's friends, because they could
not joke and be free in the presence of the worthy gentleman. If they
hushed when he came in, Thomas Newcome's sad face would seem to look
round--appealing to one after another of them, and asking, "Why don't you
go on laughing?" A company of old comrades shall be merry and laughing
together, and the entrance of a single youngster will stop the
conversation--and if men of middle age feel this restraint with our
juniors, the young ones surely have a right to be silent before their
elders. The boys are always mum under the eyes of the usher. There is
scarce any parent, however friendly or tender with his children, but must
feel sometimes that they have thoughts which are not his or hers; and
wishes and secrets quite beyond the parental control: and, as people are
vain, long after they are fathers, ay; or grandfathers, and not seldom
fancy that mere personal desire of domination is overweening anxiety and
love for their family, no doubt that common outcry against thankless
children might often be shown to prove, not that the son is disobedient,
but the father too exacting. When a mother (as fond mothers often will)
vows that she knows every thought in her daughter's heart, I think she
pretends to know a great deal too much; nor can there be a wholesomer
task for the elders, as our young subjects grow up, naturally demanding
liberty and citizen's rights, than for us gracefully to abdicate our
sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute control. There's many a
family chief who governs wisely and gently, who is loth to give the power
up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not youth alone that has need to
learn humility! By their very virtues, and the purity of their lives,
many good parents create flatterers for themselves, and so live in the
midst of a filial court of parasites--and seldom without a pang of
unwillingness, and often not at all, will they consent to forgo their
autocracy, and exchange the tribute they have been wont to exact of love
and obedience for the willing offering of love and freedom.

Our good Colonel was not of the tyrannous, but of the loving order of
fathers: and having fixed his whole heart upon this darling youth, his
son, was punished, as I suppose such worldly and selfish love ought to be
punished (so Mr. Honeyman says, at least, in his pulpit), by a hundred
little mortifications, disappointments, and secret wounds, which stung
not the less severely though never mentioned by their victim.

Sometimes he would have a company of such gentlemen as Messrs.
Warrington, Honeyman, and Pendennis, when haply a literary conversation
would ensue after dinner; and the merits of our present poets and writers
would be discussed with the claret. Honeyman was well enough read in
profane literature, especially of the lighter sort; and, I dare say,
could have passed a satisfactory examination in Balzac, Dumas, and Paul
de Kock himself, of all whose works our good host was entirely ignorant,
--as indeed he was of graver books, and of earlier books, and of books in
general--except those few which we have said formed his travelling
library. He heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him. He heard that
Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man. He heard that there
had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope's memory and fame, and
that it was time to reinstate him that his favourite, Dr. Johnson, talked
admirably, but did not write English: that young Keats was a genius to be
estimated in future days with young Raphael: and that a young gentleman
of Cambridge who had lately published two volumes of verses, might take
rank with the greatest poets of all. Doctor Johnson not write English!
Lord Byron not one of the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet
of the second order! Mr. Pope attacked for inferiority and want of
imagination; Mr. Keats and this young Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge, the
chief of modern poetic literature! What were these new dicta, which Mr.
Warrington delivered with a puff of tobacco-smoke: to which Mr. Honeyman
blandly assented and Clive listened with pleasure? Such opinions were not
of the Colonel's time. He tried in vain to construe Oenone, and to make
sense of Lamia. Ulysses he could understand; but what were these
prodigious laudations bestowed on it? And that reverence for Mr.
Wordsworth, what did it mean? Had he not written Peter Bell, and been
turned into deserved ridicule by all the reviews? Was that dreary
Excursion to be compared to Goldsmith's Traveller, or Doctor Johnson's
Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told the
truth, where had been the truth in his own young days, and in what
ignorance had our forefathers been brought up?--Mr. Addison was only an
elegant essayist, and shallow trifler! All these opinions were openly
uttered over the Colonel's claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sate wondering at
the speakers, who were knocking the gods of their youth about their ears.
To Binnie the shock was not so great; the hard-headed Scotchman had read
Hume in his college days, and sneered at some of the gods even at that
early time. But with Newcome the admiration for the literature of the
last century was an article of belief: and the incredulity of the young
men seemed rank blasphemy. "You will be sneering at Shakspeare next," he
said: and was silenced, though not better pleased, when his youthful
guests told him, that Doctor Goldsmith sneered at him too; that Dr.
Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve, in his own day and
afterwards, was considered to be, in some points, Shakspeare's superior.
"What do you think a man's criticism is worth, sir," cries Mr.
Warrington, "who says those lines of Mr. Congreve, about a church--

   'How reverend is the face of yon tall pile,
    Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
    To bear aloft its vast and ponderous roof,
    By its own weight made steadfast and immovable;
    Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe
    And terror on my aching sight'--et caetera

what do you think of a critic who says those lines are finer than
anything Shakspeare ever wrote?" A dim consciousness of danger for Clive,
a terror that his son had got into the society of heretics and
unbelievers, came over the Colonel,--and then presently, as was the wont
with his modest soul, a gentle sense of humility. He was in the wrong,
perhaps, and these younger men were right. Who was he, to set up his
judgment against men of letters, educated at college? It was better that
Clive should follow them than him, who had had but a brief schooling, and
that neglected, and who had not the original genius of his son's
brilliant companions. We particularise these talks, and the little
incidental mortifications which one of the best of men endured, not
because the conversations are worth the remembering or recording, but
because they presently very materially influenced his own and his son's
future history.

In the midst of the artists and their talk the poor Colonel was equally
in the dark. They assaulted this Academician and that; laughed at Mr.
Haydon, or sneered at Mr. Eastlake, or the contrary; deified Mr. Turner
on one side of the table, and on the other scorned him as a madman--nor
could Newcome comprehend a word of their jargon. Some sense there must be
in their conversation: Clive joined eagerly in it and took one side or
another. But what was all this rapture about a snuffy brown picture
called Titian, this delight in three flabby nymphs by Rubens, and so
forth? As for the vaunted Antique, and the Elgin Marbles--it might be
that that battered torso was a miracle, and that broken-nosed bust a
perfect beauty. He tried and tried to see that they were. He went away
privily and worked at the National Gallery with a catalogue: and passed
hours in the Museum before the ancient statues, desperately praying to
comprehend them, and puzzled before them as he remembered he was puzzled
before the Greek rudiments as a child when he cried over o kai hae
alaethaes kai to alaethaes. Whereas when Clive came to look at these same
things his eyes would lighten up with pleasure, and his cheeks flush with
enthusiasm. He seemed to drink in colour as he would a feast of wine.
Before the statues he would wave his finger, following the line of grace,
and burst into ejaculations of delight and admiration. "Why can't I love
the things which he loves?" thought Newcome; "why am I blind to the
beauties which he admires so much--and am I unable to comprehend what he
evidently understands at his young age?"

So, as he thought what vain egotistical hopes he used to form about the
boy when he was away in India--how in his plans for the happy future,
Clive was to be always at his side; how they were to read, work, play,
think, be merry together--a sickening and humiliating sense of the
reality came over him: and he sadly contrasted it with the former fond
anticipations. Together they were, yet he was alone still. His thoughts
were not the boy's: and his affections rewarded but with a part of the
young man's heart. Very likely other lovers have suffered equally. Many a
man and woman has been incensed and worshipped, and has shown no more
feeling than is to be expected from idols. There is yonder statue in St.
Peter's, of which the toe is worn away with kisses, and which sits, and
will sit eternally, prim and cold. As the young man grew, it seemed to
the father as if each day separated them more and more. He himself became
more melancholy and silent. His friend the civilian marked the ennui, and
commented on it in his laughing way. Sometimes he announced to the club
that Tom Newcome was in love: then he thought it was not Tom's heart but
his liver that was affected, and recommended blue pill. O thou fond fool!
who art thou, to know any man's heart save thine alone? Wherefore were
wings made, and do feathers grow, but that birds should fly? The instinct
that bids you love your nest, leads the young ones to seek a tree and a
mate of their own. As if Thomas Newcome by poring over poems or pictures
ever so much could read them with Clive's eyes!--as if by sitting mum
over his wine, but watching till the lad came home with his latchkey
(when the Colonel crept back to his own room in his stockings), by
prodigal bounties, by stealthy affection, by any schemes or prayers, he
could hope to remain first in his son's heart!

One day going into Clive's study, where the lad was so deeply engaged
that he did not hear the father's steps advancing, Thomas Newcome found
his son, pencil in hand, poring over a paper, which, blushing, he thrust
hastily into his breast-pocket, as soon as he saw his visitor. The father
was deeply smitten and mortified. "I--I am sorry you have any secrets
from me, Clive," he gasped out at length.

The boy's face lighted up with humour. "Here it is, father, if you would
like to see:"--and he pulled out a paper which contained neither more nor
less than a copy of very flowery verses, about a certain young lady, who
had succeeded (after I know not how many predecessors) to the place of
prima-donna assoluta in Clive's heart. And be pleased, madam, not to be
too eager with your censure, and fancy that Mr. Clive or his chronicler
would insinuate anything wrong. I dare say you felt a flame or two before
you were married yourself: and that the Captain or the Curate, and the
interesting young foreigner with whom you danced, caused your heart to
beat, before you bestowed that treasure on Mr. Candour. Clive was doing
no more than your own son will do when he is eighteen or nineteen years
old himself--if he is a lad of any spirit and a worthy son of so charming
a lady as yourself.




CHAPTER XXII

Describes a Visit to Paris; with Accidents and Incidents in London


Mr. Clive, as we have said, had now begun to make acquaintances of his
own; and the chimney-glass in his study was decorated with such a number
of cards of invitation, as made his ex-fellow-student of Gandish's, young
Moss, when admitted into that sanctum, stare with respectful
astonishment. "Lady Bary Rowe at obe," the young Hebrew read out; "Lady
Baughton at obe, dadsig! By eyes! what a tip-top swell you're a gettid to
be, Newcome! I guess this is a different sort of business to the hops at
old Levison's, where you first learned the polka; and where we had to pay
a shilling a glass for negus!"

"We had to pay! You never paid anything, Moss," cries Clive, laughing;
and indeed the negus imbibed by Mr. Moss did not cost that prudent young
fellow a penny.

"Well, well; I suppose at these swell parties you 'ave as bush champade
as ever you like," continues Moss. "Lady Kicklebury at obe--small early
party. Why, I declare you know the whole peerage! I say, if any of these
swells want a little tip-top lace, a real bargain, or diamonds, you know,
you might put in a word for us, and do us a good turn."

"Give me some of your cards," says Clive; "I can distribute them about at
the balls I go to. But you must treat my friends better than you serve
me. Those cigars which you sent me were abominable, Moss; the groom in
the stable won't smoke them."

"What a regular swell that Newcome has become!" says Mr. Moss to an old
companion, another of Clive's fellow-students: "I saw him riding in the
Park with the Earl of Kew, and Captain Belsize, and a whole lot of 'em--I
know 'em all--and he'd hardly nod to me. I'll have a horse next Sunday,
and then I'll see whether he'll cut me or not. Confound his airs! For all
he's such a count, I know he's got an aunt who lets lodgings at Brighton,
and an uncle who'll be preaching in the Bench if he don't keep a precious
good look-out."

"Newcome is not a bit of a count," answers Moss's companion, indignantly.
"He don't care a straw whether a fellow's poor or rich; and he comes up
to my room just as willingly as he would go to a duke's. He is always
trying to do a friend a good turn. He draws the figure capitally: he
looks proud, but he isn't, and is the best-natured fellow I ever saw."

"He ain't been in our place this eighteen months," says Mr. Moss: "I know
that."

"Because when he came you were always screwing him with some bargain or
other," cried the intrepid Hicks, Mr. Moss's companion for the moment.
"He said he couldn't afford to know you: you never let him out of your
house without a pin, or a box of eau-de-cologne, or a bundle of cigars.
And when you cut the arts for the shop, how were you and Newcome to go on
together, I should like to know?"

"I know a relative of his who comes to our 'ouse every three months, to
renew a little bill," says Mr. Moss, with a grin: "and I know this, if I
go to the Earl of Kew in the Albany, or the Honourable Captain Belsize,
Knightsbridge Barracks, they let me in soon enough. I'm told his father
ain't got much money."

"How the deuce should I know? or what do I care?" cries the young artist,
stamping the heel of his blucher on the pavement. "When I was sick in
that confounded Clipstone Street, I know the Colonel came to see me, and
Newcome too, day after day, and night after night. And when I was getting
well, they sent me wine and jelly, and all sorts of jolly things. I
should like to know how often you came to see me, Moss, and what you did
for a fellow?"

"Well, I kep away because I thought you wouldn't like to be reminded of
that two pound three you owe me, Hicks: that's why I kep away," says Mr.
Moss, who, I dare say, was good-natured too. And when young Moss appeared
at the billiard-room that night, it was evident that Hicks had told the
story; for the Wardour Street youth was saluted with a roar of queries,
"How about that two pound three that Hicks owes you?"

The artless conversation of the two youths will enable us to understand
how our hero's life was speeding. Connected in one way or another with
persons in all ranks, it never entered his head to be ashamed of the
profession which he had chosen. People in the great world did not in the
least trouble themselves regarding him, or care to know whether Mr. Clive
Newcome followed painting or any other pursuit: and though Clive saw many
of his schoolfellows in the world, these entering into the army, others
talking with delight of college, and its pleasures or studies; yet,
having made up his mind that art was his calling, he refused to quit her
for any other mistress, and plied his easel very stoutly. He passed
through the course of study prescribed by Mr. Gandish, and drew every
cast and statue in that gentleman's studio. Grindley, his tutor, getting
a curacy, Clive did not replace him; but he took a course of modern
languages, which he learned with considerable aptitude and rapidity. And
now, being strong enough to paint without a master, it was found that
there was no good light in the house in Fitzroy Square; and Mr. Clive
must needs have an atelier hard by, where he could pursue his own devices
independently.

If his kind father felt any pang even at this temporary parting, he was
greatly soothed and pleased by a little mark of attention on the young
man's part, of which his present biographer happened to be a witness; for
having walked over with Colonel Newcome to see the new studio, with its
tall centre window, and its curtains, and carved wardrobes, china jars,
pieces of armour, and other artistical properties, the lad, with a very
sweet smile of kindness and affection lighting up his honest face, took
one of two Bramah's house-keys with which he was provided, and gave it to
his father: "That's your key, sir," he said to the Colonel; "and you must
be my first sitter, please, father; for though I'm a historical painter,
I shall condescend to do a few portraits, you know." The Colonel took his
son's hand, and grasped it; as Clive fondly put the other hand on his
father's shoulder. Then Colonel Newcome walked away into the next room
for a minute or two, and came back wiping his moustache with his
handkerchief, and still holding the key in the other hand. He spoke about
some trivial subject when he returned; but his voice quite trembled; and
I thought his face seemed to glow with love and pleasure. Clive has never
painted anything better than that head, which he executed in a couple of
sittings; and wisely left without subjecting it to the chances of further
labour.

It is certain the young man worked much better after he had been inducted
into this apartment of his own. And the meals at home were gayer; and the
rides with his father more frequent and agreeable. The Colonel used his
key once or twice, and found Clive and his friend Ridley engaged in
depicting a life-guardsman,--or a muscular negro,--or a Malay from a
neighbouring crossing, who would appear as Othello, conversing with a
Clipstone Street nymph, who was ready to represent Desdemona, Diana,
Queen Ellinor (sucking poison from the arm of the Plantagenet of the
Blues), or any other model of virgin or maiden excellence.

Of course our young man commenced as a historical painter, deeming that
the highest branch of art; and declining (except for preparatory studies)
to operate on any but the largest canvasses. He painted a prodigious
battle-piece of Assaye, with General Wellesley at the head of the 19th
Dragoons charging the Mahratta Artillery, and sabring them at their guns.
A piece of ordnance was dragged into the back-yard, and the Colonel's
stud put into requisition to supply studies for this enormous picture.
Fred Bayham (a stunning likeness) appeared as the principal figure in the
foreground, terrifically wounded, but still of undaunted courage,
slashing about amidst a group of writhing Malays, and bestriding the body
of a dead cab-horse, which Clive painted, until the landlady and rest of
the lodgers cried out, and for sanitary reasons the knackers removed the
slaughtered charger. So large was this picture that it could only be got
out of the great window by means of artifice and coaxing; and its
transport caused a shout of triumph among the little boys in Charlotte
Street. Will it be believed that the Royal Academicians rejected the
"Battle of Assaye"? The masterpiece was so big that Fitzroy Square could
not hold it; and the Colonel had thoughts of presenting it to the
Oriental Club; but Clive (who had taken a trip to Paris with his father,
as a delassement after the fatigues incident on this great work), when he
saw it, after a month's interval, declared the thing was rubbish, and
massacred Britons, Malays, Dragoons, Artillery and all.


"Hotel de la Terrasse, Rue de Rivoli,

"April 27--May 1, 183-.

"My Dear Pendennis--You said I might write you a line from Paris; and if
you find in my correspondence any valuable hints for the Pall Mall
Gazette, you are welcome to use them gratis. Now I am here, I wonder I
have never been here before, and that I have seen the Dieppe packet a
thousand times at Brighton pier without thinking of going on board her.
We had a rough little passage to Boulogne. We went into action as we
cleared Dover pier--when the first gun was fired, and a stout old lady
was carried off by a steward to the cabin; half a dozen more dropped
immediately, and the crew bustled about, bringing basins for the wounded.
The Colonel smiled as he saw them fall. 'I'm an old sailor,' says he to a
gentleman on board. 'I was coming home, sir, and we had plenty of rough
weather on the voyage, I never thought of being unwell. My boy here, who
made the voyage twelve years ago last May, may have lost his sea-legs;
but for me, sir--' Here a great wave dashed over the three of us; and
would you believe it? in five minutes after, the dear old governor was as
ill as all the rest of the passengers. When we arrived, we went through a
line of ropes to the custom-house, with a crowd of snobs jeering at us on
each side; and then were carried off by a bawling commissioner to an
hotel, where the Colonel, who speaks French beautifully, you know, told
the waiter to get us a petit dejeuner soigne; on which the fellow,
grinning, said, a 'nice fried sole, sir,--nice mutton-chop, sir,' in
regular Temple Bar English; and brought us Harvey sauce with the chops,
and the last Bell's Life to amuse us after our luncheon. I wondered if
all the Frenchmen read Bell's Life, and if all the inns smell so of
brandy-and-water!

"We walked out to see the town, which I dare say you know, and therefore
shan't describe. We saw some good studies of fishwomen with bare legs,
and remarked that the soldiers were very dumpy and small. We were glad
when the time came to set off by the diligence; and having the coupe to
ourselves, made a very comfortable journey to Paris. It was jolly to hear
the postillions crying to their horses, and the bells of the team, and to
feel ourselves really in France. We took in provender at Abbeville and
Amiens, and were comfortably landed here after about six-and-twenty hours
of coaching. Didn't I get up the next morning and have a good walk in the
Tuileries! The chestnuts were out, and the statues all shining, and all
the windows of the palace in a blaze. It looks big enough for the king of
the giants to live in. How grand it is! I like the barbarous splendour of
the architecture, and the ornaments profuse and enormous with which it is
overladen. Think of Louis XVI. with a thousand gentlemen at his back, and
a mob of yelling ruffians in front of him, giving up his crown without a
fight for it; leaving his friends to be butchered, and himself sneaking
into prison! No end of little children were skipping and playing in the
sunshiny walks, with dresses as bright and cheeks as red as the flowers
and roses in the parterres. I couldn't help thinking of Barbaroux and his
bloody pikemen swarming in the gardens, and fancied the Swiss in the
windows yonder; where they were to be slaughtered when the King had
turned his back. What a great man that Carlyle is! I have read the battle
in his History so often, that I knew it before I had seen it. Our windows
look out on the obelisk where the guillotine stood. The Colonel doesn't
admire Carlyle. He says Mrs. Graham's Letters from Paris are excellent,
and we bought Scott's Visit to Paris, and Paris Re-visited, and read them
in the diligence. They are famous good reading; but the Palais Royal is
very much altered since Scott's time: no end of handsome shops; I went
there directly,--the same night we arrived, when the Colonel went to bed.
But there is none of the fun going on which Scott describes. The laquais
de place says Charles X. put an end to it all.

"Next morning the governor had letters to deliver after breakfast, and
left me at the Louvre door. I shall come and live here, I think. I feel
as if I never want to go away. I had not been ten minutes in the place
before I fell in love with the most beautiful creature the world has ever
seen. She was standing silent and majestic in the centre of one of the
rooms of the statue-gallery; and the very first glimpse of her struck one
breathless with the sense of her beauty. I could not see the colour of
her eyes and hair exactly, but the latter is light, and the eyes I should
think are grey. Her complexion is of a beautiful warm marble tinge. She
is not a clever woman, evidently; I do not think she laughs or talks
much--she seems too lazy to do more than smile. She is only beautiful.
This divine creature has lost an arm, which has been cut off at the
shoulder, but she looks none the less lovely for the accident. She maybe
some two-and-thirty years old; and she was born about two thousand years
ago. Her name is the Venus of Milo. O Victrix! O lucky Paris! (I don't
mean this present Lutetia, but Priam's son.) How could he give the apple
to any else but this enslaver--this joy of gods and men? at whose benign
presence the flowers spring up, and the smiling ocean sparkles, and the
soft skies beam with serene light! I wish we might sacrifice. I would
bring a spotless kid, snowy-coated, and a pair of doves and a jar of
honey--yea, honey from Morel's in Piccadilly, thyme-flavoured, narbonian,
and we would acknowledge the Sovereign Loveliness, and adjure the Divine
Aphrodite. Did you ever see my pretty young cousin, Miss Newcome, Sir
Brian's daughter? She has a great look of the huntress Diana. It is
sometimes too proud and too cold for me. The blare of those horns is too
shrill and the rapid pursuit through bush and bramble too daring. O thou
generous Venus! O thou beautiful bountiful calm! At thy soft feet let me
kneel--on cushions of Tyrian purple. Don't show this to Warrington,
please: I never thought when I began that Pegasus was going to run away
with me.

"I wish I had read Greek a little more at school: it's too late at my
age; I shall be nineteen soon, and have got my own business; but when we
return I think I shall try and read it with Cribs. What have I been
doing, spending six months over a picture of sepoys and dragoons cutting
each other's throats? Art ought not to be a fever. It ought to be a calm;
not a screaming bull-fight or a battle of gladiators, but a temple for
placid contemplation, rapt worship, stately rhythmic ceremony, and music
solemn and tender. I shall take down my Snyders and Rubens when I get
home; and turn quietist. To think I have spent weeks in depicting bony
life-guardsmen delivering cut one, or Saint George, and painting black
beggars off a crossing!

"What a grand thing it is to think of half a mile of pictures at the
Louvre! Not but that there are a score under the old pepper-boxes in
Trafalgar Square as fine as the best here. I don't care for any Raphael
here, as much as our own St. Catharine. There is nothing more grand.
Could the Pyramids of Egypt or the Colossus of Rhodes be greater than our
Sebastian? and for our Bacchus and Ariadne, you cannot beat the best you
know. But if we have fine jewels, here there are whole sets of them:
there are kings and all their splendid courts round about them. J. J. and
I must come and live here. Oh, such portraits of Titian! Oh, such swells
by Vandyke! I'm sure he must have been as fine a gentleman as any he
painted! It's a shame they haven't got a Sir Joshua or two. At a feast of
painters he has a right to a place, and at the high table too. Do you
remember Tom Rogers, of Gandish's? He used to come to my rooms--my other
rooms in the Square. Tom is here with a fine carrotty beard, and a velvet
jacket, cut open at the sleeves, to show that Tom has a shirt. I dare say
it was clean last Sunday. He has not learned French yet, but pretends to
have forgotten English; and promises to introduce me to a set of the
French artists his camarades. There seems to be a scarcity of soap among
these young fellows; and I think I shall cut off my mustachios; only
Warrington will have nothing to laugh at when I come home.

"The Colonel and I went to dine at the Cafe de Paris, and afterwards to
the opera. Ask for huitres de Marenne when you dine here. We dined with a
tremendous French swell, the Vicomte de Florac, officier d'ordonnance to
one of the princes, and son of some old friends of my father's. They are
of very high birth, but very poor. He will be a duke when his cousin, the
Duc d'Ivry, dies. His father is quite old. The vicomte was born in
England. He pointed out to us no end of famous people at the opera--a few
of the Fauxbourg St. Germain, and ever so many of the present people:--M.
Thiers, and Count Mole, and Georges Sand, and Victor Hugo, and Jules
Janin--I forget half their names. And yesterday we went to see his
mother, Madame de Florac. I suppose she was an old flame of the
Colonel's, for their meeting was uncommonly ceremonious and tender. It
was like an elderly Sir Charles Grandison saluting a middle-aged Miss
Byron. And only fancy! the Colonel has been here once before since his
return to England! It must have been last year, when he was away for ten
days, whilst I was painting that rubbishing picture of the Black Prince
waiting on King John. Madame de F. is a very grand lady, and must have
been a great beauty in her time. There are two pictures by Gerard in her
salon--of her and M. de Florac. M. de Florac, old swell, powder, thick
eyebrows, hooked nose; no end of stars, ribbons, and embroidery. Madame
also in the dress of the Empire--pensive, beautiful, black velvet, and a
look something like my cousin's. She wore a little old-fashioned brooch
yesterday, and said, 'Voila, la reconnoissez-vous? Last year when you
were here, it was in the country;' and she smiled at him: and the dear
old boy gave a sort of groan and dropped his head in his hand. I know
what it is. I've gone through it myself. I kept for six months an absurd
ribbon of that infernal little flirt Fanny Freeman. Don't you remember
how angry I was when you abused her?

"'Your father and I knew each other when we were children, my friend,'
the Countess said to me (in the sweetest French accent). He was looking
into the garden of the house where they live, in the Rue Saint Dominique.
'You must come and see me often, always. You remind me of him,' and she
added, with a very sweet kind smile, 'Do you like best to think that he
was better-looking than you, or that you excel him?' I said I should like
to be like him. But who is? There are cleverer fellows, I dare say; but
where is there such a good one? I wonder whether he was very fond of
Madame de Florac? The old Count does not show. He is quite old, and wears
a pigtail. We saw it bobbing over his garden chair. He lets the upper
part of his house; Major-General the Honourable Zeno F. Pokey, of
Cincinnati, U.S., lives in it. We saw Mrs. Pokey's carriage in the court,
and her footmen smoking cigars there; a tottering old man with feeble
legs, as old as old Count de Florac, seemed to be the only domestic who
waited on the family below.

"Madame de Florac and my father talked about my profession. The Countess
said it was a belle carriere. The Colonel said it was better than the
army. 'Ah oui, monsieur,' says she very sadly. And then he said, 'that
presently I should very likely come to study at Paris, when he knew there
would be a kind friend to watch over son garcon.'

"'But you will be here to watch over him yourself, mon ami?' says the
French lady.

"Father shook his head. 'I shall very probably have to go back to India,'
he said. 'My furlough is expired. I am now taking my extra leave. If I
can get my promotion, I need not return. Without that I cannot afford to
live in Europe. But my absence in all probability will be but very
short,' he said. 'And Clive is old enough now to go on without me.'

"Is this the reason why father has been so gloomy for some months past? I
thought it might have been some of my follies which made him
uncomfortable; and you know I have been trying my best to amend--I have
not half such a tailor's bill this year as last. I owe scarcely anything.
I have paid off Moss every halfpenny for his confounded rings and
gimcracks. I asked father about this melancholy news as we walked away
from Madame de Florac.

"He is not near so rich as we thought. Since he has been at home he says
he has spent greatly more than his income, and is quite angry at his own
extravagance. At first he thought he might have retired from the army
altogether; but after three years at home, he finds he cannot live upon
his income. When he gets his promotion as full Colonel, he will be
entitled to a thousand a year; that, and what he has invested in India,
and a little in this country, will be plenty for both of us. He never
seems to think of my making money by my profession. Why, suppose I sell
the 'Battle of Assaye' for 500 pounds? that will be enough to carry me on
ever so long, without dipping into the purse of the dear old father.

"The Viscount de Florac called to dine with us. The Colonel said he did
not care about going out: and so the Viscount and I went together. Trois
Freres Provencaux--he ordered the dinner and of course I paid. Then we
went to a little theatre, and he took me behind the scenes--such a queer
place! We went to the loge of Mademoiselle Fine who acted the part of 'Le
petit Tambour,' in which she sings a famous song with a drum. He asked
her and several literary fellows to supper at the Cafe Anglais. And I
came home ever so late, and lost twenty napoleons at a game called
bouillotte. It was all the change out of a twenty-pound note which dear
old Binnie gave me before we set out, with a quotation out of Horace, you
know, about Neque tu choreas sperne puer. O me! how guilty I felt as I
walked home at ever so much o'clock to the Hotel de la Terrasse, and
sneaked into our apartment! But the Colonel was sound asleep. His dear
old boots stood sentries at his bedroom door, and I slunk into mine as
silently as I could.

"P.S.--Wednesday.--There's just one scrap of paper left. I have got J.
J.'s letter. He has been to the private view of the Academy (so that his
own picture is in), and the 'Battle of Assaye' is refused. Smee told him
it was too big. I dare say it's very bad. I'm glad I'm away, and the
fellows are not condoling with me.

"Please go and see Mr. Binnie. He has come to grief. He rode the
Colonel's horse; came down on the pavement and wrenched his leg, and I'm
afraid the grey's. Please look at his legs; we can't understand John's
report of them. He, I mean Mr. B., was going to Scotland to see his
relations when the accident happened. You know he has always been going
to Scotland to see his relations. He makes light of the business, and
says the Colonel is not to think of coming to him: and I don't want to go
back just yet, to see all the fellows from Gandish's and the Life
Academy, and have them grinning at my misfortune.

"The governor would send his regards, I dare say, but he is out, and I am
always yours affectionately,                Clive Newcome."

"P.S.--He tipped me himself this morning; isn't he a kind, dear old
fellow?"


Arthur Pendennis, Esq., to Clive Newcome, Esq.

"'Pall Mall Gazette,' Journal of Politics, Literature and Fashion, 225
Catherine Street, Strand,

"Dear Clive--I regret very much for Fred Bayham's sake (who has lately
taken the responsible office of Fine Arts Critic for the P. G.) that your
extensive picture of the 'Battle of Assaye' has not found a place in the
Royal Academy Exhibition. F. B. is at least fifteen shillings out of
pocket by its rejection, as he had prepared a flaming eulogium of your
work, which of course is so much waste paper in consequence of this
calamity. Never mind. Courage, my son. The Duke of Wellington you know
was best back at Seringapatam before he succeeded at Assaye. I hope you
will fight other battles, and that fortune in future years will be more
favourable to you. The town does not talk very much of your discomfiture.
You see the parliamentary debates are very interesting just now, and
somehow the 'Battle of Assaye' did not seem to excite the public mind.

"I have been to Fitzroy Square; both to the stables and the house. The
Houyhnhnm's legs are very well; the horse slipped on his side and not on
his knees, and has received no sort of injury. Not so Mr. Binnie; his
ankle is much wrenched and inflamed. He must keep his sofa for many days,
perhaps weeks. But you know he is a very cheerful philosopher, and
endures the evils of life with much equanimity. His sister has come to
him. I don't know whether that may be considered as a consolation of his
evil or an aggravation of it. You know he uses the sarcastic method in
his talk, and it was difficult to understand from him whether he was
pleased or bored by the embraces of his relative. She was an infant when
he last beheld her, on his departure to India. She is now (to speak with
respect) a very brisk, plump, pretty little widow; having, seemingly,
recovered from her grief at the death of her husband, Captain Mackenzie
in the West Indies. Mr. Binnie was just on the point of visiting his
relatives, who reside at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, when he met with
the fatal accident which prevented his visit to his native shores. His
account of his misfortune and his lonely condition was so pathetic that
Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter put themselves into the Edinburgh
steamer, and rushed to console his sofa. They occupy your bedroom and
sitting-room, which latter Mrs. Mackenzie says no longer smells of
tobacco smoke, as it did when she took possession of your den. If you
have left any papers about, any bills, any billets-doux, I make no doubt
the ladies have read every single one of them, according to the amiable
habits of their sex. The daughter is a bright little blue-eyed
fair-haired lass, with a very sweet voice, in which she sings (unaided by
instrumental music, and seated on a chair in the middle of the room) the
artless ballads of her native country. I had the pleasure of hearing the
'Bonnets of Bonny Dundee' and 'Jack of Hazeldean' from her ruby lips two
evenings since; not indeed for the first time in my life, but never from
such a pretty little singer. Though both ladies speak our language with
something of the tone usually employed by the inhabitants of the northern
part of Britain, their accent is exceedingly pleasant, and indeed by no
means so strong as Mr. Binnie's own; for Captain Mackenzie was an
Englishman, for whose sake his lady modified her native Musselburgh
pronunciation. She tells many interesting anecdotes of him, of the West
Indies, and of the distinguished regiment of infantry to which the
captain belonged. Miss Rosa is a great favourite with her uncle, and I
have had the good fortune to make their stay in the metropolis more
pleasant, by sending them orders, from the Pall Mall Gazette, for the
theatres, panoramas, and the principal sights in town. For pictures they
do not seem to care much; they thought the National Gallery a dreary
exhibition, and in the Royal Academy could be got to admire nothing but
the picture of M'Collop of M'Collop, by our friend of the like name; but
they think Madame Tussaud's interesting exhibition of waxwork the most
delightful in London; and there I had the happiness of introducing them
to our friend Mr. Frederick Bayham; who, subsequently, on coming to this
office with his valuable contributions on the Fine Arts, made particular
inquiries as to their pecuniary means, and expressed himself instantly
ready to bestow his hand upon the mother or daughter, provided old Mr.
Binnie would make a satisfactory settlement. I got the ladies a box at
the opera, whither they were attended by Captain Goby of their regiment,
godfather to Miss, and where I had the honour of paying them a visit. I
saw your fair young cousin Miss Newcome in the lobby with her grandmamma
Lady Kew. Mr. Bayham with great eloquence pointed out to the Scotch
ladies the various distinguished characters in the house. The opera
delighted them, but they were astounded at the ballet, from which mother
and daughter retreated in the midst of a fire of pleasantries of Captain
Goby. I can fancy that officer at mess, and how brilliant his anecdotes
must be when the company of ladies does not restrain his genial flow of
humour.

"Here comes Mr. Baker with the proofs. In case you don't see the P. G. at
Galignani's, I send you an extract from Bayham's article on the Royal
Academy, where you will have the benefit of his opinion on the works of
some of your friends:--

"'617. 'Moses Bringing Home the Gross of Green Spectacles,' Smith, R.A.--
Perhaps poor Goldsmith's exquisite little work has never been so great a
favourite as in the present age. We have here, in a work by one of our
most eminent artists, an homage to the genius of him 'who touched nothing
which he did not adorn:' and the charming subject is handled in the most
delicious manner by Mr. Smith. The chiaroscuro is admirable: the impasto
is perfect. Perhaps a very captious critic might object to the
foreshortening of Moses's left leg; but where there is so much to praise
justly, the Pall Nall Gazette does not care to condemn.

"'420. Our (and the public's) favourite, Brown, R.A., treats us to a
subject from the best of all stories, the tale 'which laughed Spain's
chivalry away,' the ever new Don Quixote. The incident which Brown has
selected is the 'Don's Attack on the Flock of Sheep;' the sheep are in
his best manner, painted with all his well-known facility and brio. Mr.
Brown's friendly rival, Hopkins, has selected Gil Blas for an
illustration this year; and the 'Robber's Cavern' is one of the most
masterly of Hopkins' productions.

"'Great Rooms. 33. 'Portrait of Cardinal Cospetto,' O'Gogstay, A.R.A.;
and 'Neighbourhood of Corpodibacco--Evening--a Contadina and a
Trasteverino dancing at the door of a Locanda to the music of a
Pifferaro.'--Since his visit to Italy Mr. O'Gogstay seems to have given
up the scenes of Irish humour with which he used to delight us; and the
romance, the poetry, the religion of 'Italia la bella' form the subjects
of his pencil. The scene near Corpodibacco (we know the spot well, and
have spent many a happy month in its romantic mountains) is most
characteristic. Cardinal Cospetto, we must say, is a most truculent
prelate, and not certainly an ornament to his church.

"'49, 210, 311. Smee, R.A.--Portraits which a Reynolds might be proud
of,--a Vandyke or Claude might not disown. 'Sir Brian Newcome, in the
costume of a Deputy-Lieutenant,' 'Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots,
K.C.B.,' painted for the 50th Dragoons, are triumphs, indeed, of this
noble painter. Why have we no picture of the Sovereign and her august
consort from Smee's brush? When Charles II. picked up Titian's
mahl-stick, he observed to a courtier, 'A king you can always have; a
genius comes but rarely.' While we have a Smee among us, and a monarch
whom we admire,--may the one be employed to transmit to posterity the
beloved features of the other! We know our lucubrations are read in high
places, and respectfully insinuate verbum sapienti.

"'1906. 'The M'Collop of M'Collop,'--A. M'Collop,--is a noble work of a
young artist, who, in depicting the gallant chief of a hardy Scottish
clan, has also represented a romantic Highland landscape, in the midst of
which, 'his foot upon his native heath,' stands a man of splendid
symmetrical figure and great facial advantages. We shall keep our eye on
Mr. M'Collop.

"'1367. 'Oberon and Titania.' Ridley.--This sweet and fanciful little
picture draws crowds round about it, and is one of the most charming and
delightful works of the present exhibition. We echo the universal opinion
in declaring that it shows not only the greatest promise, but the most
delicate and beautiful performance. The Earl of Kew, we understand,
bought the picture at the private view; and we congratulate the young
painter heartily upon his successful debut. He is, we understand, a pupil
of Mr. Gandish. Where is that admirable painter? We miss his bold
canvasses and grand historic outline.'

"I shall alter a few inaccuracies in the composition of our friend F. B.,
who has, as he says, 'drawn it uncommonly mild in the above criticism.'
In fact, two days since, he brought in an article of quite a different
tendency, of which he retains only the two last paragraphs; but he has,
with great magnanimity, recalled his previous observations; and, indeed,
he knows as much about pictures as some critics I could name.

"Good-bye, my dear Clive! I send my kindest regards to your father; and
think you had best see as little as possible of your bouillotte-playing
French friend and his friends. This advice I know you will follow, as
young men always follow the advice of their seniors and well-wishers. I
dine in Fitzroy Square to-day with the pretty widow and her daughter, and
am yours always, dear Clive,                          A. P."




CHAPTER XXIII

In which we hear a Soprano and a Contralto


The most hospitable and polite of Colonels would not hear of Mrs.
Mackenzie and her daughter quitting his house when he returned to it,
after six weeks' pleasant sojourn in Paris; nor, indeed, did his fair
guest show the least anxiety or intention to go away. Mrs. Mackenzie had
a fine merry humour of her own. She was an old soldier's wife, she said
and knew when her quarters were good; and I suppose, since her honeymoon,
when the captain took her to Harrogate and Cheltenham, stopping at the
first hotels, and travelling in a chaise-and-pair the whole way, she had
never been so well off as in that roomy mansion near Tottenham Court
Road. Of her mother's house at Musselburgh she gave a ludicrous but
dismal account. "Eh, James," she said, "I think if you had come to mamma,
as you threatened, you would not have staid very long. It's a wearisome
place. Dr. M'Craw boards with her; and it's sermon and psalm-singing from
morning till night. My little Josey takes kindly to the life there, and I
left her behind, poor little darling! It was not fair to bring three of
us to take possession of your house, dear James; but my poor little Rosey
was just withering away there. It's good for the dear child to see the
world a little, and a kind uncle, who is not afraid of us now he sees us,
is he?" Kind Uncle James was not at all afraid of little Rosey; whose
pretty face and modest manners, and sweet songs, and blue eyes, cheered
and soothed the old bachelor. Nor was Rosey's mother less agreeable and
pleasant. She had married the captain (it was a love-match, against the
will of her parents, who had destined her to be the third wife of old Dr.
M'Mull) when very young. Many sorrows she had had, including poverty, the
captain's imprisonment for debt, and his demise; but she was of a gay and
lightsome spirit. She was but three-and-thirty years old, and looked
five-and-twenty. She was active, brisk, jovial, and alert; and so
good-looking, that it was a wonder she had not taken a successor to
Captain Mackenzie. James Binnie cautioned his friend the Colonel against
the attractions of the buxom siren; and laughingly would ask Clive how he
would like Mrs. Mackenzie for a mamaw?

Colonel Newcome felt himself very much at ease regarding his future
prospects. He was very glad that his friend James was reconciled to his
family, and hinted to Clive that the late Captain Mackenzie's
extravagance had been the cause of the rupture between him and his
brother-in-law, who had helped that prodigal captain repeatedly during
his life; and, in spite of family quarrels, had never ceased to act
generously to his widowed sister and her family. "But I think, Mr.
Clive," said he, "that as Miss Rosa is very pretty, and you have a spare
room at your studio, you had best take up your quarters in Charlotte
Street as long as the ladies are living with us." Clive was nothing loth
to be independent; but he showed himself to be a very good home-loving
youth. He walked home to breakfast every morning, dined often, and spent
the evenings with the family. Indeed, the house was a great deal more
cheerful for the presence of the two pleasant ladies. Nothing could be
prettier than to see the two ladies tripping downstairs together, mamma's
pretty arm round Rosey's pretty waist. Mamma's talk was perpetually of
Rosey. That child was always gay, always good, always happy! That darling
girl woke with a smile on her face, it was sweet to see her! Uncle James,
in his dry way, said, he dared to say it was very pretty. "Go away, you
droll, dear old kind Uncle James!" Rosey's mamma would cry out. "You old
bachelors are wicked old things!" Uncle James used to kiss Rosey very
kindly and pleasantly. She was as modest, as gentle, as eager to please
Colonel Newcome as any little girl could be. It was pretty to see her
tripping across the room with his coffee-cup, or peeling walnuts for him
after dinner with her white plump little fingers.

Mrs. Irons, the housekeeper, naturally detested Mrs. Mackenzie, and was
jealous of her: though the latter did everything to soothe and coax the
governess of the two gentlemen's establishment. She praised her dinners,
delighted in her puddings, must beg Mrs. Irons to allow her to see one of
those delicious puddings made, and to write the receipt for her, that
Mrs. Mackenzie might use it when she was away. It was Mrs. Irons' belief
that Mrs. Mackenzie never intended to go away. She had no ideer of
ladies, as were ladies, coming into her kitchen. The maids vowed that
they heard Miss Rosa crying, and mamma scolding in her bedroom for all
she was so soft-spoken. How was that jug broke, and that chair smashed in
the bedroom, that day there was such a awful row up there?

Mrs. Mackenzie played admirably, in the old-fashioned way, dances, reels,
and Scotch and Irish tunes, the former, of which filled James Binnie's
soul with delectation. The good mother naturally desired that her darling
should have a few good lessons of the piano while she was in London.
Rosey was eternally strumming upon an instrument which had been taken
upstairs for her special practice; and the Colonel, who was always
seeking to do harmless jobs of kindness for his friends, bethought him of
little Miss Cann, the governess at Ridley's, whom he recommended as an
instructress. "Anybody whom you recommend I'm sure, dear Colonel, we
shall like," said Mrs. Mackenzie, who looked as black as thunder, and had
probably intended to have Monsieur Quatremains or Signor Twankeydillo;
and the little governess came to her pupil. Mrs. Mackenzie treated her
very gruffly and haughtily at first; but as soon as she heard Miss Cann
play, the widow was pacified--nay, charmed. Monsieur Quatremains charged
a guinea for three-quarters of an hour; while Miss Cann thankfully took
five shillings for an hour and a half; and the difference of twenty
lessons, for which dear Uncle James paid, went into Mrs. Mackenzie's
pocket, and thence probably on to her pretty shoulders and head in the
shape of a fine silk dress and a beautiful French bonnet, in which
Captain Goby said, upon his life, she didn't look twenty.

The little governess trotting home after her lesson would often look in
to Clive's studio in Charlotte Street, where her two boys, as she called
Clive and J. J., were at work each at his easel. Clive used to laugh, and
tell us, who joked him about the widow and her daughter, what Miss Cann
said about them. Mrs. Mack was not all honey, it appeared. If Rosey
played incorrectly, mamma flew at her with prodigious vehemence of
language, and sometimes with a slap on poor Rosey's back. She must make
Rosey wear tight boots, and stamp on her little feet if they refused to
enter into the slipper. I blush for the indiscretion of Miss Cann; but
she actually told J. J., that mamma insisted upon lacing her so tight, as
nearly to choke the poor little lass. Rosey did not fight: Rosey always
yielded; and the scolding over and the tears dried, would come simpering
downstairs with mamma's arm round her waist, and her pretty artless happy
smile for the gentlemen below. Besides the Scottish songs without music,
she sang ballads at the piano very sweetly. Mamma used to cry at these
ditties. "That child's voice brings tears into my eyes, Mr. Newcome," she
would say. "She has never known a moment's sorrow yet! Heaven grant,
heaven grant, she may be happy! But what shall I be when I lose her?"

"Why, my dear, when ye lose Rosey, ye'll console yourself with Josey,"
says droll Mr. Binnie from the sofa, who perhaps saw the manoeuvre of the
widow.

The widow laughs heartily and really. She places a handkerchief over her
mouth. She glances at her brother with a pair of eyes full of knowing
mischief. "Ah, dear James," she says, "you don't know what it is to have
a mother's feelings."

"I can partly understand them," says James. "Rosey, sing me that pretty
little French song." Mrs. Mackenzie's attention to Clive was really quite
affecting. If any of his friends came to the house, she took them aside
and praised Clive to them. The Colonel she adored. She had never met with
such a man or seen such a manner. The manners of the Bishop of Tobago
were beautiful, and he certainly had one of the softest and finest hands
in the world; but not finer than Colonel Newcome's. "Look at his foot!"
(and she put out her own, which was uncommonly pretty, and suddenly
withdrew it, with an arch glance meant to represent a blush)--"my shoe
would fit it! When we were at Coventry Island, Sir Peregrine Blandy, who
succeeded poor dear Sir Rawdon Crawley--I saw his dear boy was gazetted
to a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Guards last week--Sir Peregrine, who was
one of the Prince of Wales's most intimate friends, was always said to
have the finest manner and presence of any man of his day; and very grand
and noble he was, but I don't think he was equal to Colonel Newcome--I
don't really think so. Do you think so, Mr. Honeyman? What a charming
discourse that was last Sunday! I know there were two pair of eyes not
dry in the church. I could not see the other people just for crying
myself. Oh, but I wish we could have you at Musselburgh! I was bred a
Presbyterian, of course; but in much travelling through the world with my
dear husband, I came to love his church. At home we sit under Dr M'Craw,
of course; but he is so awfully long! Four hours every Sunday at least,
morning and afternoon! It nearly kills poor Rosey. Did you hear her voice
at your church? The dear girl is delighted with the chants. Rosey, were
you not delighted with the chants?"

If she is delighted with the chants, Honeyman is delighted with the
chantress and her mamma. He dashes the fair hair from his brow: he sits
down to the piano, and plays one or two of them, warbling a faint vocal
accompaniment, and looking as if he would be lifted off the screw
music-stool, and flutter up to the ceiling.

"Oh, it's just seraphic!" says the widow. "It's just the breath of
incense and the pealing of the organ at the Cathedral at Montreal. Rosey
doesn't remember Montreal. She was a wee wee child. She was born on the
voyage out, and christened at sea. You remember, Goby."

"Gad, I promised and vowed to teach her her catechism; 'gad, but I
haven't," says Captain Goby. "We were between Montreal and Quebec for
three years with the Hundredth, and the Hundred Twentieth Highlanders,
and the Thirty-third Dragoon Guards a part of the time; Fipley commanded
them, and a very jolly time we had. Much better than the West Indies,
where a fellow's liver goes to the deuce with hot pickles and sangaree.
Mackenzie was a dev'lish wild fellow," whispers Captain Goby to his
neighbour (the present biographer, indeed), "and Mrs. Mack was as
pretty a little woman as ever you set eyes on." (Captain Goby winks, and
looks peculiarly sly as he makes this statement.) "Our regiment wasn't on
your side of India, Colonel."

And in the interchange of such delightful remarks, and with music and
song, the evening passes away. "Since the house had been adorned by the
fair presence of Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter," Honeyman said, always
gallant in behaviour and flowery in expression, "it seemed as if spring
had visited it. Its hospitality was invested with a new grace; its ever
welcome little reunions were doubly charming. But why did these ladies
come, if they were to go away again? How--how would Mr. Binnie console
himself (not to mention others) if they left him in solitude?"

"We have no wish to leave my brother James in solitude," cries Mrs.
Mackenzie, frankly laughing. "We like London a great deal better than
Musselburgh."

"Oh, that we do!" ejaculates the blushing Rosey.

"And we will stay as long as ever my brother will keep us," continues the
widow.

"Uncle James is so kind and dear," says Rosey. "I hope he won't send me
and mamma away."

"He were a brute--a savage, if he did!" cries Binnie, with glances of
rapture towards the two pretty faces. Everybody liked them. Binnie
received their caresses very good-humouredly. The Colonel liked every
woman under the sun. Clive laughed and joked and waltzed alternately with
Rosey and her mamma. The latter was the briskest partner of the two. The
unsuspicious widow, poor dear innocent, would leave her girl at the
painting-room, and go shopping herself; but little J. J. also worked
there, being occupied with his second picture: and he was almost the only
one of Clive's friends whom the widow did not like. She pronounced the
quiet little painter a pert, little, obtrusive, underbred creature.

In a word, Mrs. Mackenzie was, as the phrase is, "setting her cap" so
openly at Clive, that none of us could avoid seeing her play: and Clive
laughed at her simple manoeuvres as merrily as the rest. She was a merry
little woman. We gave her and her pretty daughter a luncheon in Lamb
Court, Temple; in Sibwright's chambers--luncheon from Dick's Coffee
House--ices and dessert from Partington's in the Strand. Miss Rosey, Mr.
Sibwright, our neighbour in Lamb Court, and the Reverend Charles Honeyman
sang very delightfully after lunch; there was quite a crowd of porters,
laundresses, and boys to listen in the court; Mr. Paley was disgusted
with the noise we made--in fact, the party was perfectly successful. We
all liked the widow, and if she did set her pretty ribbons at Clive, why
should not she? We all liked the pretty, fresh, modest Rosey. Why, even
the grave old benchers in the Temple church, when the ladies visited it
on Sunday, winked their reverend eyes with pleasure, as they looked at
those two uncommonly smart, pretty, well-dressed, fashionable women.
Ladies, go to the Temple church. You will see more young men, and receive
more respectful attention there than in any place, except perhaps at
Oxford or Cambridge. Go to the Temple church--not, of course, for the
admiration which you will excite and which you cannot help; but because
the sermon is excellent, the choral services beautifully performed, and
the church so interesting as a monument of the thirteenth century, and as
it contains the tombs of those dear Knights Templars!

Mrs. Mackenzie could be grave or gay, according to her company: nor could
any woman be of more edifying behaviour when an occasional Scottish
friend bringing a letter from darling Josey, or a recommendatory letter
from Josey's grandmother, paid a visit in Fitzroy Square. Little Miss
Cann used to laugh and wink knowingly, saying, "You will never get back
your bedroom, Mr. Clive. You may be sure that Miss Josey will come in a
few months; and perhaps old Mrs. Binnie, only no doubt she and her
daughter do not agree. But the widow has taken possession of Uncle James;
and she will carry off somebody else if I am not mistaken. Should you
like a stepmother, Mr. Clive, or should you prefer a wife?"

Whether the fair lady tried her wiles upon Colonel Newcome the present
writer has no certain means of ascertaining: but I think another image
occupied his heart: and this Circe tempted him no more than a score of
other enchantresses who had tried their spells upon him. If she tried she
failed. She was a very shrewd woman, quite frank in her talk when such
frankness suited her. She said to me, "Colonel Newcome has had some great
passion, once upon a time, I am sure of that, and has no more heart to
give away. The woman who had his must have been a very lucky woman:
though I daresay she did not value what she had; or did not live to enjoy
it--or--or something or other. You see tragedies in some people's faces.
I recollect when we were in Coventry Island--there was a chaplain there--
a very good man--a Mr. Bell, and married to a pretty little woman who
died. The first day I saw him I said, 'I know that man has had a great
grief in life. I am sure that he left his heart in England.' You
gentlemen who write books, Mr. Pendennis, and stop at the third volume,
know very well that the real story often begins afterwards. My third
volume ended when I was sixteen, and was married to my poor husband. Do
you think all our adventures ended then, and that we lived happy ever
after? I live for my darling girls now. All I want is to see them
comfortable in life. Nothing can be more generous than my dear brother
James has been. I am only his half-sister, you know, and was an infant in
arms when he went away. He had differences with Captain Mackenzie, who
was headstrong and imprudent, and I own my poor dear husband was in the
wrong. James could not live with my poor mother. Neither could by
possibility suit the other. I have often, I own, longed to come and keep
house for him. His home, the society he sees, of men of talents like Mr.
Warrington and--and I won't mention names, or pay compliments to a man
who knows human nature so well as the author of Walter Lorraine: this
house is pleasanter a thousand times than Musselburgh--pleasanter for me
and my dearest Rosey, whose delicate nature shrunk and withered up in
poor mamma's society. She was never happy except in my room, the dear
child! She's all gentleness and affection. She doesn't seem to show it:
but she has the most wonderful appreciation of wit, of genius, and talent
of all kinds. She always hides her feelings, except from her fond old
mother. I went up into our room yesterday, and found her in tears. I
can't bear to see her eyes red or to think of her suffering. I asked her
what ailed her, and kissed her. She is a tender plant, Mr. Pendennis!
Heaven knows with what care I have nurtured her! She looked up smiling on
my shoulder. She looked so pretty! 'Oh, mamma,' the darling child said,
'I couldn't help it. I have been crying over Walter Lorraine.' (Enter
Rosey.) Rosey, darling! I have been telling Mr. Pendennis what a
naughty, naughty child you were yesterday, and how you read a book which
I told you you shouldn't read; for it is a very wicked book; and though
it contains some sad sad truths, it is a great deal too misanthropic (is
that the right word? I'm a poor soldier's wife, and no scholar, you
know), and a great deal too bitter; and though the reviews praise it, and
the clever people--we are poor simple country people--we won't praise it.
Sing, dearest, that little song" (profuse kisses to Rosey), "that pretty
thing that Mr. Pendennis likes."

"I am sure that I will sing anything that Mr. Pendennis likes," says
Rosey, with her candid bright eyes--and she goes to the piano and warbles
"Batti, Batti," with her sweet fresh artless voice.

More caresses follow. Mamma is in a rapture. How pretty they look--the
mother and daughter--two lilies twining together! The necessity of an
entertainment at the Temple-lunch from Dick's (as before mentioned),
dessert from Partington's, Sibwright's spoons, his boy to aid ours, nay,
Sib himself, and his rooms, which are so much more elegant than ours, and
where there is a piano and guitar: all these thoughts pass in rapid and
brilliant combination in the pleasant Mr. Pendennis's mind. How delighted
the ladies are with the proposal! Mrs. Mackenzie claps her pretty hands,
and kisses Rosey again. If osculation is a mark of love, surely Mrs. Mack
is the best of mothers. I may say, without false modesty, that our little
entertainment was most successful. The champagne was iced to a nicety.
The ladies did not perceive that our laundress, Mrs. Flanagan, was
intoxicated very early in the afternoon. Percy Sibwright sang admirably,
and with the greatest spirit, ditties in many languages. I am sure Miss
Rosey thought him (as indeed he is) one of the most fascinating young
fellows about town. To her mother's excellent accompaniment Rosey sang
her favourite songs (by the way, her stock was very small--five, I think,
was the number). Then the table was moved into a corner, where the
quivering moulds of jelly seemed to keep time to the music; and whilst
Percy played, two couple of waltzers actually whirled round the little
room. No wonder that the court below was thronged with admirers, that
Paley the reading man was in a rage, and Mrs. Flanagan in a state of
excitement. Ah! pleasant days, happy gold dingy chambers illuminated by
youthful sunshine! merry songs and kind faces--it is pleasant to recall
you. Some of those bright eyes shine no more: some of those smiling lips
do not speak. Some are not less kind, but sadder than in those days: of
which the memories revisit us for a moment, and sink back into the grey
past. The dear old Colonel beat time with great delight to the songs; the
widow lit his cigar with her own fair fingers. That was the only smoke
permitted during the entertainment--George Warrington himself not being
allowed to use his cutty-pipe--though the gay little widow said that she
had been used to smoking in the West Indies and I dare say spoke the
truth. Our entertainment lasted actually until after dark: and a
particularly neat cab being called from St. Clement's by Mr. Binnie's
boy, you may be sure we all conducted the ladies to their vehicle: and
many a fellow returning from his lonely club that evening into chambers
must have envied us the pleasure of having received two such beauties.

The clerical bachelor was not to be outdone by the gentlemen of the bar;
and the entertainment at the Temple was followed by one at Honeyman's
lodgings, which, I must own, greatly exceeded ours in splendour, for
Honeyman had his luncheon from Gunter's; and if he had been Miss Rosey's
mother, giving a breakfast to the dear girl on her marriage, the affair
could not have been more elegant and handsome. We had but two bouquets at
our entertainment; at Honeyman's there were four upon the
breakfast-table, besides a great pineapple, which must have cost the
rogue three or four guineas, and which Percy Sibwright delicately cut up.
Rosey thought the pineapple delicious. "The dear thing does not remember
the pineapples in the West Indies!" cries Mrs. Mackenzie; and she gave us
many exciting narratives of entertainments at which she had been present
at various colonial governors' tables. After luncheon, our host hoped we
should have a little music. Dancing, of course, could not be allowed.
"That," said Honeyman with his soft-bleating sigh, "were scarcely
clerical. You know, besides, you are in a hermitage; and" (with a glance
round the table) "must put up with Cenobite's fare." The fare was, as I
have said, excellent. The wine was bad, as George, and I, and Sib agreed;
and in so far we flattered ourselves that our feast altogether excelled
the parson's. The champagne especially was such stuff, that Warrington
remarked on it to his neighbour, a dark gentleman, with a tuft to his
chin, and splendid rings and chains.

The dark gentleman's wife and daughter were the other two ladies invited
by our host. The elder was splendidly dressed. Poor Mrs. Mackenzie's
simple gimcracks, though she displayed them to the most advantage, and
could make an ormolu bracelet go as far as another woman's emerald
clasps, were as nothing compared to the other lady's gorgeous jewellery.
Her fingers glittered with rings innumerable. The head of her
smelling-bottle was as big as her husband's gold snuff box, and of the
same splendid material. Our ladies, it must be confessed, came in a
modest cab from Fitzroy Square; these arrived in a splendid little open
carriage with white ponies, and harness all over brass, which the lady of
the rings drove with a whip that was a parasol. Mrs. Mackenzie, standing
at Honeyman's window, with her arm round Rosey's waist, viewed this
arrival perhaps with envy. "My dear Mr. Honeyman, whose are those
beautiful horses?" cries Rosey, with enthusiasm.

The divine says with a faint blush--"It is--ah--it is Mrs. Sherrick and
Miss Sherrick who have done me the favour to come to luncheon."

"Wine-merchant. Oh!" thinks Mrs. Mackenzie, who has seen Sherrick's brass
plate on the cellar door of Lady Whittlesea's Chapel; and hence, perhaps,
she was a trifle more magniloquent than usual, and entertained us with
stories of colonial governors and their ladies, mentioning no persons but
those who "had handles to their names," as the phrase is.

Although Sherrick had actually supplied the champagne which Warrington
abused to him in confidence, the wine-merchant was not wounded; on the
contrary, he roared with laughter at the remark, and some of us smiled
who understood the humour of the joke. As for George Warrington, he
scarce knew more about the town than the ladies opposite to him; who, yet
more innocent than George, thought the champagne very good. Mrs. Sherrick
was silent during the meal, looking constantly up at her husband, as if
alarmed and always in the habit of appealing to that gentleman, who gave
her, as I thought, knowing glances and savage winks, which made me augur
that he bullied her at home. Miss Sherrick was exceedingly handsome: she
kept the fringed curtains of her eyes constantly down; but when she
lifted them up towards Clive, who was very attentive to her (the rogue
never sees a handsome woman but to this day he continues the same
practice)--when she looked up and smiled, she was indeed a beautiful
young creature to behold--with her pale forehead, her thick arched
eyebrows, her rounded cheeks, and her full lips slightly shaded,--how
shall I mention the word?--slightly pencilled, after the manner of the
lips of the French governess, Mademoiselle Lenoir.

Percy Sibwright engaged Miss Mackenzie with his usual grace and
affability. Mrs. Mackenzie did her very utmost to be gracious, but it was
evident the party was not altogether to her liking. Poor Percy, about
whose means and expectations she had in the most natural way in the world
asked information from me, was not perhaps a very eligible admirer for
darling Rosey. She knew not that Percy can no more help gallantry than
the sun can help shining. As soon as Rosey had done eating up her
pineapple, artlessly confessing (to Percy Sibwright's inquiries) that she
preferred it to the rasps and hinnyblobs in her grandmamma's garden,
"Now, dearest Rosey," cries Mrs. Mack, "now, a little song. You promised
Mr. Pendennis a little song." Honeyman whisks open the piano in a moment.
The widow takes off her cleaned gloves (Mrs. Sherrick's were new, and of
the best Paris make), and little Rosey sings No. 1, followed by No. 2,
with very great applause. Mother and daughter entwine as they quit the
piano. "Brava! brava!" says Percy Sibwright. Does Mr. Clive Newcome say
nothing? His back is turned to the piano, and he is looking with all his
might into the eyes of Miss Sherrick.

Percy sings a Spanish seguidilla, or a German lied, or a French romance,
or a Neapolitan canzonet, which, I am bound to say, excites very little
attention. Mrs. Ridley is sending in coffee at this juncture, of which
Mrs. Sherrick partakes, with lots of sugar, as she has partaken of
numberless things before. Chicken, plovers' eggs, prawns, aspics,
jellies, creams, grapes, and what-not. Mr. Honeyman advances, and with
deep respect asks if Mrs. Sherrick and Miss Sherrick will not be
persuaded to sing? She rises and bows, and again takes off the French
gloves, and shows the large white hands glittering with rings, and,
summoning Emily her daughter, they go to the piano.

"Can she sing," whispers Mrs. Mackenzie, "can she sing after eating so
much?" Can she sing, indeed! Oh, you poor ignorant Mrs. Mackenzie! Why,
when you were in the West Indies, if you ever read the English
newspapers, you must have read of the fame of Miss Folthorpe. Mrs.
Sherrick is no other than the famous artist, who, after three years of
brilliant triumphs at the Scala, the Pergola, the San Carlo, the opera in
England, forsook her profession, rejected a hundred suitors, and married
Sherrick, who was Mr. Cox's lawyer, who failed, as everybody knows, as
manager of Drury Lane. Sherrick, like a man of spirit, would not allow
his wife to sing in public after his marriage; but in private society, of
course, she is welcome to perform: and now with her daughter, who
possesses a noble contralto voice, she takes her place royally at the
piano, and the two sing so magnificently that everybody in the room, with
one single exception, is charmed and delighted; and that little Miss Cann
herself creeps up the stairs, and stands with Mrs. Ridley at the door to
listen to the music.

Miss Sherrick looks doubly handsome as she sings. Clive Newcome is in a
rapture; so is good-natured Miss Rosey, whose little heart beats with
pleasure, and who says quite unaffectedly to Miss Sherrick, with delight
and gratitude beaming from her blue eyes, "Why did you ask me to sing,
when you sing so wonderfully, so beautifully, yourself? Do not leave the
piano, please--do sing again!" And she puts out a kind little hand
towards the superior artist, and, blushing, leads her back to the
instrument. "I'm sure me and Emily will sing for you as much as you like,
dear," says Mrs. Sherrick, nodding to Rosey good-naturedly. Mrs.
Mackenzie, who has been biting her lips and drumming the time on a
side-table, forgets at last the pain of being vanquished in admiration of
the conquerors. "It was cruel of you not to tell us, Mr. Honeyman," she
says, "of the--of the treat you had in store for us. I had no idea we
were going to meet professional people; Mrs. Sherrick's singing is indeed
beautiful."

"If you come up to our place in the Regent's Park, Mr. Newcome," Mr.
Sherrick says, "Mrs. S. and Emily will give you as many songs as you
like. How do you like the house in Fitzroy Square? Anything wanting doing
there? I'm a good landlord to a good tenant. Don't care what I spend on
my houses. Lose by 'em sometimes. Name a day when you'll come to us; and
I'll ask some good fellows to meet you. Your father and Mr. Binnie came
once. That was when you were a young chap. They didn't have a bad
evening, I believe. You just come and try us--I can give you as good a
glass of wine as most, I think," and he smiles, perhaps thinking of the
champagne which Mr. Warrington had slighted. "I've ad the close carriage
for my wife this evening," he continues, looking out of window at a very
handsome brougham which has just drawn up there. "That little pair of
horses steps prettily together, don't they? Fond of horses? I know you
are. See you in the Park; and going by our house sometimes. The Colonel
sits a horse uncommonly well: so do you, Mr. Newcome. I've often said,
'Why don't they get off their horses and say, Sherrick, we're come for a
bit of lunch and a glass of Sherry?' Name a day, sir. Mr. P., will you be
in it?"

Clive Newcome named a day, and told his father of the circumstance in the
evening. The Colonel looked grave. "There was something which I did not
quite like about Mr. Sherrick," said that acute observer of human nature.
"It was easy to see that the man is not quite a gentleman. I don't care
what a man's trade is, Clive. Indeed, who are we, to give ourselves airs
upon that subject? But when I am gone, my boy, and there is nobody near
you who knows the world as I do, you may fall into designing hands, and
rogues may lead you into mischief: keep a sharp look-out, Clive. Mr.
Pendennis, here, knows that there are designing fellows abroad" (and the
dear old gentleman gives a very knowing nod as he speaks). "When I am
gone, keep the lad from harm's way, Pendennis. Meanwhile Mr. Sherrick has
been a very good and obliging landlord; and a man who sells wine may
certainly give a friend a bottle. I am glad you had a pleasant evening,
boys. Ladies, I hope you have had a pleasant afternoon. Miss Rosey, you
are come back to make tea for the old gentlemen? James begins to get
about briskly now. He walked to Hanover Square, Mrs. Mackenzie, without
hurting his ankle in the least."

"I am almost sorry that he is getting well," says Mrs. Mackenzie
sincerely. "He won't want us when he is quite cured."

"Indeed, my dear creature!" cries the Colonel, taking her pretty hand and
kissing it; "he will want you, and he shall want you. James no more knows
the world than Miss Rosey here; and if I had not been with him, would
have been perfectly unable to take care of himself. When I am gone to
India, somebody must stay with him; and--and my boy must have a home to
go to," says the kind soldier, his voice dropping. "I had been in hopes
that his own relatives would have received him more, but never mind about
that," he cried more cheerfully. "Why, I may not be absent a year! I
perhaps need not go at all--I am second for promotion. A couple of our
old generals may drop any day; and when I get my regiment I come back to
stay, to live at home. Meantime, whilst I am gone, my dear lady, you will
take care of James; and you will be kind to my boy."

"That I will!" said the widow, radiant with pleasure, and she took one of
Clive's hands and pressed it for an instant; and from Clive's father's
kind face there beamed out that benediction which always made his
countenance appear to me among the most beautiful of human faces.




CHAPTER XXIV

In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity


His narrative, as the judicious reader no doubt is aware, is written
maturely and at ease, long after the voyage is over, whereof it recounts
the adventures and perils; the winds adverse and favourable; the storms,
shoals, shipwrecks, islands, and so forth, which Clive Newcome met in his
early journey in life. In such a history events follow each other without
necessarily having a connection with one another. One ship crosses
another ship, and after a visit from one captain to his comrade, they
sail away each on his course. The Clive Newcome meets a vessel which
makes signals that she is short of bread and water; and after supplying
her, our captain leaves her to see her no more. One or two of the vessels
with which we commenced the voyage together, part company in a gale, and
founder miserably; others, after being wofully battered in the tempest,
make port, or are cast upon surprising islands where all sorts of
unlooked-for prosperity awaits the lucky crew. Also, no doubt, the writer
of the book, into whose hands Clive Newcome's logs have been put, and who
is charged with the duty of making two octavo volumes out of his friend's
story, dresses up the narrative in his own way; utters his own remarks in
place of Newcome's; makes fanciful descriptions of individuals and
incidents with which he never could have been personally acquainted; and
commits blunders, which the critics will discover. A great number of the
descriptions in Cook's Voyages, for instance, were notoriously invented
by Dr. Hawkesworth, who "did" the book: so in the present volumes, where
dialogues are written down, which the reporter could by no possibility
have heard, and where motives are detected which the persons actuated by
them certainly never confided to the writer, the public must once for all
be warned that the author's individual fancy very likely supplies much of
the narrative; and that he forms it as best he may, out of stray papers,
conversations reported to him, and his knowledge, right or wrong, of the
characters of the persons engaged. And, as is the case with the most
orthodox histories, the writer's own guesses or conjectures are printed
in exactly the same type as the most ascertained patent facts. I fancy,
for my part, that the speeches attributed to Clive, the Colonel, and the
rest, are as authentic as the orations in Sallust or Livy, and only
implore the truth-loving public to believe that incidents here told, and
which passed very probably without witnesses, were either confided to me
subsequently as compiler of this biography, or are of such a nature that
they must have happened from what we know happened after. For example,
when you read such words as QVE ROMANVS on a battered Roman stone, your
profound antiquarian knowledge enables you to assert that SENATVS POPVLVS
was also inscribed there at some time or other. You take a mutilated
statue of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, or Virorum, and you pop him on a wanting
hand, an absent foot, or a nose which time or barbarians have defaced.
You tell your tales as you can, and state the facts as you think they
must have been. In this manner, Mr. James (historiographer to Her
Majesty), Titus Livius, Professor Alison, Robinson Crusoe, and all
historians proceeded. Blunders there must be in the best of these
narratives, and more asserted than they can possibly know or vouch for.

To recur to our own affairs, and the subject at present in hand, I am
obliged here to supply from conjecture a few points of the history, which
I could not know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us say, is
Romanus, and we must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription. After
Mrs. Mackenzie and her pretty daughter had been for a few months in
London, which they did not think of quitting, although Mr. Binnie's
wounded little leg was now as well and as brisk as ever it had been, a
redintegration of love began to take place between the Colonel and his
relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that there had ever been a
quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was not a man to talk
at length of any such matter; though a word or two occasionally dropped
in conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons who chose to
interest themselves about his family affairs to form their own opinions
concerning them. After that visit of the Colonel and his son to Newcome,
Ethel was constantly away with her grandmother. The Colonel went to see
his pretty little favourite at Brighton, and once, twice, thrice, Lady
Kew's door was denied to him. The knocker of that door could not be more
fierce than the old lady's countenance, when Newcome met her in her
chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the loveliest of a charming
Amazonian squadron, led by Mr. Whiskin, the riding-master, when the
Colonel encountered his pretty Ethel, she greeted him affectionately, it
is true; there was still the sweet look of candour and love in her eyes;
but when he rode up to her she looked so constrained, when he talked
about Clive, so reserved, when he left her, so sad, that he could not but
feel pain and commiseration. Back he went to London, having in a week
only caught this single glance of his darling.

This event occurred while Clive was painting his picture of the "Battle
of Assaye" before mentioned, during the struggles incident on which
composition he was not thinking much about Miss Ethel, or his papa, or
any other subject but his great work. Whilst Assaye was still in
progress, Thomas Newcome must have had an explanation with his
sister-in-law, Lady Anne, to whom he frankly owned the hopes which he had
entertained for Clive, and who must as frankly have told the Colonel that
Ethel's family had very different views for that young lady to those
which the simple Colonel had formed. A generous early attachment, the
Colonel thought, is the safeguard of a young man. To love a noble girl;
to wait a while and struggle, and haply do some little achievement in
order to win her; the best task to which his boy could set himself. If
two young people so loving each other were to marry on rather narrow
means, what then? A happy home was better than the finest house in
Mayfair; a generous young fellow, such as, please God, his son was--
loyal, upright, and a gentleman--might pretend surely to his kinswoman's
hand without derogation; and the affection he bore Ethel himself was so
great, and the sweet regard with which she returned it, that the simple
father thought his kindly project was favoured by Heaven, and prayed for
its fulfilment, and pleased himself to think, when his campaigns were
over, and his sword hung on the wall, what a beloved daughter he might
have to soothe and cheer his old age. With such a wife for his son, and
child for himself, he thought the happiness of his last years might repay
him for friendless boyhood, lonely manhood, and cheerless exile; and he
imparted his simple scheme to Ethel's mother, who no doubt was touched as
he told his story; for she always professed regard and respect for him,
and in the differences which afterwards occurred in the family, and the
quarrels which divided the brothers, still remained faithful to the good
Colonel.

But Barnes Newcome, Esquire, was the bead of the house, and the governor
of his father and all Sir Brian's affairs; and Barnes Newcome, Esquire,
hated his cousin Clive, and spoke of him as a beggarly painter, an
impudent snob, an infernal young puppy, and so forth; and Barnes with his
usual freedom of language imparted his opinions to his Uncle Hobson at
the bank, and Uncle Hobson carried them home to Mrs. Newcome in
Bryanstone Square; and Mrs. Newcome took an early opportunity of telling
the Colonel her opinion on the subject, and of bewailing that love for
aristocracy which she saw actuated some folks; and the Colonel was
brought to see that Barnes was his boy's enemy, and words very likely
passed between them, for Thomas Newcome took a new banker at this time,
and, as Clive informed me, was in very great dudgeon because Hobson
Brothers wrote to him to say that he had overdrawn his account. "I am
sure there is some screw loose," the sagacious youth remarked to me; "and
the Colonel and the people in Park Lane are at variance, because he goes
there very little now; and he promised to go to Court when Ethel was
presented, and he didn't go."

Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie's niece and sister in Fitzroy
Square, the fraternal quarrel between the Newcomes must have come to an
end--for that time at least--and was followed by a rather ostentatious
reconciliation. And pretty little Rosey Mackenzie was the innocent and
unconscious cause of this amiable change in the minds of the three
brethren, as I gathered from a little conversation with Mrs. Newcome, who
did me the honour to invite me to her table. As she had not vouchsafed
this hospitality to me for a couple of years previously, and perfectly
stifled me with affability when we met,--as her invitation came quite at
the end of the season, when almost everybody was out of town, and a
dinner to a man is no compliment,--I was at first for declining this
invitation, and spoke of it with great scorn when Mr. Newcome orally
delivered it to me at Bays's Club.

"What," said I, turning round to an old man of the world, who happened to
be in the room at the time, "what do these people mean by asking a fellow
to dinner in August, and taking me up after dropping me for two years?"

"My good fellow," says my friend--it was my kind old Uncle Major
Pendennis, indeed--"I have lived long enough about town never to ask
myself questions of that sort. In the world people drop you and take you
up every day. You know Lady Cheddar by sight? I have known her husband
for forty years: I have stayed with them in the country, for weeks at a
time. She knows me as well as she knows King Charles at Charing Cross,
and a doosid deal better, and yet for a whole season she will drop me--
pass me by, as if there was no such person in the world. Well, sir, what
do I do? I never see her. I give you my word I am never conscious of her
existence; and if I meet her at dinner, I'm no more aware of her than the
fellows in the play are of Banquo. What's the end of it? She comes round
--only last Toosday she came round--and said Lord Cheddar wanted me to go
down to Wiltshire. I asked after the family (you know Henry Churningham
is engaged to Miss Rennet?--a doosid good match for the Cheddars). We
shook hands and are as good friends as ever. I don't suppose she'll cry
when I die, you know," said the worthy old gentleman with a grin. "Nor
shall I go into very deep mourning if anything happens to her. You were
quite right to say to Newcome that you did not know whether you were free
or not, and would look at your engagements when you got home, and give
him an answer. A fellow of that rank has no right to give himself airs.
But they will, sir. Some of those bankers are as high and mighty as the
oldest families. They marry noblemen's daughters, by Jove, and think
nothing is too good for 'em. But I should go, if I were you, Arthur. I
dined there a couple of months ago; and the bankeress said something
about you: that you and her nephew were much together, that you were sad
wild dogs, I think--something of that sort. 'Gad, ma'am,' says I, 'boys
will be boys.' 'And they grow to be men!' says she, nodding her head.
Queer little woman, devilish pompous. Dinner confoundedly long, stoopid,
scientific."

The old gentleman was on this day inclined to be talkative and
confidential, and I set down some more remarks which he made concerning
my friends. "Your Indian Colonel," says he, "seems a worthy man." The
Major quite forgot having been in India himself, unless he was in company
with some very great personage. "He don't seem to know much of the world,
and we are not very intimate. Fitzroy Square is a dev'lish long way off
for a fellow to go for a dinner, and entre nous, the dinner is rather
queer and the company still more so. It's right for you who are a
literary man to see all sorts of people; but I'm different, you know, so
Newcome and I are not very thick together. They say he wanted to marry
your friend to Lady Anne's daughter, an exceedingly fine girl; one of the
prettiest girls come out this season. I hear the young men say so. And
that shows how monstrous ignorant of the world Colonel Newcome is. His
son could no more get that girl than he could marry one of the royal
princesses. Mark my words, they intend Miss Newcome for Lord Kew. Those
banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Kew will sow his wild
oats, and they'll marry her to him; or if not to him, to some man of high
rank. His father Walham was a weak young man; but his grandmother, old
Lady Kew, is a monstrous clever old woman, too severe with her children,
one of whom ran away and married a poor devil without a shilling. Nothing
could show a more deplorable ignorance of the world than poor Newcome
supposing his son could make such a match as that with his cousin. Is it
true that he is going to make his son an artist? I don't know what the
dooce the world is coming to. An artist! By gad, in my time a fellow
would as soon have thought of making his son a hairdresser, or a
pastrycook, by gad." And the worthy Major gives his nephew two fingers,
and trots off to the next club in St. James's Street, of which he is a
member.

The virtuous hostess of Bryanstone Square was quite civil and
good-humoured when Mr. Pendennis appeared at her house; and my surprise
was not inconsiderable when I found the whole party from Saint Pancras
there assembled--Mr. Binnie; the Colonel and his son; Mrs. Mackenzie,
looking uncommonly handsome and perfectly well-dressed; and Miss Rosey,
in pink crape, with pearly shoulders and blushing cheeks, and beautiful
fair ringlets--as fresh and comely a sight as it was possible to witness.
Scarcely had we made our bows, and shaken our hands, and imparted our
observations about the fineness of the weather, when, behold! as we look
from the drawing-room windows into the cheerful square of Bryanstone, a
great family coach arrives, driven by a family coachman in a family wig,
and we recognise Lady Anne Newcome's carriage, and see her ladyship, her
mother, her daughter, and her husband, Sir Brian, descend from the
vehicle. "It is quite a family party," whispers the happy Mrs. Newcome to
the happy writer conversing with her in the niche of the window. "Knowing
your intimacy with our brother, Colonel Newcome, we thought it would
please him to meet you here. Will you be so kind as to take Miss Newcome
to dinner?"

Everybody was bent upon being happy and gracious. It was "My dear
brother, how do you do?" from Sir Brian. "My dear Colonel, how glad we
are to see you! how well you look!" from Lady Anne. Miss Newcome ran up
to him with both hands out, and put her beautiful face so close to his
that I thought, upon my conscience, she was going to kiss him. And Lady
Kew, advancing in the frankest manner, with a smile, I must own, rather
awful, playing round her many wrinkles, round her ladyship's hooked nose,
and displaying her ladyship's teeth (a new and exceedingly handsome set),
held out her hand to Colonel Newcome, and said briskly, "Colonel, it is
an age since we met." She turns to Clive with equal graciousness and
good-humour, and says, "Mr. Clive, let me shake hands with you; I have
heard all sorts of good of you, that you have been painting the most
beautiful things, that you are going to be quite famous." Nothing can
exceed the grace and kindness of Lady Anne Newcome towards Mrs.
Mackenzie: the pretty widow blushes with pleasure at this greeting; and
now Lady Anne must be introduced to Mrs. Mackenzie's charming daughter,
and whispers in the delighted mother's ear, "She is lovely!" Rosey comes
up looking rosy indeed, and executes a pretty curtsey with a great deal
of blushing grace.

Ethel has been so happy to see her dear uncle, that as yet she has had no
eyes for any one else, until Clive advancing, those bright eyes become
brighter still with surprise and pleasure as she beholds him. For being
absent with his family in Italy now, and not likely to see this biography
for many many months, I may say that he is a much handsomer fellow than
our designer has represented; and if that wayward artist should take this
very scene for the purpose of illustration, he is requested to bear in
mind that the hero of this story will wish to have justice done to his
person. There exists in Mr. Newcome's possession a charming little
pencil-drawing of Clive at this age, and which Colonel Newcome took with
him when he went--whither he is about to go in a very few pages--and
brought back with him to this country. A florid apparel becomes some men,
as simple raiment suits others, and Clive in his youth was of the
ornamental class of mankind--a customer to tailors, a wearer of handsome
rings, shirt-studs, mustachios, long hair, and the like; nor could he
help, in his costume or his nature, being picturesque and generous and
splendid. He was always greatly delighted with that Scotch man-at-arms in
Quentin Durward, who twists off an inch or two of his gold chain to treat
a friend and pay for a bottle. He would give a comrade a ring or a fine
jewelled pin, if he had no money. Silver dressing-cases and brocade
morning-gowns were in him a sort of propriety at this season of his
youth. It was a pleasure to persons of colder temperament to sun
themselves in the warmth of his bright looks and generous humour. His
laughter cheered one like wine. I do not know that he was very witty; but
he was pleasant. He was prone to blush: the history of a generous trait
moistened his eyes instantly. He was instinctively fond of children, and
of the other sex from one year old to eighty. Coming from the Derby once
--a merry party--and stopped on the road from Epsom in a lock of
carriages, during which the people in the carriage ahead saluted us with
many vituperative epithets, and seized the heads of our leaders,--Clive
in a twinkling jumped off the box, and the next minute we saw him engaged
with a half-dozen of the enemy: his hat gone, his fair hair flying off
his face, his blue eyes flashing with fire, his lips and nostrils
quivering wrath, his right and left hand hitting out, que c'etoit un
plaisir voir. His father sat back in the carriage, looking with delight
and wonder--indeed it was a great sight. Policeman X separated the
warriors. Clive ascended the box again with a dreadful wound in the coat,
which was gashed from the waist to the shoulder. I hardly ever saw the
elder Newcome in such a state of triumph. The postboys quite stared at
the gratuity he gave them, and wished they might drive his lordship to
the Oaks.

All the time we have been making this sketch Ethel is standing, looking
at Clive; and the blushing youth casts down his eyes before hers. Her
face assumes a look of arch humour. She passes a slim hand over the
prettiest lips and a chin with the most lovely of dimples, thereby
indicating her admiration of Mr. Clive's mustachios and imperial. They
are of a warm yellowish chestnut colour, and have not yet known the
razor. He wears a low cravat; a shirt-front of the finest lawn, with ruby
buttons. His hair, of a lighter colour, waves almost to his "manly
shoulders broad." "Upon my word; my dear Colonel," says Lady Kew, after
looking at him, and nodding her head shrewdly, "I think we were right."

"No doubt right in everything your ladyship does, but in what
particularly?" asks the Colonel.

"Right to keep him out of the way. Ethel has been disposed of these ten
years. Did not Anne tell you? How foolish of her! But all mothers like to
have young men dying for their daughters. Your son is really the
handsomest boy in London. Who is that conceited-looking young man in the
window? Mr. Pen--what? has your son really been very wicked? I was told
he was a sad scapegrace."

"I never knew him do, and I don't believe he ever thought, anything that
was untrue, or unkind, or ungenerous," says the Colonel. "If any one has
belied my boy to you, and I think I know who his enemy has been----"

"The young lady is very pretty," remarks Lady Kew, stopping the Colonel's
further outbreak. "How very young her mother looks! Ethel, my dear!
Colonel Newcome must present us to Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Mackenzie;"
and Ethel, giving a nod to Clive, with whom she has talked for a minute
or two, again puts her hand in her uncle's, and walks towards Mrs.
Mackenzie and her daughter.

And now let the artist, if he has succeeded in drawing Clive to his
liking, cut a fresh pencil, and give us a likeness of Ethel. She is
seventeen years old; rather taller than the majority of women; of a
countenance somewhat grave and haughty, but on occasion brightening with
humour or beaming with kindliness and affection. Too quick to detect
affectation or insincerity in others, too impatient of dulness or
pomposity, she is more sarcastic now than she became when after years of
suffering had softened her nature. Truth looks out of her bright eyes,
and rises up armed, and flashes scorn or denial, perhaps too readily,
when she encounters flattery, or meanness, or imposture. After her first
appearance in the world, if the truth must be told, this young lady was
popular neither with many men, nor with most women. The innocent dancing
youth who pressed round her, attracted by her beauty, were rather afraid,
after a while, of engaging her. This one felt dimly that she despised
him; another, that his simpering commonplaces (delights of how many
well-bred maidens!) only occasioned Miss Newcome's laughter. Young Lord
Croesus, whom all maidens and matrons were eager to secure, was astounded
to find that he was utterly indifferent to her, and that she would refuse
him twice or thrice in an evening, and dance as many times with poor Tom
Spring, who was his father's ninth son, and only at home till he could
get a ship and go to sea again. The young women were frightened at her
sarcasm. She seemed to know what fadaises they whispered to their
partners as they paused in the waltzes; and Fanny, who was luring Lord
Croesus towards her with her blue eyes, dropped them guiltily to the
floor when Ethel's turned towards her; and Cecilia sang more out of time
than usual; and Clara, who was holding Freddy, and Charley, and Tommy
round her enchanted by her bright conversation and witty mischief, became
dumb and disturbed when Ethel passed her with her cold face; and old Lady
Hookham, who was playing off her little Minnie now at young Jack Gorget
of the Guards, now at the eager and simple Bob Bateson of the
Coldstreams, would slink off when Ethel made her appearance on the
ground, whose presence seemed to frighten away the fish and the angler.
No wonder that the other Mayfair nymphs were afraid of this severe Diana,
whose looks were so cold and whose arrows were so keen.

But those who had no cause to heed Diana's shot or coldness might admire
her beauty; nor could the famous Parisian marble, which Clive said she
resembled, be more perfect in form than this young lady. Her hair and
eyebrows were jet black (these latter may have been too thick according
to some physiognomists, giving rather a stern expression to the eyes, and
hence causing those guilty ones to tremble who came under her lash), but
her complexion was as dazzlingly fair and her cheeks as red as Miss
Rosey's own, who had a right to those beauties, being a blonde by nature.
In Miss Ethel's black hair there was a slight natural ripple, as when a
fresh breeze blows over the melan hudor--a ripple such as Roman ladies
nineteen hundred years ago, and our own beauties a short time since,
endeavoured to imitate by art, paper, and I believe crumpling-irons. Her
eyes were grey; her mouth rather large; her teeth as regular and bright
as Lady Kew's own; her voice low and sweet; and her smile, when it
lighted up her face and eyes, as beautiful as spring sunshine; also they
could lighten and flash often, and sometimes, though rarely, rain. As for
her figure--but as this tall slender form is concealed in a simple white
muslin robe (of the sort which I believe is called demi-toilette), in
which her fair arms are enveloped, and which is confined at her slim
waist by an azure ribbon, and descends to her feet--let us make a
respectful bow to that fair image of Youth, Health, and Modesty, and
fancy it as pretty as we will. Miss Ethel made a very stately curtsey to
Mrs. Mackenzie, surveying that widow calmly, so that the elder lady
looked up and fluttered; but towards Rosey she held out her hand, and
smiled with the utmost kindness, and the smile was returned by the other;
and the blushes with which Miss Mackenzie was always ready at this time,
became her very much. As for Mrs. Mackenzie--the very largest curve that
shall not be a caricature, and actually disfigure the widow's
countenance--a smile so wide and steady, so exceedingly rident, indeed,
as almost to be ridiculous, may be drawn upon her buxom face, if the
artist chooses to attempt it as it appeared during the whole of this
summer evening, before dinner came (when people ordinarily look very
grave), when she was introduced to the company: when she was made known
to our friends Julia and Maria,--the darling child, lovely little dears!
how like their papa and mamma!--when Sir Brian Newcome gave her his arm
downstairs to the dining-room when anybody spoke to her: when John
offered her meat, or the gentleman in the white waistcoat, wine; when she
accepted or when she refused these refreshments; when Mr. Newcome told
her a dreadfully stupid story; when the Colonel called cheerily from his
end of the table, "My dear Mrs. Mackenzie, you don't take any wine
to-day; may I not have the honour of drinking a glass of champagne with
you?" when the new boy from the country upset some sauce upon her
shoulder: when Mrs. Newcome made the sign for departure; and I have no
doubt in the drawing-room, when the ladies retired thither. "Mrs. Mack is
perfectly awful," Clive told me afterwards, "since that dinner in
Bryanstone Square. Lady Kew and Lady Anne are never out of her mouth; she
has had white muslin dresses made just like Ethel's for herself and her
daughter. She has bought a Peerage, and knows the pedigree of the whole
Kew family. She won't go out in a cab now without the boy on the box; and
in the plate for the cards which she has established in the drawing-room,
you know, Lady Kew's pasteboard always will come up to the top, though I
poke it down whenever I go into the room. As for poor Lady Trotter, the
governess of St. Kitt's, you know, and the Bishop of Tobago, they are
quite bowled out: Mrs. Mack has not mentioned them for a week."

During the dinner it seemed to me that the lovely young lady by whom I
sate cast many glances towards Mrs. Mackenzie, which did not betoken
particular pleasure. Miss Ethel asked me several questions regarding
Clive, and also respecting Miss Mackenzie: perhaps her questions were
rather downright and imperious, and she patronised me in a manner that
would not have given all gentlemen pleasure. I was Clive's friend, his
schoolfellow? had I seen him a great deal? know him very well--very well
indeed? Was it true that he had been very thoughtless? very wild? Who
told her so? That was not her question (with a blush). It was not true,
and I ought to know? He was not spoiled? He was very good-natured,
generous, told the truth? He loved his profession very much, and had
great talent? Indeed she was very glad. Why do they sneer at his
profession? It seemed to her quite as good as her father's and brother's.
Were artists not very dissipated? Not more so, nor often so much as other
young men? Was Mr. Binnie rich, and was he going to leave all his money
to his niece? How long have you known them? Is Miss Mackenzie as
good-natured as she looks? Not very clever, I suppose. Mrs. Mackenzie
looks very--No, thank you, no more. Grandmamma (she is very deaf, and
cannot hear) scolded me for reading the book you wrote, and took the book
away. I afterwards got it, and read it all. I don't think there was any
harm in it. Why do you give such bad characters of women? Don't you know
any good ones? Yes, two as good as any in the world. They are unselfish:
they are pious; they are always doing good; they live in the country? Why
don't you put them into a book? Why don't you put my uncle into a book?
He is so good, that nobody could make him good enough. Before I came out,
I heard a young lady--(Lady Clavering's daughter, Miss Amory) sing a song
of yours. I have never spoken to an author before. I saw Mr. Lyon at Lady
Popinjoy's, and heard him speak. He said it was very hot, and he looked
so, I am sure. Who is the greatest author now alive? You will tell me
when you come upstairs after dinner;--and the young lady sails away,
following the matrons, who rise and ascend to the drawing-room. Miss
Newcome has been watching the behaviour of the author by whom she sate;
curious to know what such a person's habits are; whether he speaks and
acts like other people; and in what respect authors are different from
persons "in society."

When we had sufficiently enjoyed claret and politics below-stairs, the
gentlemen went to the drawing-room to partake of coffee and the ladies'
delightful conversation. We had heard previously the tinkling of the
piano above, and the well-known sound of a couple of Miss Rosey's five
songs. The two young ladies were engaged over an album at a side-table,
when the males of the party arrived. The book contained a number of
Clive's drawings made in the time of his very early youth for the
amusement of his little cousins. Miss Ethel seemed to be very much
pleased with these performances, which Miss Mackenzie likewise examined
with great good-nature and satisfaction. So she did the views of Rome,
Naples, Marble Hill in the county of Sussex, etc., in the same
collection: so she did the Berlin cockatoo and spaniel which Mrs. Newcome
was working in idle moments: so she did the "Books of Beauty," "Flowers
of Loveliness," and so forth. She thought the prints very sweet and
pretty: she thought the poetry very pretty and sweet. Which did she like
best, Mr. Niminy's "Lines to a bunch of violets," or Miss Piminy's
"Stanzas to a wreath of roses"? Miss Mackenzie was quite puzzled to say
which of these masterpieces she preferred; she found them alike so
pretty. She appealed, as in most cases, to mamma. "How, my darling love,
can I pretend to know?" mamma says. "I have been a soldier's wife,
battling about the world. I have not had your advantages. I had no
drawing-masters, nor music-masters as you have. You, dearest child, must
instruct me in these things." This poses Rosey: who prefers to have her
opinions dealt out to her like her frocks, bonnets, handkerchiefs, her
shoes and gloves, and the order thereof; the lumps of sugar for her tea,
the proper quantity of raspberry jam for breakfast; who trusts for all
supplies corporeal and spiritual to her mother. For her own part, Rosey
is pleased with everything in nature. Does she love music? Oh, yes.
Bellini and Donizetti? Oh, yes. Dancing? They had no dancing at
grandmamma's, but she adores dancing, and Mr. Clive dances very well
indeed. (A smile from Miss Ethel at this admission.) Does she like the
country? Oh, she is so happy in the country! London? London is
delightful, and so is the seaside. She does not really know which she
likes best, London or the country, for mamma is not near her to decide,
being engaged listening to Sir Brian, who is laying down the law to her,
and smiling, smiling with all her might. In fact, Mr. Newcome says to Mr.
Pendennis in his droll, humorous way, "That woman grins like a Cheshire
cat." Who was the naturalist who first discovered that peculiarity of the
cats in Cheshire?

In regard to Miss Mackenzie's opinions, then, it is not easy to discover
that they are decided, or profound, or original; but it seems pretty
clear that she has a good temper, and a happy contented disposition. And
the smile which her pretty countenance wears shows off to great advantage
the two dimples on her pink cheeks. Her teeth are even and white, her
hair of a beautiful colour, and no snow can be whiter than her fair round
neck and polished shoulders. She talks very kindly and good-naturedly
with Julia and Maria (Mrs. Hobson's precious ones) until she is
bewildered by the statements which those young ladies make regarding
astronomy, botany, and chemistry, all of which they are studying. "My
dears, I don't know a single word about any of these abstruse subjects: I
wish I did," she says. And Ethel Newcome laughs. She too is ignorant upon
all these subjects. "I am glad there is some one else," says Rosey, with
naivete, "who is as ignorant as I am." And the younger children, with a
solemn air, say they will ask mamma leave to teach her. So everybody,
somehow, great or small, seems to protect her; and the humble, simple,
gentle little thing wins a certain degree of goodwill from the world,
which is touched by her humility and her pretty sweet looks. The servants
in Fitzroy Square waited upon her much more kindly than upon her smiling
bustling mother. Uncle James is especially fond of his little Rosey. Her
presence in his study never discomposes him; whereas his sister fatigues
him with the exceeding activity of her gratitude, and her energy in
pleasing. As I was going away, I thought I heard Sir Brian Newcome say,
"It" (but what "it" was, of course I cannot conjecture)--"it will do very
well. The mother seems a superior woman."




CHAPTER XXV

Is passed in a Public-house


I had no more conversation with Miss Newcome that night, who had
forgotten her curiosity about the habits of authors. When she had ended
her talk with Miss Mackenzie, she devoted the rest of the evening to her
uncle, Colonel Newcome; and concluded by saying, "And now you will come
and ride with me to-morrow, uncle, won't you?" which the Colonel
faithfully promised to do. And she shook hands with Clive very kindly:
and with Rosey very frankly, but as I thought with rather a patronising
air: and she made a very stately bow to Mrs. Mackenzie, and so departed
with her father and mother. Lady Kew had gone away earlier. Mrs.
Mackenzie informed us afterwards that the Countess had gone to sleep
after her dinner. If it was at Mrs. Mack's story about the Governor's
ball at Tobago, and the quarrel for precedence between the Lord Bishop's
lady, Mrs. Rotchet, and the Chief Justice's wife, Lady Barwise, I should
not be at all surprised.

A handsome fly carried off the ladies to Fitzroy Square, and the two
worthy Indian gentlemen in their company; Clive and I walking, with the
usual Havannah to light us home. And Clive remarked that he supposed
there had been some difference between his father and the bankers: for
they had not met for ever so many months before, and the Colonel always
had looked very gloomy when his brothers were mentioned. "And I can't
help thinking," says the astute youth, "that they fancied I was in love
with Ethel (I know the Colonel would have liked me to make up to her),
and that may have occasioned the row. Now, I suppose, they think I am
engaged to Rosey. What the deuce are they in such a hurry to marry me
for?"

Clive's companion remarked, "that marriage was a laudable institution:
and an honest attachment an excellent conservator of youthful morals." On
which Clive replied, "Why don't you marry yourself?"

This it was justly suggested was no argument, but a merely personal
allusion foreign to the question, which was, that marriage was laudable,
etc.

Mr. Clive laughed. "Rosey is as good a little creature as can be," he
said. "She is never out of temper, though I fancy Mrs. Mackenzie tries
her. I don't think she is very wise: but she is uncommonly pretty, and
her beauty grows on you. As for Ethel, anything so high and mighty I have
never seen since I saw the French giantess. Going to Court, and about to
parties every night where a parcel of young fools flatter her, has
perfectly spoiled her. By Jove, how handsome she is! How she turns with
her long neck, and looks at you from under those black eyebrows! If I
painted her hair, I think I should paint it almost blue, and then glaze
over with lake. It is blue. And how finely her head is joined on to her
shoulders!"--And he waves in the air an imaginary line with his cigar.
"She would do for Judith, wouldn't she? Or how grand she would look as
Herodias's daughter sweeping down a stair--in a great dress of
cloth-of-gold like Paul Veronese--holding a charger before her with white
arms, you know--with the muscles accented like that glorious Diana at
Paris--a savage smile on her face and a ghastly solemn gory head on the
dish. I see the picture, sir, I see the picture!" and he fell to curling
his mustachios just like his brave old father.

I could not help laughing at the resemblance, and mentioning it to my
friend. He broke, as was his wont, into a fond eulogium of his sire,
wished he could be like him--worked himself up into another state of
excitement, in which he averred "that if his father wanted him to marry,
he would marry that instant. And why not Rosey? She is a dear little
thing. Or why not that splendid Miss Sherrick? What ahead!--a regular
Titian! I was looking at the difference of their colour at Uncle
Honeyman's that day of the dejeuner. The shadows in Rosey's face, sir,
are all pearly-tinted. You ought to paint her in milk, sir!" cries the
enthusiast. "Have you ever remarked the grey round her eyes, and the sort
of purple bloom of her cheek? Rubens could have done the colour: but I
don't somehow like to think of a young lady and that sensuous old Peter
Paul in company. I look at her like a little wild-flower in a field--like
a little child at play, sir. Pretty little tender nursling! If I see her
passing in the street, I feel as if I would like some fellow to be rude
to her, that I might have the pleasure of knocking him down. She is like
a little songbird, sir,--a tremulous, fluttering little linnet that you
would take into your hand, pavidam quaerentem matrem, and smooth its
little plumes, and let it perch on your finger and sing. The Sherrick
creates quite a different sentiment--the Sherrick is splendid, stately,
sleepy----"

"Stupid," hints Clive's companion.

"Stupid! Why not? Some women ought to be stupid. What you call dulness I
call repose. Give me a calm woman, a slow woman,--a lazy, majestic woman.
Show me a gracious virgin bearing a lily: not a leering giggler frisking
a rattle. A lively woman would be the death of me. Look at Mrs. Mack,
perpetually nodding, winking, grinning, throwing out signals which you
are to be at the trouble to answer! I thought her delightful for three
days; I declare I was in love with her--that is, as much as I can be
after--but never mind that, I feel I shall never be really in love again.
Why shouldn't the Sherrick be stupid, I say? About great beauty there
should always reign a silence. As you look at the great stars, the great
ocean, any great scene of nature: you hush, sir. You laugh at a
pantomime, but you are still in a temple. When I saw the great Venus of
the Louvre, I thought--Wert thou alive, O goddess, thou shouldst never
open those lovely lips but to speak lowly, slowly: thou shouldst never
descend from that pedestal but to walk stately to some near couch, and
assume another attitude of beautiful calm. To be beautiful is enough. If
a woman can do that well: who shall demand more from her? You don't want
a rose to sing. And I think wit is out of place where there's great
beauty; as I wouldn't have a Queen to cut jokes on her throne. I say,
Pendennis,"--here broke off the enthusiastic youth,--"have you got
another cigar? Shall we go into Finch's, and have a game at billiards?
Just one--it's quite early yet. Or shall we go in the Haunt? It's
Wednesday night, you know, when all the boys go." We tap at a door in an
old, old street in Soho: an old maid with a kind, comical face opens the
door, and nods friendly, and says, "How do, sir? ain't seen you this ever
so long. How do, Mr. Noocom?" "Who's here?" "Most everybody's here." We
pass by a little snug bar, in which a trim elderly lady is seated by a
great fire, on which boils an enormous kettle; while two gentlemen are
attacking a cold saddle of mutton and West India pickles: hard by Mrs.
Nokes the landlady's elbow--with mutual bows--we recognise Hickson, the
sculptor, and Morgan, the intrepid Irish chieftain, chief of the
reporters of the Morning Press newspaper. We pass through a passage into
a back room, and are received with a roar of welcome from a crowd of men,
almost invisible in the smoke.

"I am right glad to see thee, boy!" cries a cheery voice (that will never
troll a chorus more). "We spake anon of thy misfortune, gentle youth! and
that thy warriors of Assaye have charged the Academy in vain. Mayhap thou
frightenedst the courtly school with barbarous visages of grisly war.--
Pendennis, thou dost wear a thirsty look! Resplendent swell! untwine thy
choker white, and I will either stand a glass of grog, or thou shalt pay
the like for me, my lad, and tell us of the fashionable world." Thus
spake the brave old Tom Sarjent,--also one of the Press, one of the old
boys: a good old scholar with a good old library of books, who had taken
his seat any time these forty years by the chimney-fire in this old
Haunt: where painters, sculptors, men of letters, actors, used to
congregate, passing pleasant hours in rough kindly communion, and many a
day seeing the sunrise lighting the rosy street ere they parted, and
Betsy put the useless lamp out and closed the hospitable gates of the
Haunt.

The time is not very long since, though to-day is so changed. As we think
of it, the kind familiar faces rise up, and we hear the pleasant voices
and singing. There are they met, the honest hearty companions. In the
days when the Haunt was a haunt, stage-coaches were not yet quite over.
Casinos were not invented: clubs were rather rare luxuries: there were
sanded floors, triangular sawdust-boxes, pipes, and tavern parlours.
Young Smith and Brown, from the Temple, did not go from chambers to dine
at the Polyanthus, or the Megatherium, off potage a la Bisque, turbot au
gratin, cotelettes a la What-do-you-call-'em, and a pint of St. Emilion;
but ordered their beefsteak and pint of port from the "plump head-waiter
at the Cock;" did not disdain the pit of the theatre; and for a supper a
homely refection at the tavern. How delightful are the suppers in Charles
Lamb to read of even now!--the cards--the punch--the candles to be
snuffed--the social oysters--the modest cheer! Whoever snuffs a candle
now? What man has a domestic supper whose dinner-hour is eight o'clock?
Those little meetings, in the memory of many of us yet, are gone quite
away into the past. Five-and-twenty years ago is a hundred years off--so
much has our social life changed in those five lustres. James Boswell
himself, were he to revisit London, would scarce venture to enter a
tavern. He would find scarce a respectable companion to enter its doors
with him. It is an institution as extinct as a hackney-coach. Many a
grown man who peruses this historic page has never seen such a vehicle,
and only heard of rum-punch as a drink which his ancestors used to
tipple.

Cheery old Tom Sarjent is surrounded at the Haunt by a dozen of kind boon
companions. They toil all day at their avocations of art, or letters, or
law, and here meet for a harmless night's recreation and converse. They
talk of literature, or politics, or pictures, or plays; socially banter
one another over their cheap cups: sing brave old songs sometimes when
they are especially jolly kindly ballads in praise of love and wine;
famous maritime ditties in honour of Old England. I fancy I hear Jack
Brent's noble voice rolling out the sad, generous refrain of "The
Deserter," "Then for that reason and for a season we will be merry before
we go," or Michael Percy's clear tenor carolling the Irish chorus of
"What's that to any one, whether or no!" or Mark Wilder shouting his
bottle-song of "Garryowen na gloria." These songs were regarded with
affection by the brave old frequenters of the Haunt. A gentleman's
property in a song was considered sacred. It was respectfully asked for:
it was heard with the more pleasure for being old. Honest Tom Sarjent!
how the times have changed since we saw thee! I believe the present chief
of the reporters of the newspaper (which responsible office Tom filled)
goes to Parliament in his brougham, and dines with the Ministers of the
Crown.

Around Tom are seated grave Royal Academicians, rising gay Associates;
writers of other journals besides the Pall Mall Gazette; a barrister
maybe, whose name will be famous some day: a hewer of marble perhaps: a
surgeon whose patients have not come yet; and one or two men about town
who like this queer assembly better than haunts much more splendid.
Captain Shandon has been here, and his jokes are preserved in the
tradition of the place. Owlet, the philosopher, came once and tried, as
his wont is, to lecture; but his metaphysics were beaten down by a storm
of banter. Slatter, who gave himself such airs because he wrote in the
------ Review, tried to air himself at the Haunt, but was choked by the
smoke, and silenced by the unanimous pooh-poohing of the assembly. Dick
Walker, who rebelled secretly at Sarjent's authority, once thought to
give himself consequence by bringing a young lord from the Blue Posts,
but he was so unmercifully "chaffed" by Tom, that even the young lord
laughed at him. His lordship has been heard to say he had been taken to a
monsus queeah place, queeah set of folks, in a tap somewhere, though he
went away quite delighted with Tom's affability, but he never came again.
He could not find the place, probably. You might pass the Haunt in the
daytime, and not know it in the least. "I believe," said Charley Ormond
(A.R.A. he was then)--"I believe in the day there's no such place at all:
and when Betsy turns the gas off at the door-lamp as we go away, the
whole thing vanishes: the door, the house, the bar, the Haunt, Betsy, the
beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes and all." It has vanished: it is to be found no
more: neither by night nor by day--unless the ghosts of good fellows
still haunt it.

As the genial talk and glass go round, and after Clive and his friend
have modestly answered the various queries put to them by good old Tom
Sarjent, the acknowledged Praeses of the assembly and Sachem of this
venerable wigwam, the door opens and another well-known figure is
recognised with shouts as it emerges through the smoke. "Bayham, all
hail!" says Tom. "Frederick, I am right glad to see thee!"

Bayham says he is disturbed in spirit, and calls for a pint of beer to
console him.

"Hast thou flown far, thou restless bird of night?" asks Father Tom, who
loves speaking in blank verses.

"I have come from Cursitor Street," says Bayham, in a low groan. "I have
just been to see a poor devil in quod there. Is that you, Pendennis? You
know the man--Charles Honeyman."

"What!" cries Clive, starting up.

"O my prophetic soul, my uncle!" growls Bayham. "I did not see the young
one; but 'tis true."

The reader is aware that more than the three years have elapsed, of which
time the preceding pages contain the harmless chronicle; and while Thomas
Newcome's leave has been running out and Clive's mustachios growing, the
fate of other persons connected with our story has also had its
development, and their fortune has experienced its natural progress, its
increase or decay. Our tale, such as it has hitherto been arranged, has
passed leisurely in scenes wherein the present tense is perforce adopted;
the writer acting as chorus to the drama, and occasionally explaining, by
hints or more open statements, what has occurred during the intervals of
the acts; and how it happens that the performers are in such or such a
posture. In the modern theatre, as the play-going critic knows, the
explanatory personage is usually of quite a third-rate order. He is the
two walking-gentlemen friends of Sir Harry Courtly, who welcome the young
baronet to London, and discourse about the niggardliness of Harry's old
uncle, the Nabob; and the depth of Courtly's passion for Lady Annabel the
premiere amoureuse. He is the confidant in white linen to the heroine in
white satin. He is "Tom, you rascal," the valet or tiger, more or less
impudent and acute--that well-known menial in top-boots and a livery
frock with red cuffs and collar, whom Sir Harry always retains in his
service, addresses with scurrilous familiarity, and pays so irregularly:
or he is Lucetta, Lady Annabel's waiting-maid, who carries the
billets-doux and peeps into them; knows all about the family affairs;
pops the lover under the sofa; and sings a comic song between the scenes.
Our business now is to enter into Charles Honeyman's privacy, to peer
into the secrets of that reverend gentleman, and to tell what has
happened to him during the past months, in which he has made fitful
though graceful appearances on our scene.

While his nephew's whiskers have been budding, and his brother-in-law has
been spending his money and leave, Mr. Honeyman's hopes have been
withering, his sermons growing stale, his once blooming popularity
drooping and running to seed. Many causes have contributed to bring him
to his present melancholy strait. When you go to Lady Whittlesea's Chapel
now, it is by no means crowded. Gaps are in the pews: there is not the
least difficulty in getting a snug place near the pulpit, whence the
preacher can look over his pocket-handkerchief and see Lord Dozeley no
more: his lordship has long gone to sleep elsewhere and a host of the
fashionable faithful have migrated too. The incumbent can no more cast
his fine eyes upon the French bonnets of the female aristocracy and see
some of the loveliest faces in Mayfair regarding his with expressions of
admiration. Actual dowdy tradesmen of the neighbourhood are seated with
their families in the aisles: Ridley and his wife and son have one of the
very best seats. To be sure Ridley looks like a nobleman, with his large
waistcoat, bald head, and gilt book: J. J. has a fine head; but Mrs.
Ridley! cook and housekeeper is written on her round face. The music is
by no means of its former good quality. That rebellious and
ill-conditioned basso Bellew has seceded, and seduced the four best
singing boys, who now perform glees at the Cave of Harmony. Honeyman has
a right to speak of persecution, and to compare himself to a hermit in so
far that he preaches in a desert. Once, like another hermit, St. Hierome,
he used to be visited by lions. None such come to him now. Such lions as
frequent the clergy are gone off to lick the feet of other ecclesiastics.
They are weary of poor Honeyman's old sermons.

Rivals have sprung up in the course of these three years--have sprung up
round about Honeyman and carried his flock into their folds. We know how
such simple animals will leap one after another, and that it is the
sheepish way. Perhaps a new pastor has come to the church of St. Jacob's
hard by--bold, resolute, bright, clear, a scholar and no pedant: his
manly voice is thrilling in their ears, he speaks of life and conduct, of
practice as well as faith; and crowds of the most polite and most
intelligent, and best informed, and best dressed, and most selfish people
in the world come and hear him twice at least. There are so many
well-informed and well-dressed etc. etc. people in the world that the
succession of them keeps St. Jacob's full for a year or more. Then, it
may be, a bawling quack, who has neither knowledge, nor scholarship, nor
charity, but who frightens the public with denunciations and rouses them
with the energy of his wrath, succeeds in bringing them together for a
while till they tire of his din and curses. Meanwhile the good quiet old
churches round about ring their accustomed bell: open their Sabbath
gates: receive their tranquil congregations and sober priest, who has
been busy all the week, at schools and sick-beds, with watchful teaching,
gentle counsel, and silent alms.

Though we saw Honeyman but seldom, for his company was not altogether
amusing, and his affectation, when one became acquainted with it, very
tiresome to witness, Fred Bayham, from his garret at Mrs. Ridley's, kept
constant watch over the curate, and told us of his proceedings from time
to time. When we heard the melancholy news first announced, of course the
intelligence damped the gaiety of Clive and his companion; and F. B.,
conducted all the affairs of life with great gravity, telling Tom Sarjent
that he had news of importance for our private ear, Tom with still more
gravity than F. B.'s, said, "Go, my children, you had best discuss this
topic in a separate room, apart from the din and fun of a convivial
assembly;" and ringing the bell he bade Betsy bring him another glass of
rum-and-water, and one for Mr. Desborough, to be charged to him.

We adjourned to another parlour then, where gas was lighted up: and F. B.
over a pint of beer narrated poor Honeyman's mishap. "Saving your
presence, Clive," said Bayham, "and with every regard for the youthful
bloom of your young heart's affections, your uncle Charles Honeyman, sir,
is a bad lot. I have known him these twenty years, when I was at his
father's as a private tutor. Old Miss Honeyman is one of those cards
which we call trumps--so was old Honeyman a trump; but Charles and his
sister----"

I stamped on F. B.'s foot under the table. He seemed to have forgotten
that he was about to speak of Clive's mother.

"Hem! of your poor mother, I--hem--I may say vidi tantum. I scarcely knew
her. She married very young: as I was when she left Borhambury. But
Charles exhibited his character at a very early age--and it was not a
charming one--no, by no means a model of virtue. He always had a genius
for running into debt. He borrowed from every one of the pupils--I don't
know how he spent it except in hardbake and alycompaine--and even from
old Nosey's groom,--pardon me, we used to call your grandfather by that
playful epithet (boys will be boys, you know),--even from the doctor's
groom he took money, and I recollect thrashing Charles Honeyman for that
disgraceful action.

"At college, without any particular show, he was always in debt and
difficulties. Take warning by him, dear youth! By him and by me, if you
like. See me--me, F. Bayham, descended from the ancient kings that long
the Tuscan sceptre swayed, dodge down a street to get out of sight of a
boot-shop, and my colossal frame tremble if a chap puts his hand on my
shoulder, as you did, Pendennis, the other day in the Strand, when I
thought a straw might have knocked me down! I have had my errors, Clive.
I know 'em. I'll take another pint of beer, if you please. Betsy, has
Mrs. Nokes any cold meat in the bar? and an accustomed pickle? Ha! Give
her my compliments, and say F. B. is hungry. I resume my tale. Faults F.
B. has, and knows it. Humbug he may have been sometimes; but I'm not such
a complete humbug as Honeyman."

Clive did not know how to look at this character of his relative, but
Clive's companion burst into a fit of laughter, at which F. B. nodded
gravely, and resumed his narrative. "I don't know how much money he has
had from your governor, but this I can say, the half of it would make F.
B. a happy man. I don't know out of how much the reverend party has
nobbled his poor old sister at Brighton. He has mortgaged his chapel to
Sherrick, I suppose you know, who is master of it, and could turn him out
any day. I don't think Sherrick is a bad fellow. I think he's a good
fellow; I have known him do many a good turn to a chap in misfortune. He
wants to get into society: what more natural? That was why you were asked
to meet him the other day, and why he asked you to dinner. I hope you had
a good one. I wish he'd ask me.

"Then Moss has got his bills, and Moss's brother-in-law in Cursitor
Street has taken possession of his revered person. He's very welcome. One
Jew has the chapel, another Hebrew has the clergyman. It's singular,
ain't it? Sherrick might turn Lady Whittlesea into a synagogue and have
the Chief Rabbi into the pulpit, where my uncle the Bishop has given out
the text.

"The shares of that concern ain't at a premium. I have had immense fun
with Sherrick about it. I like the Hebrew, sir. He maddens with rage when
F. B. goes and asks him whether any more pews are let overhead. Honeyman
begged and borrowed in order to buy out the last man. I remember when the
speculation was famous, when all the boxes (I mean the pews) were taken
for the season, and you couldn't get a place, come ever so early. Then
Honeyman was spoilt, and gave his sermons over and over again. People got
sick of seeing the old humbug cry, the old crocodile! Then we tried the
musical dodge. F. B. came forward, sir, there. That was a coup: I did it,
sir. Bellew wouldn't have sung for any man but me--and for two-and-twenty
months I kept him as sober as Father Mathew. Then Honeyman didn't pay
him: there was a row in the sacred building, and Bellew retired. Then
Sherrick must meddle in it. And having heard a chap out Hampstead way who
Sherrick thought would do, Honeyman was forced to engage him, regardless
of expense. You recollect the fellow, sir? The Reverend Simeon Rawkins,
the lowest of the Low Church, sir--a red-haired dumpy man, who gasped at
his h's and spoke with a Lancashire twang--he'd no more do for Mayfair
than Grimaldi for Macbeth. He and Honeyman used to fight like cat and dog
in the vestry: and he drove away a third part of the congregation. He was
an honest man and an able man too, though not a sound Churchman" (F. B.
said this with a very edifying gravity): "I told Sherrick this the very
day I heard him. And if he had spoken to me on the subject I might have
saved him a pretty penny--a precious deal more than the paltry sum which
he and I had a quarrel about at that time--a matter of business, sir--a
pecuniary difference about a small three months' thing which caused a
temporary estrangement between us. As for Honeyman, he used to cry about
it. Your uncle is great in the lachrymatory line, Clive Newcome. He used
to go with tears in his eyes to Sherrick, and implore him not to have
Rawkins, but he would. And I must say for poor Charles that the failure
of Lady Whittlesea's has not been altogether Charles's fault; and that
Sherrick has kicked down that property.

"Well, then, sir, poor Charles thought to make it all right by marrying
Mrs. Brumby;--and she was very fond of him and the thing was all but
done, in spite of her sons, who were in a rage as you may fancy. But
Charley, sir, has such a propensity for humbug that he will tell lies
when there is no earthly good in lying. He represented his chapel at
twelve hundred a year, his private means as so-and-so; and when he came
to book up with Briggs the lawyer, Mrs. Brumby's brother, it was found
that he lied and prevaricated so, that the widow in actual disgust would
have nothing more to do with him. She was a good woman of business, and
managed the hat-shop for nine years, whilst poor Brumby was at Dr.
Tokelys. A first-rate shop it was, too. I introduced Charles to it. My
uncle the Bishop had his shovels there: and they used for a considerable
period to cover this humble roof with tiles," said F. B., tapping his
capacious forehead; "I am sure he might have had Brumby," he added, in
his melancholy tones, "but for those unlucky lies. She didn't want money.
She had plenty. She longed to get into society, and was bent on marrying
a gentleman.

"But what I can't pardon in Honeyman is the way in which he has done poor
old Ridley and his wife. I took him there, you know, thinking they would
send their bills in once a month: that he was doing a good business: in
fact, that I had put 'em into a good thing. And the fellow has told me a
score of times that he and the Ridleys were all right. But he has not
only not paid his lodgings, but he has had money of them: he has given
dinners: he has made Ridley pay for wine. He has kept paying lodgers out
of the house, and he tells me all this with a burst of tears, when he
sent for me to Lazarus's to-night, and I went to him, sir, because he was
in distress--went into the lion's den, sir!" says F. B., looking round
nobly. "I don't know how much he owes them: because of course you know
the sum he mentions ain't the right one. He never does tell the truth--
does Charles. But think of the pluck of those good Ridleys never saying a
single word to F. B. about the debt! 'We are poor, but we have saved some
money and can lie out of it. And we think Mr. Honeyman will pay us,' says
Mrs. Ridley to me this very evening. And she thrilled my heart-strings,
sir; and I took her in my arms, and kissed the old woman," says Bayham;
"and I rather astonished little Miss Cann, and young J. J., who came in
with a picture under his arm. But she said she had kissed Master
Frederick long before J. J. was born--and so she had: that good and
faithful servant--and my emotion in embracing her was manly, sir, manly."

Here old Betsy came in to say that the supper was a-waitin' for Mr.
Bayham and it was a-getting' very late; and we left F. B. to his meal;
and bidding adieu to Mrs. Nokes, Clive and I went each to our habitation.




CHAPTER XXVI

In which Colonel Newcome's Horses are sold


At an hour early the next morning I was not surprised to see Colonel
Newcome at my chambers, to whom Clive had communicated Bayham's important
news of the night before. The Colonel's object, as any one who knew him
need scarcely be told, was to rescue his brother-in-law; and being
ignorant of lawyers, sheriffs'-officers, and their proceedings, he
bethought him that he would apply to Lamb Court for information, and in
so far showed some prudence, for at least I knew more of the world and
its ways than my simple client, and was enabled to make better terms for
the unfortunate prisoner, or rather for Colonel Newcome, who was the real
sufferer, than Honeyman's creditors might otherwise have been disposed to
give.

I thought it would be more prudent that our good Samaritan should not see
the victim of rogues whom he was about to succour; and left him to
entertain himself with Mr. Warrington in Lamb Court, while I sped to the
lock-up house, where the Mayfair pet was confined. A sickly smile played
over his countenance as he beheld me when I was ushered to his private
room. The reverent gentleman was not shaved; he had partaken of
breakfast. I saw a glass which had once contained brandy on the dirty
tray whereon his meal was placed: a greasy novel from a Chancery Lane
library lay on the table: but he was at present occupied in writing one
or more of those great long letters, those laborious, ornate, eloquent
statements, those documents so profusely underlined, in which the
machinations of villains are laid bare with italic fervour; the coldness,
to use no harsher phrase, of friends on whom reliance might have been
placed; the outrageous conduct of Solomons; the astonishing failure of
Smith to pay a sum of money on which he had counted as on the Bank of
England; finally, the infallible certainty of repaying (with what
heartfelt thanks need not be said) the loan of so many pounds next
Saturday week at farthest. All this, which some readers in the course of
their experience have read no doubt in many handwritings, was duly set
forth by poor Honeyman. There was a wafer in a wine-glass on the table,
and the bearer no doubt below to carry the missive. They always sent
these letters by a messenger, who is introduced in the postscript; he is
always sitting in the hall when you get the letter, and is "a young man
waiting for an answer, please."

No one can suppose that Honeyman laid a complete statement of his affairs
before the negotiator who was charged to look into them. No debtor does
confess all his debts, but breaks them gradually to his man of business,
factor or benefactor, leading him on from surprise to surprise; and when
he is in possession of the tailor's little account, introducing him to
the bootmaker. Honeyman's schedule I felt perfectly certain was not
correct. The detainees against him were trifling. "Moss of Wardour
Street, one hundred and twenty--I believe I have paid him thousands in
this very transaction," ejaculates Honeyman. "A heartless West End
tradesman hearing of my misfortune--all these people a linked together,
my dear Pendennis, and rush like vultures upon their prey!--Waddilove,
the tailor, has another writ out for ninety-eight pounds; a man whom I
have made by my recommendations! Tobbins, the bootmaker, his neighbour in
Jermyn Street, forty-one pounds more, and that is all--I give you my
word, all. In a few months, when my pew-rents will be coming in, I should
have settled with those cormorants; otherwise, my total and irretrievable
ruin, and the disgrace and humiliation of a prison attends me. I know it;
I can bear it; I have been wretchedly weak, Pendennis: I can say mea
culpa, mea maxima culpa, and I can--bear--my--penalty." In his finest
moments he was never more pathetic. He turned his head away, and
concealed it in a handkerchief not so white as those which veiled his
emotions at Lady Whittlesea's.

How by degrees this slippery penitent was induced to make other
confessions; how we got an idea of Mrs. Ridley's account from him, of his
dealings with Mr. Sherrick, need not be mentioned here. The conclusion to
which Colonel Newcome's ambassador came was, that to help such a man
would be quite useless; and that the Fleet Prison would be a most
wholesome retreat for this most reckless divine. Ere the day was out,
Messrs. Waddilove and Tobbins had conferred with their neighbour in St.
James's, Mr. Brace; and there came a detainer from that haberdasher for
gloves, cravats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, that might have done credit to
the most dandified young Guardsman. Mr. Warrington was on Mr. Pendennis's
side, and urged that the law should take its course. "Why help a man,"
said he, "who will not help himself? Let the law sponge out the fellow's
debts; set him going again with twenty pounds when he quits the prison,
and get him a chaplaincy in the Isle of Man."

I saw by the Colonel's grave kind face that these hard opinions did not
suit him. "At all events, sir, promise us," we said, "that you will pay
nothing yourself--that you won't see Honeyman's creditors, and let
people, who know the world better, deal with him." "Know the world, young
man!" cries Newcome; "I should think if I don't know the world at my age,
I never shall." And if he had lived to be as old as Jahaleel, a boy could
still have cheated him.

"I do not scruple to tell you," he said, after a pause during which a
plenty of smoke was delivered from the council of three, "that I have--a
fund--which I had set aside for mere purposes of pleasure, I give you my
word, and a part of which I shall think it my duty to devote to poor
Honeyman's distresses. The fund is not large. The money was intended, in
fact:--however, there it is. If Pendennis will go round to these
tradesmen, and make some composition with them, as their prices have been
no doubt enormously exaggerated, I see no harm. Besides the tradesfolk,
there is good Mrs. Ridley and Mr. Sherrick--we must see them; and, if we
can, set this luckless Charles again on his legs. We have read of other
prodigals who were kindly treated; and we may have debts of our own to
forgive, boys."

Into Mr. Sherrick's account we had no need to enter. That gentleman had
acted with perfect fairness by Honeyman. He laughingly said to us, "You
don't imagine I would lend that chap a shilling without security?
I will give him fifty or a hundred. Here's one of his notes, with
What-do-you-call-'ems--that rum fellow Bayham's name as drawer. A nice
pair, ain't they? Pooh! I shall never touch 'em. I lent some money on the
shop overhead," says Sherrick, pointing to the ceiling (we were in his
counting-house in the cellar of Lady Whittlesea's Chapel), "because I
thought it was a good speculation. And so it was at first. The people
liked Honeyman. All the nobs came to hear him. Now the speculation ain't
so good.  He's used up. A chap can't be expected to last for ever. When I
first engaged Mademoiselle Bravura at my theatre, you couldn't get a
place for three weeks together. The next year she didn't draw twenty
pounds a week. So it was with Pottle and the regular drama humbug. At
first it was all very well. Good business, good houses, our immortal
bard, and that sort of game. They engaged the tigers and the French
riding people over the way; and there was Pottle bellowing away in my
place to the orchestra and the orders. It's all a speculation. I've
speculated in about pretty much everything that's going: in theatres, in
joint-stock jobs, in building-ground, in bills, in gas and insurance
companies, and in this chapel. Poor old Honeyman! I won't hurt him. About
that other chap I put in to do the first business--that red-haired chap,
Rawkins--I think I was wrong. I think he injured the property. But I
don't know everything, you know. I wasn't bred to know about parsons--
quite the reverse. I thought, when I heard Rawkins at Hampstead, he was
just the thing. I used to go about, sir, just as I did to the provinces,
when I had the theatre--Camberwell, Islington, Kennington, Clapton, all
about, and hear the young chaps. Have a glass of sherry; and here's
better luck to Honeyman. As for that Colonel, he's a trump, sir! I never
see such a man. I have to deal with such a precious lot of rogues, in the
City and out of it, among the swells and all, you know, that to see such
a fellow refreshes me; and I'd do anything for him. You've made a good
thing of that Pall Mall Gazette! I tried papers too; but mine didn't do.
I don't know why. I tried a Tory one, moderate Liberal, and out-and-out
uncompromising Radical. I say, what d'ye think of a religious paper, the
Catechism, or some such name? Would Honeyman do as editor? I'm afraid
it's all up with the poor cove at the chapel." And I parted with Mr.
Sherrick, not a little edified by his talk, and greatly relieved as to
Honeyman's fate. The tradesmen of Honeyman's body were appeased; and as
for Mr. Moss, when he found that the curate had no effects, and must go
before the Insolvent Court, unless Moss chose to take the composition
which we were empowered to offer him, he too was brought to hear reason,
and parted with the stamped paper on which was poor Honeyman's signature.
Our negotiation had like to have come to an end by Clive's untimely
indignation, who offered at one stage of the proceedings to pitch young
Moss out of window; but nothing came of this most ungentlemanlike
behaviour on Noocob's part, further than remonstrance and delay in the
proceedings; and Honeyman preached a lovely sermon at Lady Whittlesea's
the very next Sunday. He had made himself much liked in the
sponging-house, and Mr. Lazarus said, "if he hadn't a got out time
enough, I'd a let him out for Sunday, and sent one of my men with him
to show him the way ome, you know; for when a gentleman behaves as a
gentleman to me, I behave as a gentleman to him."

Mrs. Ridley's account, and it was a long one, was paid without a single
question, or the deduction of a farthing; but the Colonel rather sickened
of Honeyman's expressions of rapturous gratitude, and received his
professions of mingled contrition and delight very coolly. "My boy," says
the father to Clive, "you see to what straits debt brings a man, to
tamper with truth to have to cheat the poor. Think of flying before a
washerwoman, or humbling yourself to a tailor, or eating a poor man's
children's bread!" Clive blushed, I thought, and looked rather confused.

"Oh, father," says he, "I--I'm afraid I owe some money too--not much; but
about forty pound, five-and-twenty for cigars, and fifteen I borrowed of
Pendennis, and--and I've been devilish annoyed about it all this time."

"You stupid boy," says the father "I knew about the cigars bill, and paid
it last week. Anything I have is yours, you know. As long as there is a
guinea, there is half for you. See that every shilling we owe is paid
before--before a week is over. And go down and ask Binnie if I can see
him in his study. I want to have some conversation with him." When Clive
was gone away, he said to me in a very sweet voice, "In God's name, keep
my boy out of debt when I am gone, Arthur. I shall return to India very
soon."

"Very soon, sir! You have another year's leave," said I.

"Yes, but no allowances, you know; and this affair of Honeyman's has
pretty nearly emptied the little purse I had set aside for European
expenses. They have been very much heavier than I expected. As it is, I
overdrew my account at my brother's, and have been obliged to draw money
from my agents in Calcutta. A year sooner or later (unless two of our
senior officers had died, when I should have got my promotion and
full colonel's pay with it, and proposed to remain in this country)--a
year sooner or later, what does it matter? Clive will go away and work at
his art, and see the great schools of painting while I am absent. I
thought at one time how pleasant it would be to accompany him. But
l'homme propose, Pendennis. I fancy now a lad is not the better for being
always tied to his parent's apron-string. You young fellows are too
clever for me. I haven't learned your ideas or read your books. I feel
myself very often an old damper in your company. I will go back, sir,
where I have some friends, where I am somebody still. I know an honest
face or two, white and brown, that will lighten up in the old regiment
when they see Tom Newcome again. God bless you, Arthur. You young fellows
in this country have such cold ways that we old ones hardly know how to
like you at first. James Binnie and I, when we first came home, used to
talk you over, and think you laughed at us. But you didn't, I know. God
Almighty bless you, and send you a good wife, and make a good man of you.
I have bought a watch, which I would like you to wear in remembrance of
me and my boy, to whom you were so kind when you were boys together in
the old Grey Friars." I took his hand, and uttered some incoherent words
of affection and respect. Did not Thomas Newcome merit both from all who
knew him?

His resolution being taken, our good Colonel began to make silent but
effectual preparations for his coming departure. He was pleased during
these last days of his stay to give me even more of his confidence than I
had previously enjoyed, and was kind enough to say that he regarded me
almost as a son of his own, and hoped I would act as elder brother and
guardian to Clive. Ah! who is to guard the guardian? The younger brother
had many nobler qualities than belonged to the elder. The world had not
hardened Clive, nor even succeeded in spoiling him. I perceive I am
diverging from his history into that of another person, and will return
to the subject proper of the book.

Colonel Newcome expressed himself as being particularly touched and
pleased with his friend Binnie's conduct, now that the Colonel's
departure was determined. "James is one of the most generous of men,
Pendennis, and I am proud to be put under an obligation to him, and to
tell it too. I hired this house, as you are aware, of our speculative
friend Mr. Sherrick, and am answerable for the payment of the rent till
the expiry of the lease. James has taken the matter off my hands
entirely. The place is greatly too large for him, but he says that he
likes it, and intends to stay, and that his sister and niece shall be his
housekeepers. Clive" (here, perhaps, the speaker's voice drops a little)
--"Clive will be the son of the house still, honest James says, and God
bless him. James is richer than I thought by near a lakh of rupees--and
here is a hint for you, Master Arthur. Mr. Binnie has declared to me in
confidence that if his niece, Miss Rosey, shall marry a person of whom he
approves, he will leave her a considerable part of his fortune."

The Colonel's confidant here said that his own arrangements were made in
another quarter, to which statement the Colonel replied knowingly, "I
thought so. A little bird has whispered to me the name of a certain Miss
A. I knew her grandfather, an accommodating old gentleman, and I borrowed
some money from him when I was a subaltern at Calcutta. I tell you in
strict confidence, my dear young friend, that I hope and trust a certain
young gentleman of your acquaintance may be induced to think how good and
pretty and sweet-tempered a girl Miss Mackenzie is, and that she may be
brought to like him. If you young men would marry in good time good and
virtuous women--as I am sure--ahem!--Miss Amory is--half the temptations
of your youth would be avoided. You would neither be dissolute, has many
of you seem to me, or cold and selfish, which are worse vices still. And
my prayer is, that my Clive may cast anchor early out of the reach of
temptation, and mate with some such kind girl as Binnie's niece. When I
first came home I formed other plans for him which could not be brought
to a successful issue; and knowing his ardent disposition, and having
kept an eye on the young rogue's conduct, I tremble lest some mischance
with a woman should befall him, and long to have him out of danger."

So the kind scheme of the two elders was, that their young ones should
marry and be happy ever after, like the Prince and Princess of the Fairy
Tale: and dear Mrs. Mackenzie (have I said that at the commencement of
her visit to her brother she made almost open love to the Colonel?), dear
Mrs. Mack was content to forgo her own chances so that her darling Rosey
might be happy. We used to laugh and say, that as soon as Clive's father
was gone, Josey would be sent for to join Rosey. But little Josey being
under her grandmother's sole influence took most gratifying and serious
turn; wrote letters, in which she questioned the morality of operas,
Towers of London, and waxworks; and, before a year was out, married Elder
Bogie, of Mr. M'Craw's church.

Presently was to be read in the Morning Post an advertisement of the sale
of three horses (the description and pedigree following), "the property
of an officer returning to India. Apply to the groom, at the stables, 150
Fitzroy Square."

The Court of Directors invited Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome to an
entertainment given to Major-General Sir Ralph Spurrier, K.C.B.,
appointed Commander-in-Chief at Madras. Clive was asked to this dinner
too, "and the governor's health was drunk, sir," Clive said, "after
dinner, and the dear old fellow made such a good speech, in returning
thanks!"

He, Clive, and I made a pilgrimage to Grey Friars, and had the Green to
ourselves, it being the Bartlemytide vacation, and the boys all away. One
of the good old Poor Brothers whom we both recollected accompanied us
round the place; and we sate for a while in Captain Scarsdale's little
room (he had been a Peninsular officer, who had sold out, and was fain in
his old age to retire into this calm retreat). And we talked, as old
schoolmates and lovers talk, about subjects interesting to schoolmates
and lovers only.

One by one the Colonel took leave of his friends, young and old; ran down
to Newcome, and gave Mrs. Mason a parting benediction; slept a night at
Tom Smith's, and passed a day with Jack Brown; went to all the boys' and
girls' schools where his little proteges were, so as to be able to take
the very last and most authentic account of the young folks to their
parents in India; spent a week at Marble Hill, and shot partridges there,
but for which entertainment, Clive said, the place would have been
intolerable; and thence proceeded to Brighton to pass a little time with
good Miss Honeyman. As for Sir Brian's family, when Parliament broke up,
of course, they did not stay in town. Barnes, of course, had part of a
moor in Scotland, whither his uncle and cousin did not follow him. The
rest went abroad. Sir Brian wanted the waters of Aix-la-Chapelle. The
brothers parted very good friends; Lady Anne, and all the young people,
heartily wished him farewell. I believe Sir Brian even accompanied the
Colonel downstairs from the drawing-room, in Park Lane, and actually came
out and saw his brother into his cab (just as he would accompany old Lady
Bagges when she came to look at her account at the bank, from the parlour
to her carriage). But as for Ethel, she was not going to be put off with
this sort of parting and the next morning a cab dashed up to Fitzroy
Square, and a veiled lady came out thence, and was closeted with Colonel
Newcome for five minutes, and when he led her back to the carriage there
were tears in his eyes.

Mrs. Mackenzie joked about the transaction (having watched it from the
dining-room windows), and asked the Colonel who his sweetheart was?
Newcome replied very sternly, that he hoped no one would ever speak
lightly of that young lady, whom he loved as his own daughter; and I
thought Rosey looked vexed at the praises thus bestowed. This was the day
before we all went down to Brighton. Miss Honeyman's lodgings were taken
for Mr. Binnie and his ladies. Clive and her dearest Colonel had
apartments next door. Charles Honeyman came dawn and preached one of his
very best sermons. Fred Bayham was there, and looked particularly grand
and noble on the pier and the cliff. I am inclined to think he had had
some explanation with Thomas Newcome, which had placed F. B. in a state
of at least temporary prosperity. Whom did he not benefit whom he knew,
and what eye that saw him did not bless him? F. B. was greatly affected
at Charles's sermon, of which our party of course could see the
allusions. Tears actually rolled down his brown cheeks; for Fred was a
man very easily moved, and, as it were, a softened sinner. Little Rosey
and her mother sobbed audibly, greatly to the surprise of stout old Miss
Honeyman, who had no idea of such watery exhibitions, and to the
discomfiture of poor Newcome, who was annoyed to have his praises even
hinted in that sacred edifice. Good Mr. James Binnie came for once to
church; and, however variously their feelings might be exhibited or,
repressed, I think there was not one of the little circle there assembled
who did not bring to the place a humble prayer and a gentle heart. It was
the last Sabbath-bell our dear friend was to hear for many a day on his
native shore. The great sea washed the beach as we came out, blue with
the reflection of the skies, and its innumerable waves crested with
sunshine. I see the good man and his boy yet clinging to him, as they
pace together by the shore.

The Colonel was very much pleased by a visit from Mr. Ridley and the
communication which he made (my Lord Todmorden has a mansion and park in
Sussex, whence Mr. Ridley came to pay his duty to Colonel Newcome). He
said he "never could forget the kindness with which the Colonel have a
treated him. His lordship have taken a young man, which Mr. Ridley had
brought him up under his own eye, and can answer for him, Mr. R. says,
with impunity; and which he is to be his lordship's own man for the
future. And his lordship have appointed me his steward, and having, as he
always hev been, been most liberal in point of sellary. And me and Mrs.
Ridley was thinking, sir, most respectfully, with regard to our son, Mr.
John James Ridley--as good and honest a young man, which I am proud to
say it, that if Mr. Clive goes abroad we should be most proud and happy
if John James went with him. And the money which you have paid us so
handsome, Colonel, he shall have it; which it was the excellent ideer of
Miss Cann; and my lord have ordered a pictur of John James in the most
libral manner, and have asked my son to dinner, sir, at his lordship's
own table, which I have faithfully served him five-and-thirty years."
Ridley's voice fairly broke down at this part of his speech, which
evidently was a studied composition, and he uttered no more of it, for
the Colonel cordially shook him by the hand, and Clive jumped up clapping
his, and saying that it was the greatest wish of his heart that J. J. and
he should be companions in France and Italy. "But I did not like to ask
my dear old father," he said, "who has had so many calls on his purse,
and besides, I knew that J. J. was too independent to come as my
follower."

The Colonel's berth has been duly secured ere now. This time he makes the
overland journey; and his passage is to Alexandria, taken in one of the
noble ships of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. His kit is as simple
as a subaltern's; I believe, but for Clive's friendly compulsion, he
would have carried back no other than the old uniform which has served
him for so many years. Clive and his father travelled to Southampton
together by themselves. F. B. and I took the Southampton coach: we had
asked leave to see the last of him, and say a "God bless you" to our dear
old friend. So the day came when the vessel was to sail. We saw his
cabin, and witnessed all the bustle and stir on board the good ship on a
day of departure. Our thoughts, however, were fixed but on one person--
the case, no doubt, with hundreds more on such a day. There was many a
group of friends closing wistfully together on the sunny deck, and saying
the last words of blessing and farewell. The bustle of the ship passes
dimly round about them; the hurrying noise of crew and officers running
on their duty; the tramp and song of the men at the capstan-bars; the
bells ringing, as the hour for departure comes nearer and nearer, as
mother and son, father and daughter, husband and wife, hold hands yet for
a little while. We saw Clive and his father talking together by the
wheel. Then they went below; and a passenger, her husband, asked me to
give my arm to an almost fainting lady, and to lead her off the ship.
Bayham followed us, carrying their two children in his arms, as the
husband turned away and walked aft. The last bell was ringing, and they
were crying, "Now for the shore." The whole ship had begun to throb ere
this, and its great wheels to beat the water, and the chimneys had flung
out their black signals for sailing. We were as yet close on the dock,
and we saw Clive coming up from below, looking very pale; the plank was
drawn after him as he stepped on land.

Then, with three great cheers from the dock, and from the crew in the
bows, and from the passengers on the quarter-deck, the noble ship strikes
the first stroke of her destined race, and swims away towards the ocean.
"There he is, there he is," shouts Fred Bayham, waving his hat. "God
bless him, God bless him!" I scarce perceived at the ship's side,
beckoning an adieu, our dear old friend, when the lady, whose husband had
bidden me to lead her away from the ship, fainted in my arms. Poor soul!
Her, too, has fate stricken. Ah, pangs of hearts torn asunder, passionate
regrets, cruel, cruel partings! Shall you not end one day, ere many
years; when the tears shall be wiped from all eyes, and there shall be
neither sorrow nor pain?




CHAPTER XXVII

Youth and Sunshine


Although Thomas Newcome was gone back to India in search of more money,
finding that he could not live upon his income at home, he was
nevertheless rather a wealthy man; and at the moment of his departure
from Europe had two lakhs of rupees invested in various Indian
securities. "A thousand a year," he thought, "more, added to the interest
accruing from my two lakhs, will enable us to live very comfortably at
home. I can give Clive ten thousand pounds when he marries, and five
hundred a year out of my allowances. If he gets a wife with some money,
they may have every enjoyment of life; and as for his pictures, he can
paint just as few or as many of those as he pleases." Newcome did not
seem seriously to believe that his son would live by painting pictures,
but considered Clive as a young prince who chose to amuse himself with
painting. The Muse of Painting is a lady whose social station is not
altogether recognised with us as yet. The polite world permits a
gentleman to amuse himself with her; but to take her for better or for
worse! forsake all other chances and cleave unto her! to assume her name!
Many a respectable person would be as much shocked at the notion, as if
his son had married an opera-dancer.

Newcome left a hundred a year in England, of which the principal sum was
to be transferred to his boy as soon as he came of age. He endowed Clive
further with a considerable annual sum, which his London bankers would
pay: "And if these are not enough," says he kindly, "you must draw upon
my agents, Messrs. Frank and Merryweather at Calcutta, who will receive
your signature just as if it was mine." Before going away, he introduced
Clive to F. and M.'s corresponding London house, Jolly and Baines, Fog
Court--leading out of Leadenhall--Mr. Jolly, a myth as regarded the firm,
now married to Lady Julia Jolly--a Park in Kent--evangelical interest--
great at Exeter Hall meetings--knew Clive's grandmother--that is, Mrs.
Newcome, a most admirable woman. Baines represents a house in the
Regent's Park, with an emigrative tendency towards Belgravia--musical
daughters--Herr Moscheles, Benedick, Ella,--Osborne, constantly at
dinner-sonatas in P flat (op. 936), composed and dedicated to Miss
Euphemia Baines, by her most obliged, most obedient servant, Ferdinando
Blitz. Baines hopes that his young friend will come constantly to York
Terrace, where the most girls will be happy to see him; and mentions at
home a singular whim of Colonel Newcome's, who can give his son twelve or
fifteen hundred a year, and makes an artist of him. Euphemia and Flora
adore artists; they feel quite interested about this young man. "He was
scribbling caricatures all the time I was talking with his father in my
parlour," says Mr. Baines, and produces a sketch of an orange-woman near
the Bank, who had struck Clive's eyes, and been transferred to the
blotting-paper in Fog Court. "He needn't do anything," said good-natured
Mr. Baines. "I guess all the pictures he'll paint won't sell for much."

"Is he fond of music, papa?" asks Miss. "What a pity he had not come to
our last evening; and now the season is over!"

"And Mr. Newcome is going out of town. He came to me, to-day for circular
notes--says he's going through Switzerland and into Italy--lives in
Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Queer place, ain't it? Put his name
down in your book, and ask him to dinner next season."

Before Clive went away, he had an apparatus of easels, sketching-stools,
umbrellas, and painting-boxes, the most elaborate and beautiful that
Messrs. Soap and Isaac could supply. It made J. J.'s eyes glisten to see
those lovely gimcracks of art; those smooth mill-boards, those
slab-tinted sketching-blocks, and glistening rows of colour-tubes lying
in their boxes, which seemed to cry, "Come, squeeze me." If
painting-boxes made painters, if sketching-stools would but enable one to
sketch, surely I would hasten this very instant to Messrs. Soap and
Isaac! but, alas! these pretty toys no more make artists than cowls make
monks.

As a proof that Clive did intend to practise his profession, and to live
by it too, at this time he took four sporting sketches to a printseller
in the Haymarket, and disposed of them at the rate of seven shillings and
sixpence per sketch. His exultation at receiving a sovereign and half a
sovereign from Mr. Jones was boundless. "I can do half a dozen of these
things easily in a morning," he says. "Two guineas a day is twelve
guineas--say ten guineas a week, for I won't work on Sundays, and may
take a holiday in the week besides. Ten guineas a week is five hundred a
year. That is pretty nearly as much money as I shall want, and I need not
draw the dear old governor's allowance at all." He wrote an ardent
letter, full of happiness and affection, to the kind father, which he
shall find a month after he has arrived in India, and read to his friends
in Calcutta and Barrackpore. Clive invited many of his artist friends to
a grand feast in honour of the thirty shillings. The King's Arms,
Kensington, was the hotel selected (tavern beloved of artists for many
score years!). Gandish was there, and the Gandishites, and some chosen
spirits from the Life Academy, Clipstone Street, and J. J. was
vice-president, with Fred Bayham by his side, to make the speeches and
carve the mutton; and I promise you many a merry song was sung, and many
a health drunk in flowing bumpers; and as jolly a party was assembled as
any London contained that day. The beau-monde had quitted it; the Park
was empty as we crossed it; and the leaves of Kensington Gardens had
begun to fall, dying after the fatigues of a London season. We sang all
the way home through Knightsbridge and by the Park railings, and the
Covent Garden carters halting at the Half-way House were astonished at
our choruses. There is no half-way house now; no merry chorus at
midnight.

Then Clive and J. J. took the steamboat to Antwerp; and those who love
pictures may imagine how the two young men rejoiced in one of the most
picturesque cities of the world; where they went back straightway into
the sixteenth century; where the inn at which they stayed (delightful old
Grand Laboureur, thine ancient walls are levelled! thy comfortable
hospitalities exist no more!) seemed such a hostelry as that where
Quentin Durward first saw his sweetheart; where knights of Velasquez or
burgomasters of Rubens seemed to look from the windows of the tall-gabled
houses and the quaint porches; where the Bourse still stood, the Bourse
of three hundred years ago, and you had but to supply figures with beards
and ruffs, and rapiers and trunk-hose, to make the picture complete;
where to be awakened by the carillon of the bells was to waken to the
most delightful sense of life and happiness; where nuns, actual nuns,
walked the streets, and every figure in the Place de Meir, and every
devotee at church, kneeling and draped in black, or entering the
confessional (actually the confessional!), was a delightful subject for
the new sketchbook. Had Clive drawn as much everywhere as at Antwerp,
Messrs. Soap and Isaac might have made a little income by supplying him
with materials.

After Antwerp, Clive's correspondent gets a letter dated from the Hotel
de Suede at Brussels, which contains an elaborate eulogy of the cookery
and comfort of that hotel, where the wines, according to the writer's
opinion, are unmatched almost in Europe. And this is followed by a
description of Waterloo, and a sketch of Hougoumont, in which J. J. is
represented running away in the character of a French grenadier, Clive
pursuing him in the lifeguard's habit, and mounted on a thundering
charger.

Next follows a letter from Bonn. Verses about Drachenfels of a not very
superior style of versification; an account of Crichton, an old Grey
Friars man, who has become a student at the university; of a commerz, a
drunken bout, and a students' duel at Bonn. "And whom should I find
here," says Mr. Clive, "but Aunt Anne, Ethel, Miss Quigley, and the
little ones, the whole detachment under the command of Kuhn? Uncle Brian
is staying at Aix. He is recovered from his attack. And, upon my
conscience, I think my pretty cousin looks prettier every day.

"When they are not in London," Clive goes on to write, "or I sometimes
think when Barnes or old Lady Kew are not looking over them, they are
quite different. You know how cold they have latterly seemed to us, and
how their conduct annoyed my dear old father. Nothing can be kinder than
their behaviour since we have met. It was on the little hill at
Godesberg: J. J. and I were mounting to the ruin, followed by the beggars
who waylay you, and have taken the place of the other robbers who used to
live there, when there came a procession of donkeys down the steep, and I
heard a little voice cry, 'Hullo! it's Clive! hooray, Clive!' and an ass
came pattering down the declivity, with a little pair of white trousers
at an immensely wide angle over the donkey's back, and behold there was
little Alfred grinning with all his might.

"He turned his beast and was for galloping up the hill again, I suppose
to inform his relations; but the donkey refused with many kicks, one of
which sent Alfred plunging amongst the stones, and we were rubbing him
down just as the rest of the party came upon us. Miss Quigley looked very
grim on an old white pony; my aunt was on a black horse that might have
turned grey, he is so old. Then come two donkeysful of children, with
Kuhn as supercargo; then Ethel on donkey-back, too, with a bunch of
wildflowers in her hand, a great straw hat with a crimson ribbon, a white
muslin jacket, you know, bound at the waist with a ribbon of the first,
and a dark skirt, with a shawl round her feet which Kuhn had arranged. As
she stopped, the donkey fell to cropping greens in the hedge; the trees
there chequered her white dress and face with shadow. Her eyes, hair, and
forehead were in shadow too--but the light was all upon her right cheek:
upon her shoulder down to her arm, which was of a warmer white, and on
the bunch of flowers which she held, blue, yellow, and red poppies, and
so forth.

"J. J. says, 'I think the birds began to sing louder when she came.' We
have both agreed that she is the handsomest woman in England. It's not
her form merely, which is certainly as yet too thin and a little angular
--it is her colour. I do not care for woman or picture without colour. O
ye carnations! O ye lilia mista rosis! O such black hair and solemn
eyebrows! It seems to me the roses and carnations have bloomed again
since we saw them last in London, when they were drooping from the
exposure to night air, candle-light, and heated ballrooms.

"Here I was in the midst of a regiment of donkeys, bearing a crowd of
relations; J. J. standing modestly in the background--beggars completing
the group, and Kuhn ruling over them with voice and gesture, oaths and
whip. Throw in the Rhine in the distance flashing by the Seven Mountains
--but mind and make Ethel the principal figure: if you make her like, she
certainly will be--and other lights will be only minor fires. You may
paint her form, but you can't paint her colour; that is what beats us in
nature. A line must come right; you can force that into its place, but
you can't compel the circumambient air. There is no yellow I know of will
make sunshine, and no blue that is a bit like sky. And so with pictures:
I think you only get signs of colour, and formulas to stand for it. That
brick-dust which we agree to receive as representing a blush, look at it
--can you say it is in the least like the blush which flickers and varies
as it sweeps over the down of the cheek--as you see sunshine playing over
a meadow? Look into it and see what a variety of delicate blooms there
are! a multitude of flowerets twining into one tint! We may break our
colour-pots and strive after the line alone: that is palpable and we can
grasp it--the other is impossible and beyond us." Which sentiment I here
set down, not on account of its worth (and I think it is contradicted--as
well as asserted--in more than one of the letters I subsequently had from
Mr. Clive, but it may serve to show the ardent and impulsive disposition
of this youth), by whom all beauties of art and nature, animate or
inanimate (the former especially), were welcomed with a gusto and delight
whereof colder temperaments are incapable. The view of a fine landscape,
a fine picture, a handsome woman, would make this harmless young
sensualist tipsy with pleasure. He seemed to derive an actual hilarity
and intoxication as his eye drank in these sights; and, though it was his
maxim that all dinners were good, and he could eat bread and cheese and
drink small beer with perfect good-humour, I believe that he found a
certain pleasure in a bottle of claret, which most men's systems were
incapable of feeling.

This springtime of youth is the season of letter-writing. A lad in high
health and spirits, the blood running briskly in his young veins, and the
world, and life, and nature bright and welcome to him, looks out,
perforce, for some companion to whom he may impart his sense of the
pleasure which he enjoys, and which were not complete unless a friend
were by to share it. I was the person most convenient for the young
fellow's purpose; he was pleased to confer upon me the title of friend en
titre, and confidant in particular; to endow the confidant in question
with a number of virtues and excellences which existed very likely only
in the lad's imagination; to lament that the confidant had no sister whom
he, Clive, might marry out of hand; and to make me a thousand simple
protests of affection and admiration, which are noted here as signs of
the young man's character, by no means as proofs of the goodness of mine.
The books given to the present biographer by "his affectionate friend,
Clive Newcome," still bear on the titlepages the marks of that boyish
hand and youthful fervour. He had a copy of Walter Lorraine bound and
gilt with such splendour as made the author blush for his performance,
which has since been seen at the bookstalls at a price suited to the very
humblest purses. He fired up and fought a newspaper critic (whom Clive
met at the Haunt one night) who had dared to write an article in which
that work was slighted; and if, in the course of nature, his friendship
has outlived that rapturous period, the kindness of the two old friends,
I hope, is not the less because it is no longer romantic, and the days of
white vellum and gilt edges have passed away. From the abundance of the
letters which the affectionate young fellow now wrote, the ensuing
portion of his youthful history is compiled. It may serve to recall
passages of their early days to such of his seniors as occasionally turn
over the leaves of a novel; and in the story of his faults,
indiscretions, passions, and actions, young readers may be reminded of
their own.

Now that the old Countess, and perhaps Barnes, were away, the barrier
between Clive and this family seemed to be withdrawn. The young folks who
loved him were free to see him as often as he would come. They were going
to Baden: would he come too? Baden was on the road to Switzerland, he
might journey to Strasbourg, Basle, and so on. Clive was glad enough to
go with his cousins, and travel in the orbit of such a lovely girl as
Ethel Newcome. J. J. performed the second part always when Clive was
present: and so they all travelled to Coblentz, Mayence, and Frankfort
together, making the journey which everybody knows, and sketching the
mountains and castles we all of us have sketched. Ethel's beauty made all
the passengers on all the steamers look round and admire. Clive was proud
of being in the suite of such a lovely person. The family travelled with
a pair of those carriages which used to thunder along the Continental
roads a dozen years since, and from interior, box, and rumble discharge a
dozen English people at hotel gates.

The journey is all sunshine and pleasure and novelty: the circular notes
with which Mr. Baines of Fog Court has supplied Clive Newcome, Esquire,
enabled that young gentleman to travel with great ease and comfort. He
has not yet ventured upon engaging a valet-de-chambre, it being agreed
between him and J. J. that two travelling artists have no right to such
an aristocratic appendage; but he has bought a snug little britzska at
Frankfort (the youth has very polite tastes, is already a connoisseur in
wine, and has no scruple in ordering the best at the hotels), and the
britzska travels in company with Lady Anne's caravan, either in its wake
so as to be out of reach of the dust, or more frequently ahead of that
enormous vehicle and its tender, in which come the children and the
governess of Lady Anne Newcome, guarded by a huge and melancholy London
footman, who beholds Rhine and Neckar, valley and mountain, village and
ruin, with a like dismal composure. Little Alfred and little Egbert are
by no means sorry to escape from Miss Quigley and the tender, and for a
stage ride or two in Clive's britzska. The little girls cry sometimes to
be admitted to that privilege. I dare say Ethel would like very well to
quit her place in the caravan, where she sits, circumvented by mamma's
dogs, and books, bags, dressing-boxes, and gimcrack cases, without which
apparatus some English ladies of condition cannot travel; but Miss Ethel
is grown up, she is out, and has been presented at Court, and is a person
of too great dignity now to sit anywhere but in the place of state in the
chariot corner. I like to think, for my part, of the gallant young fellow
taking his pleasure and enjoying his holiday, and few sights are more
pleasant than to watch a happy, manly English youth, free-handed and
generous-hearted, content and good-humour shining in his honest face,
pleased and pleasing, eager, active, and thankful for services, and
exercising bravely his noble youthful privilege to be happy and to enjoy.
Sing, cheery spirit, whilst the spring lasts; bloom whilst the sun
shines, kindly flowers of youth! You shall be none the worse to-morrow
for having been happy to-day, if the day brings no action to shame it. As
for J. J., he too had his share of enjoyment; the charming scenes around
him did not escape his bright eye, he absorbed pleasure in his silent
way, he was up with the sunrise always, and at work with his eyes and his
heart if not with his hands. A beautiful object too is such a one to
contemplate, a pure virgin soul, a creature gentle, pious, and full of
love, endowed with sweet gifts, humble and timid; but for truth's and
justice's sake inflexible, thankful to God and man, fond, patient, and
faithful. Clive was still his hero as ever, his patron, his splendid
young prince and chieftain. Who was so brave, who was so handsome,
generous, witty as Clive? To hear Clive sing, as the lad would whilst
they were seated at their work, or driving along on this happy journey,
through fair landscapes in the sunshine, gave J. J. the keenest pleasure;
his wit was a little slow, but he would laugh with his eyes at Clive's
sallies, or ponder over them and explode with laughter presently, giving
a new source of amusement to these merry travellers, and little Alfred
would laugh at J. J.'s laughing; and so, with a hundred harmless jokes to
enliven, and the ever-changing, ever-charming smiles of nature to cheer
and accompany it, the happy day's journey would come to an end.

So they travelled by the accustomed route to the prettiest town of all
places where Pleasure has set up her tents; and where the gay, the
melancholy, the idle or occupied, grave or haughty, come for amusement,
or business, or relaxation; where London beauties, having danced and
flirted all the season, may dance and flirt a little more; where
well-dressed rogues from all quarters of the world assemble; where I have
seen severe London lawyers, forgetting their wigs and the Temple, trying
their luck against fortune and M. Benazet; where wistful schemers
conspire and prick cards down, and deeply meditate the infallible coup;
and try it, and lose it, and borrow a hundred francs to go home; where
even virtuous British ladies venture their little stakes, and draw up
their winnings with trembling rakes, by the side of ladies who are not
virtuous at all, no, not even by name; where young prodigals break the
bank sometimes, and carry plunder out of a place which Hercules himself
could scarcely compel; where you meet wonderful countesses and
princesses, whose husbands are almost always absent on their vast
estates--in Italy, Spain, Piedmont--who knows where their lordships'
possessions are?--while trains of suitors surround those wandering
Penelopes their noble wives; Russian Boyars, Spanish Grandees of the
Order of the Fleece, Counts of France, and Princes Polish and Italian
innumerable, who perfume the gilded halls with their tobacco-smoke, and
swear in all languages against the black and the red. The famous English
monosyllable by which things, persons, luck, even eyes, are devoted to
the infernal gods, we may be sure is not wanting in that Babel. Where
does one not hear it? "D--- the luck," says Lord Kew, as the croupier
sweeps off his lordship's rouleaux. "D--- the luck," says Brown the
bagman, who has been backing his lordship with five-franc pieces. "Ah,
body of Bacchus!" says Count Felice, whom we all remember a courier. "Ah,
sacre coup," cries M. le Vicomte de Florac, as his last louis parts
company from him--each cursing in his native tongue. Oh, sweet chorus!

That Lord Kew should be at Baden is no wonder. If you heard of him at the
Finish, or at Buckingham Palace ball, or in a watch-house, or at the
Third Cataract, or at a Newmarket meeting, you would not be surprised. He
goes everywhere; does everything with all his might; knows everybody.
Last week he won who knows how many thousand louis from the bank (it
appears Brown has chosen one of the unlucky days to back his lordship).
He will eat his supper as gaily after a great victory as after a signal
defeat; and we know that to win with magnanimity requires much more
constancy than to lose. His sleep will not be disturbed by one event or
the other. He will play skittles all the morning with perfect
contentment, romp with children in the forenoon (he is the friend of half
the children in the place), or he will cheerfully leave the green table
and all the risk and excitement there, to take a hand at sixpenny whist
with General Fogey, or to give the six Miss Fogeys a turn each in the
ballroom. From H.R.H. the Prince Royal of ----, who is the greatest guest
at Baden, down to Brown the bagman, who does not consider himself the
smallest, Lord Kew is hail fellow with everybody, and has a kind word
from and for all.




CHAPTER XXVIII

In which Clive begins to see the World


In the company assembled at Baden, Clive found one or two old
acquaintances; among them his friend of Paris, M. de Florac, not in quite
so brilliant a condition as when Newcome had last met him on the
Boulevard. Florac owned that Fortune had been very unkind to him at
Baden; and, indeed, she had not only emptied his purse, but his
portmanteaus, jewel-box, and linen-closet--the contents of all of which
had ranged themselves on the red and black against Monsieur Benazet's
crown-pieces: whatever side they took was, however, the unlucky one.
"This campaign has been my Moscow, mon cher," Florac owned to Clive. "I
am conquered by Benazet; I have lost in almost every combat. I have lost
my treasure, my baggage, my ammunition of war, everything but my honour,
which, au reste, Mons. Benazet will not accept as a stake; if he
would, there are plenty here, believe me, who would set it on the
trente-et-quarante. Sometimes I have had a mind to go home; my mother,
who is an angel all forgiveness, would receive her prodigal, and kill the
fatted veal for me. But what will you? He annoys me--the domestic veal.
Besides, my brother the Abbe, though the best of Christians, is a Jew
upon certain matters; a Benazet who will not troquer absolution except
against repentance; and I have not for a sou of repentance in my pocket!
I have been sorry, yes--but it was because odd came up in place of even,
or the reverse. The accursed apres has chased me like a remorse, and when
black has come up I have wished myself converted to red. Otherwise I have
no repentance--I am joueur--nature has made me so, as she made my brother
devot. The Archbishop of Strasbourg is of our parents; I saw his grandeur
when I went lately to Strasbourg, on my last pilgrimage to the Mont de
Piete. I owned to him that I would pawn his cross and ring to go play:
the good prelate laughed, and said his chaplain should keep an eye on
them. Will you dine with me? The landlord of my hotel was the intendant
of our cousin, the Duc d'Ivry, and will give me credit to the day of
judgment. I do not abuse his noble confidence. My dear! there are covers
of silver put upon my table every day with which I could retrieve my
fortune, did I listen to the suggestions of Satanas; but I say to him,
Vade retro. Come and dine with me--Duluc's kitchen is very good."

These easy confessions were uttered by a gentleman who was nearly forty
years of age, and who had indeed played the part of a young man in Paris
and the great European world so long, that he knew or chose to perform no
other. He did not want for abilities; had the best temper in the world;
was well bred and gentlemanlike always; and was gay even after Moscow.
His courage was known, and his character for bravery and another kind of
gallantry probably exaggerated by his bad reputation. Had his mother not
been alive, perhaps he would have believed in the virtue of no woman. But
this one he worshipped, and spoke with tenderness and enthusiasm of her
constant love and patience and goodness. "See her miniature!" he said, "I
never separate myself from it--oh, never! It saved my life in an affair
about--about a woman who was not worth the powder which poor Jules and I
burned for her. His ball struck me here, upon the waistcoat, bruising my
rib and sending me to my bed, which I never should have left alive but
for this picture. Oh, she is an angel, my mother! I am sure that Heaven
has nothing to deny that saint, and that her tears wash out my sins."

Olive smiled. "I think Madame de Florac must weep a good deal," he said.

"Enormement, my friend! My faith! I do not deny it! I give her cause,
night and evening. I am possessed by demons! This little Affenthaler wine
of this country has a little smack which is most agreeable. The passions
tear me, my young friend! Play is fatal, but play is not so fatal as
woman. Pass me the ecrevisses, they are most succulent. Take warning by
me, and avoid both. I saw you roder round the green tables, and marked
your eyes as they glistened over the heaps of gold, and looked at some of
our beauties of Baden. Beware of such sirens, young man! and take me for
your Mentor; avoiding what I have done--that understands itself. You have
not played as yet? Do not do so; above all avoid a martingale, if you do.
Play ought not to be an affair of calculation, but of inspiration. I have
calculated infallibly, and what has been the effect? Gousset empty,
tiroirs empty, necessaire parted for Strasbourg! Where is my fur pelisse,
Frederic?"

"Parbleu, vous le savez bien, Monsieur le Vicomte," says
Frederic, the domestic, who was waiting on Clive and his friend.

"A pelisse lined with true sable, and, worth three thousand francs, that
I won of a little Russian at billiards. That pelisse at Strasbourg (where
the infamous worms of the Mount of Piety are actually gnawing her). Two
hundred francs and this reconnaissance, which Frederic receive, are all
that now represent the pelisse. How many chemises have I, Frederic?"

"Eh, parbleu, Monsieur le Vicomte sait bien que nous avons toujours
vingt-quatre chemises," says Frederic, grumbling.

Monsieur le Vicomte springs up shrieking from the dinner-table.
"Twenty-four shirts," says he, "and I have been a week without a louis in
my pocket! Belitre! Nigaud!" He flings open one drawer after another, but
there are no signs of that--superfluity of linen of which the domestic
spoke, whose countenance now changes from a grim frown to a grim smile.

"Ah, my faithful Frederic, I pardon thee! Mr. Newcome will understand my
harmless supercherie. Frederic was in my company of the Guard, and
remains with me since. He is Caleb Balderstone and I am Ravenswood. Yes,
I am Edgard. Let us have coffee and a cigar, Balderstone."

"Plait-il, Monsieur le Vicomte?" says the French Caleb.

"Thou comprehendest not English. Thou readest not Valtare Scott, thou!"
cries the master. "I was recounting to Monsieur Newcome thy history and
my misfortunes. Go seek coffee for us, nigaud." And as the two gentlemen
partake of that exhilarating liquor, the elder confides gaily to his
guest the reason why he prefers taking coffee at the hotel to the coffee
at the great Cafe of the Redoute, with a duris urgens in rebus egestass!
pronounced in the true French manner.

Clive was greatly amused by the gaiety of the Viscount after his
misfortunes and his Moscow; and thought that one of Mr. Baines's circular
notes might not be ill laid out in succouring this hero. It may have been
to this end that Florac's confessions tended; though, to do him justice,
the incorrigible young fellow would confide his adventures to any one who
would listen; and the exact state of his wardrobe, and the story of his
pawned pelisse, dressing-case, rings and watches, were known to all
Baden.

"You tell me to marry and range myself," said Clive (to whom the Viscount
was expatiating upon the charms of the superbe young Anglaise with whom
he had seen Clive walking on the promenade). "Why do you not marry and
range yourself too?"

"Eh, my dear! I am married already. You do not know it? I am married
since the Revolution of July. Yes. We were poor in those days, as poor we
remain. My cousins the Duc d'Ivry's sons and his grandson were still
alive. Seeing no other resource and pursued by the Arabs, I espoused the
Vicomtesse de Florac. I gave her my name, you comprehend, in exchange for
her own odious one. She was Miss Higg. Do you know the family Higg of
Manchesterre in the comte of Lancastre? She was then a person of a ripe
age. The Vicomtesse is now--ah! it is fifteen years since, and she dies
not. Our union was not happy, my friend--Madame Paul de Florac is of the
reformed religion--not of the Anglican Church, you understand--but a
dissident I know not of what sort. We inhabited the Hotel de Florac for a
while after our union, which was all of convenience, you understand. She
filled her salon with ministers to make you die. She assaulted my poor
father in his garden-chair, whence he could not escape her. She told my
sainted mother that she was an idolatress--she who only idolatrises her
children! She called us other poor Catholics who follow the rites of our
fathers, des Romishes; and Rome, Babylon; and the Holy Father--a scarlet
--eh! a scarlet abomination. She outraged my mother, that angel; essayed
to convert the antechamber and the office; put little books in the Abbe's
bedroom. Eh, my friend! what a good king was Charles IX., and his mother
what a wise sovereign! I lament that Madame de Florac should have escaped
the St. Barthelemi, when no doubt she was spared on account of her tender
age. We have been separated for many years; her income was greatly
exaggerated. Beyond the payment of my debts I owe her nothing. I wish I
could say as much of all the rest of the world. Shall we take a turn of
promenade? Mauvais sujet! I see you are longing to be at the green
table."

Clive was not longing to be at the green table: but his companion was
never easy at it or away from it. Next to winning, losing, M. de Florac
said, was the best sport--next to losing, looking on. So he and Clive
went down to the Redoute, where Lord Kew was playing with a crowd of
awestruck amateurs and breathless punters admiring his valour and
fortune; and Clive, saying that he knew nothing about the game, took out
five Napoleons from his purse, and besought Florac to invest them in the
most profitable manner at roulette. The other made some faint attempts at
a scruple: but the money was speedily laid on the table, where it
increased and multiplied amazingly too; so that in a quarter of an hour
Florac brought quite a handful of gold pieces to his principal. Then
Clive, I dare say blushing as he made the proposal, offered half the
handful of Napoleons to M. de Florac, to be repaid when he thought fit.
And fortune must have been very favourable to the husband of Miss Higg
that night; for in the course of an hour he insisted on paying back
Clive's loan; and two days afterwards appeared with his shirt-studs (of
course with his shirts also), released from captivity, his watch, rings,
and chains, on the parade; and was observed to wear his celebrated fur
pelisse as he drove back in a britzska from Strasbourg. "As for myself,"
wrote Clive, "I put back into my purse the five Napoleons with which I
had begun; and laid down the whole mass of winnings on the table, where
it was doubled and then quadrupled, and then swept up by the croupiers,
greatly to my ease of mind. And then Lord Kew asked me to supper and we
had a merry night."

This was Mr. Clive's first and last appearance as a gambler. J. J. looked
very grave when he heard of these transactions. Clive's French friend did
not please his English companion at all, nor the friends of Clive's
French friend, the Russians, the Spaniards, the Italians, of sounding
titles and glittering decorations, and the ladies who belonged to their
society. He saw by chance Ethel, escorted by her cousin Lord Kew, passing
through a crowd of this company one day. There was not one woman there
who was not the heroine of some discreditable story. It was the Comtesse
Calypso who had been jilted by the Duc Ulysse. It was the Marquise Ariane
to whom the Prince Thesee had behaved so shamefully, and who had taken to
Bacchus as a consolation. It was Madame Medee, who had absolutely killed
her old father by her conduct regarding Jason: she had done everything
for Jason: she had got him the toison d'or from the Queen Mother, and now
had to meet him every day with his little blonde bride on his arm! J. J.
compared Ethel, moving in the midst of these folks, to the Lady amidst
the rout of Comus. There they were the Fauns and Satyrs: there they were,
the merry Pagans: drinking and dancing, dicing and sporting; laughing out
jests that never should be spoken; whispering rendezvous to be written in
midnight calendars; jeering at honest people who passed under their
palace windows--jolly rebels and repealers of the law. Ah, if Mrs. Brown,
whose children are gone to bed at the hotel, knew but the history of that
calm dignified-looking gentleman who sits under her, and over whose
patient back she frantically advances and withdraws her two-franc piece,
whilst his own columns of louis d'or are offering battle to fortune--how
she would shrink away from the shoulder which she pushes! That man so
calm and well bred, with a string of orders on his breast, so well
dressed, with such white hands, has stabbed trusting hearts; severed
family ties; written lying vows; signed false oaths; torn up pitilessly
tender appeals for redress, and tossed away into the fire supplications
blistered with tears; packed cards and cogged dice; or used pistol or
sword as calmly and dexterously as he now ranges his battalions of gold
pieces.

Ridley shrank away from such lawless people with the delicacy belonging
to his timid and retiring nature, but it must be owned that Mr. Clive was
by no means so squeamish. He did not know, in the first place, the
mystery of their iniquities; and his sunny kindly spirit, undimmed by any
of the cares which clouded it subsequently, was disposed to shine upon
all people alike. The world was welcome to him: the day a pleasure: all
nature a gay feast: scarce any dispositions discordant with his own (for
pretension only made him laugh, and hypocrisy he will never be able to
understand if he lives to be a hundred years old): the night brought him
a long sleep, and the morning a glad waking. To those privileges of youth
what enjoyments of age are comparable? what achievements of ambition?
what rewards of money and fame? Clive's happy friendly nature shone out
of his face; and almost all who beheld it felt kindly towards him. As
those guileless virgins of romance and ballad, who walk smiling through
dark forests charming off dragons and confronting lions, the young man as
yet went through the world harmless; no giant waylaid him as yet; no
robbing ogre fed on him: and (greatest danger of all for one of his
ardent nature) no winning enchantress or artful siren coaxed him to her
cave, or lured him into her waters--haunts into which we know so many
young simpletons are drawn, where their silly bones are picked and their
tender flesh devoured.

The time was short which Clive spent at Baden, for it has been said the
winter was approaching, and the destination of our young artists was
Rome; but he may have passed some score of days here, to which he and
another person in that pretty watering-place possibly looked back
afterwards, as not the unhappiest period of their lives. Among Colonel
Newcome's papers to which the family biographer has had subsequent
access, there are a couple of letters from Clive, dated Baden, at this
time, and full of happiness, gaiety, and affection. Letter No. 1 says,
"Ethel is the prettiest girl here. At the assemblies all the princes,
counts, dukes, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, are dying to dance with
her. She sends her dearest love to her uncle." By the side of the words
"prettiest girl," was written in a frank female hand the monosyllable
"Stuff;" and as a note to the expression "dearest love," with a star to
mark the text and the note, are squeezed, in the same feminine
characters, at the bottom of Clive's page, the words, "That I do. E. N."

In letter No. 2, the first two pages are closely written in Clive's
handwriting, describing his pursuits and studies, and giving amusing
details of the life at Baden, and the company whom he met there--
narrating his rencontre with their Paris friend, M. de Florac, and the
arrival of the Duchesse d'Ivry, Florac's cousin, whose titles the Vicomte
will probably inherit. Not a word about Florac's gambling propensities
are mentioned in the letter; but Clive honestly confesses that he has
staked five Napoleons, doubled them, quadrupled them, won ever so much,
lost it all back again, and come away from the table with his original
five pounds in his pocket--proposing never to play any more. "Ethel," he
concluded, "is looking over my shoulder. She thinks me such a delightful
creature that she is never easy without me. She bids me to say that I am
the best of sons and cousins, and am, in a word, a darling du--" The rest
of this important word is not given, but goose is added in the female
hand. In the faded ink, on the yellow paper that may have crossed and
recrossed oceans, that has lain locked in chests for years, and buried
under piles of family archives, while your friends have been dying and
your head has grown white--who has not disinterred mementos like these--
from which the past smiles at you so sadly, shimmering out of Hades an
instant but to sink back again into the cold shades, perhaps with a
faint, faint sound as of a remembered tone--a ghostly echo of a once
familiar laughter? I was looking of late at a wall in the Naples Museum,
whereon a boy of Herculaneum eighteen hundred years ago had scratched
with a nail the figure of a soldier. I could fancy the child turning
round and smiling on me after having done his etching. Which of us that
is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes lies the
Life of Youth,--the careless Sport, the Pleasure and Passion, the darling
Joy. You open an old letter-box and look at your own childish scrawls, or
your mother's letters to you when you were at school; and excavate your
heart. Oh me, for the day when the whole city shall be bare and the
chambers unroofed--and every cranny visible to the Light above, from the
Forum to the Lupanar!

Ethel takes up the pen. "My dear uncle," she says, "while Clive is
sketching out of window, let me write you a line or two on his paper,
though I know you like to hear no one speak but him. I wish I could draw
him for you as he stands yonder, looking the picture of good health, good
spirits, and good humour. Everybody likes him. He is quite unaffected;
always gay; always pleased. He draws more and more beautifully every day;
and his affection for young Mr. Ridley, who is really a most excellent
and astonishing young man, and actually a better artist than Clive
himself, is most romantic, and does your son the greatest credit. You
will order Clive not to sell his pictures, won't you? I know it is not
wrong, but your son might look higher than to be an artist. It is a rise
for Mr. Ridley, but a fall for him. An artist, an organist, a pianist,
all these are very good people, but you know not de notre monde, and
Clive ought to belong to it.

"We met him at Bonn on our way to a great family gathering here; where, I
must tell you, we are assembled for what I call the Congress of Baden!
The chief of the house of Kew is here, and what time he does not devote
to skittles, to smoking cigars, to the jeu in the evenings, to Madame
d'Ivry, to Madame de Cruchecassee, and the foreign people (of whom there
are a host here of the worst kind, as usual), he graciously bestows on
me. Lord and Lady Dorking are here, with their meek little daughter,
Clara Pulleyn; and Barnes is coming. Uncle Hobson has returned to Lombard
Street to relieve guard. I think you will hear before very long of Lady
Clara Newcome. Grandmamma, who was to have presided at the Congress of
Baden, and still, you know, reigns over the house of Kew, has been
stopped at Kissingen with an attack of rheumatism; I pity poor Aunt
Julia, who can never leave her. Here are all our news. I declare I have
filled the whole page; men write closer than we do. I wear the dear
brooch you gave me, often and often; I think of you always, dear, kind
uncle, as your affectionate Ethel."

Besides roulette and trente-et-quarante, a number of amusing games are
played at Baden, which are not performed, so to speak, sur table. These
little diversions and jeux de societe can go on anywhere; in an alley in
the park; in a picnic to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge;
at a tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel; in a ball at the Redoute; in
the play-rooms behind the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only cast
upon rakes and rouleaux, and red and black; or on the broad walk in front
of the conversation rooms, where thousands of people are drinking and
chattering, lounging and smoking, whilst the Austrian brass band, in the
little music pavilion, plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes.
Here the widow plays her black suit and sets her bright eyes against the
rich bachelor, elderly or young as may be. Here the artful practitioner,
who has dealt in a thousand such games, engages the young simpleton with
more money than wit; and knowing his weakness and her skill, we may
safely take the odds, and back rouge et couleur to win. Here mamma, not
having money, perhaps, but metal more attractive, stakes her virgin
daughter against Count Fettacker's forests and meadows; or Lord Lackland
plays his coronet, of which the jewels have long since been in pawn,
against Miss Bags' three-per-cents. And so two or three funny little games
were going on at Baden amongst our immediate acquaintance; besides that
vulgar sport round the green table, at which the mob, with whom we have
little to do, was elbowing each other. A hint of these domestic
prolusions has been given to the reader in the foregoing extract from
Miss Ethel Newcome's letter: likewise some passions have been in play, of
which a modest young English maiden could not be aware. Do not, however,
let us be too prematurely proud of our virtue. That tariff of British
virtue is wonderfully organised. Heaven help the society which made its
laws! Gnats are shut out of its ports, or not admitted without scrutiny
and repugnance, whilst herds of camels are let in. The law professes to
exclude some goods (or bads shall we call them?)--well, some articles of
baggage, which are yet smuggled openly under the eyes of winking
officers, and worn every day without shame. Shame! What is shame? Virtue
is very often shameful according to the English social constitution, and
shame honourable. Truth, if yours happens to differ from your
neighbour's, provokes your friend's coldness, your mother's tears, the
world's persecution. Love is not to be dealt in, save under restrictions
which kill its sweet, healthy, free commerce. Sin in man is so light,
that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed; while for woman it is so
heavy that no repentance can wash it out. Ah! yes; all stories are old.
You proud matrons in your Mayfair markets, have you never seen a virgin
sold, or sold one? Have you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among
robbers, and not a Pharisee to help him? of a poor woman fallen more
sadly yet, abject in repentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her? I
pace this broad Baden walk as the sunset is gilding the hills round
about, as the orchestra blows its merry tunes, as the happy children
laugh and sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the gambling-palace are
lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure-hunters stroll, and smoke, and
flirt, and hum: and wonder sometimes, is it the sinners who are the most
sinful? Is it poor Prodigal yonder amongst the bad company, calling black
and red and tossing the champagne; or brother Straitlace that grudges his
repentance? Is it downcast Hagar that slinks away with poor little
Ishmael in her hand; or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at her from
my demure Lord Abraham's arm?

One day of the previous May, when of course everybody went to visit the
Water-colour Exhibitions, Ethel Newcome was taken to see the pictures by
her grandmother, that rigorous old Lady Kew, who still proposed to reign
over all her family. The girl had high spirit, and very likely hot words
had passed between the elder and the younger lady; such as I am given to
understand will be uttered in the most polite families. They came to a
piece by Mr. Hunt, representing one of those figures which he knows how
to paint with such consummate truth and pathos--a friendless young girl
cowering in a doorway, evidently without home or shelter. The exquisite
fidelity of the details, and the plaintive beauty of the expression of
the child, attracted old Lady Kew's admiration, who was an excellent
judge of works of art; and she stood for some time looking at the
drawing, with Ethel by her side. Nothing, in truth, could be more simple
or pathetic; Ethel laughed, and her grandmother looking up from her stick
on which she hobbled about, saw a very sarcastic expression in the girl's
eyes.

"You have no taste for pictures, only for painters, I suppose," said Lady
Kew.

"I was not looking at the picture," said Ethel, still with a smile, "but
at the little green ticket in the corner."

"Sold," said Lady Kew. "Of course it is sold; all Mr. Hunt's pictures are
sold. There is not one of them here on which you won't see the green
ticket. He is a most admirable artist. I don't know whether his comedy or
tragedy are the most excellent."

"I think, grandmamma," Ethel said, "we young ladies in the world, when we
are exhibiting, ought to have little green tickets pinned on our backs,
with 'Sold' written on them; it would prevent trouble and any future
haggling, you know. Then at the end of the season the owner would come to
carry us home."

Grandmamma only said, "Ethel, you are a fool," and hobbled on to Mr.
Cattermole's picture hard by. "What splendid colour; what a romantic
gloom; what a flowing pencil and dexterous hand!" Lady Kew could delight
in pictures, applaud good poetry, and squeeze out a tear over a good
novel too. That afternoon, young Dawkins, the rising water-colour artist,
who used to come daily to the gallery and stand delighted before his own
piece, was aghast to perceive that there was no green ticket in the
corner of his frame, and he pointed out the deficiency to the keeper of
the pictures. His landscape, however, was sold and paid for, so no great
mischief occurred. On that same evening, when the Newcome family
assembled at dinner in Park Lane, Ethel appeared with a bright green
ticket pinned in the front of her white muslin frock, and when asked what
this queer fancy meant, she made Lady Kew a curtsey, looking her full in
the face, and turning round to her father, said, "I am a tableau-vivant,
papa. I am Number 46 in the Exhibition of the Gallery of Painters in
Water-colours."

"My love, what do you mean?" says mamma; and Lady Kew, jumping up on her
crooked stick with immense agility, tore the card out of Ethel's bosom,
and very likely would have boxed her ears, but that her parents were
present and Lord Kew announced.

Ethel talked about pictures the whole evening, and would talk of nothing
else. Grandmamma went away furious. "She told Barnes, and when everybody
was gone there was a pretty row in the building," said Madam Ethel, with
an arch look, when she narrated the story. "Barnes was ready to kill me
and eat me; but I never was afraid of Barnes." And the biographer gathers
from this little anecdote, narrated to him, never mind by whom, at a long
subsequent period, that there had been great disputes in Sir Brian
Newcome's establishment, fierce drawing-room battles, whereof certain
pictures of a certain painter might have furnished the cause, and in
which Miss Newcome had the whole of the family forces against her. That
such battles take place in other domestic establishments, who shall say
or shall not say? Who, when he goes out to dinner, and is received by a
bland host with a gay shake of the hand, and a pretty hostess with a
gracious smile of welcome, dares to think that Mr. Johnson upstairs, half
an hour before, was swearing out of his dressing-room at Mrs. Johnson,
for having ordered a turbot instead of a salmon, or that Mrs. Johnson now
talking to Lady Jones so nicely about their mutual darling children, was
crying her eyes out as her maid was fastening her gown, as the carriages
were actually driving up? The servants know these things, but not we in
the dining-room. Hark with what a respectful tone Johnson begs the
clergyman present to say grace!

Whatever these family quarrels may have been, let bygones be bygones, and
let us be perfectly sure, that to whatever purpose Miss Ethel Newcome,
for good or for evil, might make her mind up, she had quite spirit enough
to hold her own. She chose to be Countess of Kew because she chose to be
Countess of Kew; had she set her heart on marrying Mr. Kuhn, she would
have had her way, and made the family adopt it, and called him dear
Fritz, as by his godfathers and godmothers, in his baptism, Mr. Kuhn was
called. Clive was but a fancy, if he had even been so much as that, not a
passion, and she fancied a pretty four-pronged coronet still more.

So that the diatribe wherein we lately indulged, about the selling of
virgins, by no means applies to Lady Anne Newcome, who signed the address
to Mrs Stowe, the other day, along with thousands more virtuous British
matrons; but should the reader haply say, "Is thy fable, O Poet, narrated
concerning Tancred Pulleyn, Earl of Dorking, and Sigismunda, his wife?"
the reluctant moralist is obliged to own that the cap does fit those
noble personages, of whose lofty society you will, however, see but
little.

For though I would like to go into an Indian Brahmin's house, and see the
punkahs, and the purdahs and tattys, and the pretty brown maidens with
great eyes, and great nose-rings, and painted foreheads, and slim waists
cased in Cashmir shawls, Kincob scarfs, curly slippers, gilt trousers,
precious anklets and bangles; and have the mystery of Eastern existence
revealed to me (as who would not who has read the Arabian Nights in his
youth?), yet I would not choose the moment when the Brahmin of the house
was dead, his women howling, his priests doctoring his child of a widow,
now frightening her with sermons, now drugging her with bang, so as to
push her on his funeral pile at last, and into the arms of that carcase,
stupefied, but obedient and decorous. And though I like to walk, even in
fancy, in an earl's house, splendid, well ordered, where there are feasts
and fine pictures and fair ladies and endless books and good company; yet
there are times when the visit is not pleasant; and when the parents in
that fine house are getting ready their daughter for sale, and
frightening away her tears with threats, and stupefying her grief with
narcotics, praying her and imploring her, and dramming her and coaxing
her, and blessing her, and cursing her perhaps, till they have brought
her into such a state as shall fit the poor young thing for that deadly
couch upon which they are about to thrust her. When my lord and lady are
so engaged I prefer not to call at their mansion, Number 1000 in
Grosvenor Square, but to partake of a dinner of herbs rather than of that
stalled ox which their cook is roasting whole. There are some people who
are not so squeamish. The family comes, of course; the Most Reverend the
Lord Arch-Brahmin of Benares will attend the ceremony; there will be
flowers and lights and white favours; and quite a string of carriages up
to the pagoda; and such a breakfast afterwards; and music in the street
and little parish boys hurrahing; and no end of speeches within and tears
shed (no doubt), and His Grace the Arch-Brahmin will make a highly
appropriate speech, just with a faint scent of incense about it as such a
speech ought to have; and the young person will slip away unperceived,
and take off her veils, wreaths, orange-flowers, bangles and finery, and
will put on a plain dress more suited for the occasion, and the
house-door will open--and there comes the SUTTEE in company of the body:
yonder the pile is waiting on four wheels with four horses, the crowd
hurrahs and the deed is done.

This ceremony amongst us is so stale and common that to be sure there is
no need to describe its rites, and as women sell themselves for what you
call an establishment every day; to the applause of themselves, their
parents, and the world, why on earth should a man ape at originality and
pretend to pity them? Never mind about the lies at the altar, the
blasphemy against the godlike name of love, the sordid surrender, the
smiling dishonour. What the deuce does a mariage de convenance mean but
all this, and are not such sober Hymeneal torches more satisfactory often
than the most brilliant love matches that ever flamed and burnt out? Of
course. Let us not weep when everybody else is laughing: let us pity the
agonised duchess when her daughter, Lady Atalanta, runs away with the
doctor--of course, that's respectable; let us pity Lady Iphigenia's
father when that venerable chief is obliged to offer up his darling
child; but it is over her part of the business that a decorous painter
would throw the veil now. Her ladyship's sacrifice is performed, and the
less said about it the better.

Such was the case regarding an affair which appeared in due subsequence
in the newspapers not long afterwards under the fascinating title of
"Marriage in High Life," and which was in truth the occasion of the
little family Congress of Baden which we are now chronicling. We all
know--everybody at least who has the slightest acquaintance with the army
list--that, at the commencement of their life, my Lord Kew, my Lord
Viscount Rooster, the Earl of Dorking's eldest son, and the Honourable
Charles Belsize, familiarly called Jack Belsize, were subaltern officers
in one of His Majesty's regiments of cuirassier guards. They heard the
chimes at midnight like other young men, they enjoyed their fun and
frolics as gentlemen of spirit will do; sowing their wild oats
plentifully, and scattering them with boyish profusion. Lady Kew's luck
had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the lot of his noble
young companions. Lord Dorking's house is known to have been long
impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained me
with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Rooster's grandfather
"with the wild Prince and Poins," of his feats in the hunting-field, over
the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights and two days at a
sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums awful to reckon. He
played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men did, dreadful
sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants incurred the
penalties of the progenitor's imprudence, and Chanticlere, though one of
the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the year.
The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. "Dorking cannot
cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park," the good old Major used to
tell with tragic accents, "he lives by his cabbages, grapes, and
pineapples, and the fees which people give for seeing the place and
gardens, which are still the show of the county, and among the most
splendid in the island. When Dorking is at Chanticlere, Ballard, who
married his sister, lends him the plate and sends three men with it. Four
cooks inside, and four maids and six footmen on the roof, with a butler
driving, come down from London in a trap, and wait the month. And as the
last carriage of the company drives away, the servants' coach is packed,
and they all bowl back to town again. It's pitiable, sir, pitiable."

In Lord Kew's youth, the names of himself and his two noble friends
appeared on innumerable slips of stamped paper, conveying pecuniary
assurances of a promissory nature; all of which promises, my Lord
Kew singly and most honourably discharged. Neither of his two
companions-in-arms had the means of meeting these engagements. Ballard,
Rooster's uncle, was said to make his lordship some allowance. As for
Jack Belsize: how he lived; how he laughed; how he dressed himself so
well, and looked so fat and handsome; how he got a shilling to pay for a
cab or a cigar; what ravens fed him; was a wonder to all. The young men
claimed kinsmanship with one another, which those who are learned in the
peerage may unravel.

When Lord Dorking's eldest daughter married the Honourable and Venerable
Dennis Gallowglass, Archdeacon of Bullintubber (and at present Viscount
Gallowglass and Killbrogue, and Lord Bishop of Ballyshannon), great
festivities took place at Chanticlere, whither the relatives of the high
contracting parties were invited. Among them came poor Jack Belsize, and
hence the tears which are dropping at Baden at this present period of our
history. Clara Pulleyn was then a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and
Jack a handsome guardsman of six or seven and twenty. As she had been
especially warned against Jack as a wicked young rogue, whose antecedents
were wofully against him; as she was never allowed to sit near him at
dinner, or to walk with him, or to play at billiards with him, or to
waltz with him; as she was scolded if he spoke a word to her, or if he
picked up her glove, or touched her hand in a round game, or caught him
when they were playing at blindman's-buff; as they neither of them had a
penny in the world, and were both very good-looking, of course Clara was
always catching Jack at blindman's-buff; constantly lighting upon him in
the shrubberies or corridors, etc. etc. etc. She fell in love (she was
not the first) with Jack's broad chest and thin waist; she thought his
whiskers as indeed they were, the handsomest pair in all His Majesty's
Brigade of Cuirassiers.

We know not what tears were shed in the vast and silent halls of
Chanticlere, when the company were gone, and the four cooks, and four
maids, six footmen, and temporary butler had driven back in their private
trap to the metropolis, which is not forty miles distant from that
splendid castle. How can we tell? The guests departed, the lodge-gates
shut; all is mystery:--darkness with one pair of wax candles blinking
dismally in a solitary chamber; all the rest dreary vistas of brown
hollands, rolled Turkey carpets, gaunt ancestors on the walls scowling
out of the twilight blank. The imagination is at liberty to depict his
lordship, with one candle, over his dreadful endless tapes and papers;
her ladyship with the other, and an old, old novel, wherein perhaps, Mrs.
Radcliffe describes a castle as dreary as her own; and poor little Clara
sighing and crying in the midst of these funereal splendours, as lonely
and heart-sick as Oriana in her moated grange:--poor little Clara!

Lord Kew's drag took the young men to London; his lordship driving, and
the servants sitting inside. Jack sat behind with the two grooms, and
tooted on a cornet-a-piston in the most melancholy manner. He partook of
no refreshment on the road. His silence at his clubs was remarked:
smoking, billiards, military duties, and this and that, roused him a
little, and presently Jack was alive again. But then came the season,
Lady Clara Pulleyn's first season in London, and Jack was more alive than
ever. There was no ball he did not go to; no opera (that is to say, no
opera of certain operas) which he did not frequent. It was easy to see by
his face, two minutes after entering a room, whether the person he sought
was there or absent; not difficult for those who were in the secret to
watch in another pair of eyes the bright kindling signals which answered
Jack's fiery glances. Ah! how beautiful he looked on his charger on the
birthday, all in a blaze of scarlet, and bullion, and steel. O Jack! tear
her out of yon carriage, from the side of yonder livid, feathered,
painted, bony dowager! place her behind you on the black charger; cut
down the policeman, and away with you! The carriage rolls in through St.
James's Park; Jack sits alone with his sword dropped to the ground, or
only atra cura on the crupper behind him; and Snip, the tailor, in the
crowd, thinks it is for fear of him Jack's head droops. Lady Clara
Pulleyn is presented by her mother, the Countess of Dorking; and Jack is
arrested that night as he is going out of White's to meet her at the
Opera.

Jack's little exploits are known in the Insolvent Court, where he made
his appearances as Charles Belsize, commonly called the Honourable
Charles Belsize, whose dealings were smartly chronicled by the indignant
moralists of the press of those days. The Scourge flogged him heartily.
The Whip (of which the accomplished editor was himself in Whitecross
Street prison) was especially virtuous regarding him; and the Penny Voice
of Freedom gave him an awful dressing. I am not here to scourge sinners;
I am true to my party; it is the other side this humble pen attacks; let
us keep to the virtuous and respectable, for as for poor sinners they get
the whipping-post every day. One person was faithful to poor Jack through
all his blunders and follies and extravagance and misfortunes, and that
was the pretty young girl of Chanticlere, round whose young affections
his luxuriant whiskers had curled. And the world may cry out at Lord Kew
for sending his brougham to the Queen's Bench prison, and giving a great
feast at Grignon's to Jack on the day of his liberation, but I for one
will not quarrel with his lordship. He and many other sinners had a jolly
night. They said Kew made a fine speech, in hearing and acknowledging
which Jack Belsize wept copiously. Barnes Newcome was in a rage at Jack's
manumission, and sincerely hoped Mr. Commissioner would give him a couple
of years longer; and cursed and swore with a great liberality on hearing
of his liberty.

That this poor prodigal should marry Clara Pulleyn, and by way of a dowry
lay his schedule at her feet, was out of the question. His noble father,
Lord Highgate, was furious against him; his eldest brother would not see
him; he had given up all hopes of winning his darling prize long ago, and
one day there came to him a great packet bearing the seal of Chanticlere,
containing a wretched little letter signed C. P., and a dozen sheets of
Jack's own clumsy writing, delivered who knows how, in what crush-rooms,
quadrilles, bouquets, balls, and in which were scrawled Jack's love and
passion and ardour. How many a time had he looked into the dictionary at
White's, to see whether eternal was spelt with an e, and adore with one a
or two! There they were, the incoherent utterances of his brave longing
heart; and those two wretched, wretched lines signed C., begging that
C.'s little letters might too be returned or destroyed. To do him
justice, he burnt them loyally every one along with his own waste paper.
He kept not one single little token which she had given him or let him
take. The rose, the glove, the little handkerchief which she had dropped
to him, how he cried over them! The ringlet of golden hair--he burnt them
all, all in his own fire in the prison, save a little, little bit of the
hair, which might be any one's, which was the colour of his sister's. Kew
saw the deed done; perhaps he hurried away when Jack came to the very
last part of the sacrifice, and flung the hair into the fire, where he
would have liked to fling his heart and his life too.

So Clara was free, and the year when Jack came out of prison and went
abroad, she passed the season in London dancing about night after night,
and everybody said she was well out of that silly affair with Jack
Belsize. It was then that Barnes Newcome, Esq., a partner of the wealthy
banking firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, son and heir of Sir Brian
Newcome, of Newcome, Bart., and M. P., descended in right line from Bryan
de Newcomyn, slain at Hastings, and barber-surgeon to Edward the
Confessor, etc. etc., cast the eyes of regard on the Lady Clara Pulleyn,
who was a little pale and languid certainly, but had blue eyes, a
delicate skin, and a pretty person, and knowing her previous history as
well as you who have just perused it, deigned to entertain matrimonial
intentions towards her ladyship.

Not one of the members of these most respectable families, excepting poor
little Clara perhaps, poor little fish (as if she had any call but to do
her duty, or to ask a quelle sauce elle serait mangee), protested against
this little affair of traffic; Lady Dorking had a brood of little
chickens to succeed Clara. There was little Hennie, who was sixteen, and
Biddy, who was fourteen, and Adelaide, and who knows how many more? How
could she refuse a young man, not very agreeable it is true, nor
particularly amiable, nor of good birth, at least on his father's side,
but otherwise eligible, and heir to so many thousands a year? The
Newcomes, on their side, think it a desirable match. Barnes, it must be
confessed, is growing rather selfish, and has some bachelor ways which a
wife will reform. Lady Kew is strongly for the match. With her own family
interest, Lord Steyne and Lord Kew, her nephews, and Barnes's own
father-in-law, Lord Dorking, in the Peers, why shall not the Newcomes sit
there too, and resume the old seat which all the world knows they had in
the time of Richard III.? Barnes and his father had got up quite a belief
about a Newcome killed at Bosworth, along with King Richard, and hated
Henry VII. as an enemy of their noble race. So all the parties were
pretty well agreed. Lady Anne wrote rather a pretty little poem about
welcoming the white Fawn to the Newcome bowers, and "Clara" was made to
rhyme with "fairer," and "timid does and antlered deer to dot the glades
of Chanticlere," quite in a picturesque way. Lady Kew pronounced that the
poem was very pretty indeed.

The year after Jack Belsize made his foreign tour he returned to London
for the season. Lady Clara did not happen to be there; her health was a
little delicate, and her kind parents took her abroad; so all things went
on very smoothly and comfortably indeed.

Yes, but when things were so quiet and comfortable, when the ladies of
the two families had met at the Congress of Baden, and liked each other
so much, when Barnes and his papa the Baronet, recovered from his
illness, were actually on their journey from Aix-la-Chapelle, and Lady
Kew in motion from Kissingen to the Congress of Baden, why on earth
should Jack Belsize, haggard, wild, having been winning great sums, it
was said, at Hombourg, forsake his luck there, and run over frantically
to Baden? He wore a great thick beard, a great slouched hat--he looked
like nothing more or less than a painter or an Italian brigand.
Unsuspecting Clive, remembering the jolly dinner which Jack had procured
for him at the Guards' mess in St. James's, whither Jack himself came
from the Horse Guards--simple Clive, seeing Jack enter the town, hailed
him cordially, and invited him to dinner, and Jack accepted, and Clive
told him all the news he had of the place; how Kew was there, and Lady
Anne Newcome, and Ethel; and Barnes was coming. "I am not very fond of
him either," says Clive, smiling, when Belsize mentioned his name. So
Barnes was coming to marry that pretty little Lady Clara Pulleyn. The
knowing youth! I dare say he was rather pleased with his knowledge of the
fashionable world, and the idea that Jack Belsize would think he, too,
was somebody.

Jack drank an immense quantity of champagne, and the dinner over, as they
could hear the band playing from Clive's open windows in the snug clean
little Hotel de France, Jack proposed they should go on the promenade. M.
de Florac was of the party; he had been exceedingly jocular when Lord
Kew's name was mentioned, and said, "Ce petit Kiou! M. le Duc d'Ivry, mon
oncle, l'honore d'une amitie toute particuliere." These three gentlemen
walked out; the promenade was crowded, the was band playing "Home, sweet
Home" very sweetly, and the very first persons they met on the walk were
the Lords of Kew and Dorking, on the arm of which latter venerable peer
his daughter Lady Clara was hanging.

Jack Belsize, in a velvet coat, with a sombrero slouched over his face,
with a beard reaching to his waist, was, no doubt, not recognised at
first by the noble lord of Dorking, for he was greeting the other two
gentlemen with his usual politeness and affability; when, of a sudden,
Lady Clara looking up, gave a little shriek and fell down lifeless on the
gravel walk. Then the old earl recognised Mr. Belsize, and Clive heard
him say, "You villain, how dare you come here?"

Belsize had flung himself down to lift up Clara, calling her frantically
by her name, when old Dorking sprang to seize him.

"Hands off, my lord," said the other, shaking the old man from his back.
"Confound you, Jack, hold your tongue," roars out Kew. Clive runs for a
chair, and a dozen were forthcoming. Florac skips back with a glass of
water. Belsize runs towards the awakening girl: and the father, for an
instant losing all patience and self-command, trembling in every limb,
lifts his stick, and says again, "Leave her, you ruffian." "Lady Clara
has fainted again, sir," says Captain Belsize. "I am staying at the Hotel
de France. If you touch me, old man" (this in a very low voice), "by
Heaven I shall kill you. I wish you good morning;" and taking a last long
look at the lifeless girl, he lifts his hat and walks away. Lord Dorking
mechanically takes his hat off, and stands stupidly gazing after him. He
beckoned Clive to follow him, and a crowd of the frequenters of the place
are by this time closed round the fainting young lady.

Here was a pretty incident in the Congress of Baden!




CHAPTER XXIX

In which Barnes comes a-wooing


Ethel had all along known that her holiday was to be a short one, and
that, her papa and Barnes arrived, there was to be no more laughing and
fun and sketching and walking with Clive; so she took the sunshine while
it lasted, determined to bear with a stout heart the bad weather.

Sir Brian Newcome and his eldest born arrived at Baden on the very night
of Jack Belsize's performance upon the promenade; of course it was
necessary to inform the young bridegroom of the facts. His acquaintances
of the public, who by this time know his temper, and are acquainted with
his language, can imagine the explosions of the one and the vehemence of
the other; it was a perfect feu d'artifice of oaths which he sent up. Mr.
Newcome only fired off these volleys of curses when he was in a passion,
but then he was in a passion very frequently.

As for Lady Clara's little accident, he was disposed to treat that very
lightly. "Poor dear Clara, of course, of course," he said, "she's been
accustomed to fainting fits; no wonder she was agitated on the sight of
that villain, after his infernal treatment of her. If I had been there"
(a volley of oaths comes here along the whole line) "I should have
strangled the scoundrel; I should have murdered him."

"Mercy, Barnes!" cries Lady Anne.

"It was a mercy Barnes was not there," says Ethel, gravely; "a fight
between him and Captain Belsize would have been awful indeed."

"I am afraid of no man, Ethel," says Barnes fiercely, with another oath.

"Hit one of your own size, Barnes," says Miss Ethel (who had a number of
school-phrases from her little brothers, and used them on occasions
skilfully). "Hit Captain Belsize, he has no friends."

As Jack Belsize from his height and strength was fitted to be not only an
officer but actually a private in his former gallant regiment, and
brother Barnes was but a puny young gentleman, the idea of a personal
conflict between them was rather ridiculous. Some notion of this sort may
have passed through Sir Brian's mind, for the Baronet said with his usual
solemnity, "It is the cause, Ethel, it is the cause, my dear, which gives
strength; in such a cause as Barnes's, with a beautiful young creature to
protect from a villain, any man would be strong, any man would be
strong." "Since his last attack," Barnes used to say, "my poor old
governor is exceedingly shaky, very groggy about the head;" which was the
fact. Barnes was already master at Newcome and the bank, and awaiting
with perfect composure the event which was to place the blood-red hand of
the Newcome baronetcy on his own brougham.

Casting his eyes about the room, a heap of drawings, the work of a
well-known hand which he hated, met his eye. There were a half-dozen
sketches of Baden; Ethel on horseback again; the children and the dogs
just in the old way. "D--- him, is he here?" screams out Barnes. "Is that
young pothouse villain here? and hasn't Kew knocked his head off? Is
Clive Newcome here, sir," he cries out to his father. "The Colonel's son.
I have no doubt they met by----"

"By what, Barnes?" says Ethel.

"Clive is here, is he?" says the Baronet; "making caricatures, hey? You
did not mention him in your letters, Lady Anne."

Sir Brian was evidently very much touched by his last attack.

Ethel blushed; it was a curious fact, but there had been no mention of
Clive in the ladies' letters to Sir Brian.

"My dear, we met him by the merest chance, at Bonn, travelling with a
friend of his; and he speaks a little German, and was very useful to us,
and took one of the boys in his britzska the whole way."

"Boys always crowd in a carriage," says Sir Brian. "Kick your shins;
always in the way. I remember, when we used to come in the carriage from
Clapham, when we were boys, I used to kick my brother Tom's shins. Poor
Tom, he was a devilish wild fellow in those days. You don't recollect
Tom, my Lady Anne?"

Further anecdotes from Sir Brian are interrupted by Lord Kew's arrival.
"How dydo, Kew!" cries Barnes. "How's Clara?" and Lord Kew walking up
with great respect to shake hands with Sir Brian, says, "I am glad to see
you looking so well, sir," and scarcely takes any notice of Barnes. That
Mr. Barnes Newcome was an individual not universally beloved, is a point
of history of which there can be no doubt.

"You have not told me how Clara is, my good fellow," continues Barnes. "I
have heard all about her meeting with that villain, Jack Belsize."

"Don't call names, my good fellow," says Lord Kew. "It strikes me you
don't know Belsize well enough to call him by nicknames or by other
names. Lady Clara Pulleyn, I believe, is very unwell indeed."

"Confound the fellow! How dared he to come here?" cries Barnes, backing
from this little rebuff.

"Dare is another ugly word. I would advise you not to use it to the
fellow himself."

"What do you mean?" says Barnes, looking very serious in an instant.

"Easy, my good friend. Not so very loud. It appears, Ethel, that poor
Jack--I know him pretty well, you see, Barnes, and may call him by what
names I like--had been dining to-day with cousin Clive; he and M. de
Florac; and that they went with Jack to the promenade, not in the least
aware of Mr. Jack Belsize's private affairs, or of the shindy that was
going to happen."

"By Jove, he shall answer for it," cries out Barnes in a loud voice.

"I dare say he will, if you ask him," says the other drily; "but not
before ladies. He'd be afraid of frightening them. Poor Jack was always
as gentle as a lamb before women. I had some talk with the Frenchman just
now," continued Lord Kew gaily, as if wishing to pass over this side of
the subject. "Mi Lord Kiou," says he, "we have made your friend Jac to
hear reason. He is a little fou, your friend Jack. He drank champagne at
dinner like an ogre. How is the charmante Miss Clara? Florac, you see,
calls her Miss Clara, Barnes; the world calls her Lady Clara. You call
her Clara. You happy dog, you."

"I don't see why that infernal young cub of a Clive is always meddling in
our affairs," cries out Barnes, whose rage was perpetually being whipped
into new outcries. "Why has he been about this house? Why is he here?"

"It is very well for you that he was, Barnes," Lord Kew said. "The young
fellow showed great temper and spirit. There has been a famous row, but
don't be alarmed, it is all over. It is all over, everybody may go to bed
and sleep comfortably. Barnes need not get up in the morning to punch
Jack Belsize's head. I'm sorry for your disappointment, you Fenchurch
Street fire-eater. Come away. It will be but proper, you know, for a
bridegroom elect to go and ask news of la charmante Miss Clara."

"As we went out of the house," Lord Kew told Clive, "I said to Barnes
that every word I had uttered upstairs with regard to the reconciliation
was a lie. That Jack Belsize was determined to have his blood, and was
walking under the lime-trees by which we had to pass with a thundering
big stick. You should have seen the state the fellow was in, sir. The
sweet youth started back, and turned as yellow as a cream cheese. Then
he made a pretext to go into his room, and said it was for his
pocket-handkerchief, but I know it was for a pistol; for he dropped his
hand from my arm into his pocket, every time I said 'Here's Jack,' as we
walked down the avenue to Lord Dorking's apartment."

A great deal of animated business had been transacted during the two
hours subsequent to poor Lady Clara's mishap. Clive and Belsize had
returned to the former's quarters, while gentle J. J. was utilising the
last rays of the sun to tint a sketch which he had made during the
morning. He fled to his own apartment on the arrival of the
fierce-looking stranger, whose glaring eyes, pallid looks, shaggy beard,
clutched hands, and incessant gasps and mutterings as he strode up and
down, might well scare a peaceable person. Very terrible must Jack have
looked as he trampled those boards in the growing twilight, anon stopping
to drink another tumbler of champagne, then groaning expressions of
inarticulate wrath, and again sinking down on Clive's bed with a dropping
head and breaking voice, crying, "Poor little thing, poor little devil."

"If the old man sends me a message, you will stand by me, won't you,
Newcome? He was a fierce old fellow in his time, and I have seen him
shoot straight enough at Chanticlere. I suppose you know what the affair
is about?"

"I never heard of it before, but I think I understand," says Clive,
gravely.

"I can't ask Kew, he is one of the family; he is going to marry Miss
Newcome. It is no use asking him."

All Clive's blood tingled at the idea that any man was going to marry
Miss Newcome. He knew it before--a fortnight since, and it was nothing to
him to hear it. He was glad that the growing darkness prevented his face
from being seen. "I am of the family, too," said Clive, "and Barnes
Newcome and I had the same grandfather."

"Oh, yes, old boy--old banker, the weaver, what was he? I forgot," says
poor Jack, kicking on Clive's bed, "in that family the Newcomes don't
count. I beg your pardon," groans poor Jack.

They lapse into silence, during which Jack's cigar glimmers from the
twilight corner where Clive's bed is; whilst Clive wafts his fragrance
out of the window where he sits, and whence he has a view of Lady Anne
Newcome's windows to the right, over the bridge across the little rushing
river, at the Hotel de Hollande hard by. The lights twinkle in the booths
under the pretty lime avenues. The hum of distant voices is heard; the
gambling-palace is all in a blaze; it is an assembly night, and from the
doors of the conversation rooms, as they open and close, escape gusts of
harmony. Behind on the little hill the darkling woods lie calm, the edges
of the fir-trees cut sharp against the sky, which is clear with a
crescent moon and the lambent lights of the starry hosts of heaven. Clive
does not see pine-robed hills and shining stars, nor think of pleasure in
its palace yonder, nor of pain writhing on his own bed within a few feet
of him, where poor Belsize was groaning. His eyes are fixed upon a window
whence comes the red light of a lamp, across which shadows float now and
again. So every light in every booth yonder has a scheme of its own:
every star above shines by itself; and each individual heart of ours goes
on brightening with its own hopes, burning with its own desires, and
quivering with its own pain.

The reverie is interrupted by the waiter, who announces M. le Vicomte de
Florac, and a third cigar is added to the other two smoky lights. Belsize
is glad to see Florac, whom he has known in a thousand haunts. "He will
do my business for me. He has been out half a dozen times," thinks Jack.
It would relieve the poor fellow's boiling blood that some one would let
a little out. He lays his affair before Florac; he expects a message from
Lord Dorking.

"Comment donc?" cries Florac; "il y avait donc quelque chose! Cette
pauvre petite Miss! Vous voulez tuer le pere, apres avoir delaisse la
fille? Cherchez d'autres temoins, Monsieur. Le Vicomte de Florac ne se
fait pas complice de telles lachetes."

"By Heaven," says Jack, sitting up on the bed, with his eyes glaring, "I
have a great mind, Florac, to wring your infernal little neck, and to
fling you out of the window. Is all the world going to turn against me? I
am half mad as it is. If any man dares to think anything wrong regarding
that little angel, or to fancy that she is not as pure, and as good, and
as gentle, and as innocent, by Heaven, as any angel there,--if any man
thinks I'd be the villain to hurt her, I should just like to see him,"
says Jack. "By the Lord, sir, just bring him to me. Just tell the waiter
to send him upstairs. Hurt her! I hurt her! Oh! I'm a fool! a fool! a
d----d fool! Who's that?"

"It's Kew," says a voice out of the darkness from behind cigar No. 4, and
Clive now, having a party assembled, scrapes a match and lights his
candles.

"I heard your last words, Jack," Lord Kew says bluntly, "and you never
spoke more truth in your life. Why did you come here? What right had you
to stab that poor little heart over again, and frighten Lady Clara with
your confounded hairy face? You promised me you would never see her. You
gave your word of honour you wouldn't, when I gave you the money to go
abroad. Hang the money, I don't mind that; it was on your promise that
you would prowl about her no more. The Dorkings left London before you
came there; they gave you your innings. They have behaved kindly and
fairly enough to that poor girl. How was she to marry such a bankrupt
beggar as you are? What you have done is a shame, Charley Belsize. I tell
you it is unmanly and cowardly."

"Pst," says Florac, "numero deux, voila le mot lache."

"Don't bite your thumb at me," Kew went on. "I know you could thrash me,
if that's what you mean by shaking your fists; so could most men. I tell
you again--you have done a bad deed; you have broken your word of honour,
and you knocked down Clara Pulleyn to-day as cruelly as if you had done
it with your hand."

With this rush upon him, and fiery assault of Kew, Belsize was quite
bewildered. The huge man flung up his great arms, and let them drop at
his side as a gladiator that surrenders, and asks for pity. He sank down
once more on the iron bed.

"I don't know," says he, rolling and rolling round, in one of his great
hands, one of the brass knobs of the bed by which he was seated. "I don't
know, Frank," says he, "what the world is coming to, or me either; here
is twice in one night I have been called a coward by you, and by that
little what-d'-you-call-'m. I beg your pardon, Florac. I don't know
whether it is very brave in you to hit a chap when he is down: hit again,
I have no friends. I have acted like a blackguard, I own that; I did
break my promise; you had that safe enough, Frank, my boy; but I did not
think it would hurt her to see me," says he, with a dreadful sob in his
voice. "By--I would have given ten years of my life to look at her. I was
going mad without her. I tried every place, everything; went to Ems, to
Wiesbaden, to Hombourg, and played like hell. It used to excite me once,
and now I don't care for it. I won no end of money,--no end for a poor
beggar like me, that is; but I couldn't keep away. I couldn't, and if she
had been at the North Pole, by Heavens I would have followed her."

"And so just to look at her, just to give your confounded stupid eyes two
minutes' pleasure, you must bring about all this pain, you great baby,"
cries Kew, who was very soft-hearted, and in truth quite torn himself by
the sight of poor Jack's agony.

"Get me to see her for five minutes, Kew," cries the other, griping his
comrade's hand in his; "but for five minutes."

"For shame," cries Lord Kew, shaking away his hand, "be a man, Jack, and
have no more of this puling. It's not a baby, that must have its toy, and
cries because it can't get it. Spare the poor girl this pain, for her own
sake, and balk yourself of the pleasure of bullying and making her
unhappy."

Belsize started up with looks that were by no means pleasant. "There's
enough of this chaff I have been called names, and blackguarded quite
sufficiently for one sitting. I shall act as I please. I choose to take
my own way, and if any gentleman stops me he has full warning." And he
fell to tugging his mustachios, which were of a dark tawny hue, and
looked as warlike as he had ever done on any field-day.

"I take the warning!" said Lord Kew. "And if I know the way you are
going, as I think I do, I will do my best to stop you, madman as you are!
You can hardly propose to follow her to her own doorway and pose yourself
before your mistress as the murderer of her father, like Rodrigue in the
French play. If Rooster were here it would be his business to defend his
sister; In his absence I will take the duty on myself, and I say to you,
Charles Belsize, in the presence of these gentlemen, that any man who
iusults this young lady, who persecutes her with his presence, knowing it
can but pain her, who persists in following her when he has given his
word of honour to avoid her, that such a man is----"

"What, my Lord Kew?" cries Belsize, whose chest began to heave.

"You know what," answers the other. "You know what a man is who insults a
poor woman, and breaks his word of honour. Consider the word said, and
act upon it as you think fit."

"I owe you four thousand pounds, Kew," says Belsize, "and I have got four
thousand on the bills, besides four hundred when I came out of that
place."

"You insult me the more," cries Kew, flashing out, "by alluding to the
money. If you will leave this place to-morrow, well and good; if not, you
will please to give me a meeting. Mr. Newcome will you be so kind as to
act as my friend? We are connexions, you know, and this gentleman chooses
to insult a lady who is about to become one of our family."

"C'est bien, milord. Ma foi! c'est d'agir en vrai gentilhomme," says
Florac, delighted. "Touchez-la, mon petit Kiou. Tu as du coeur. Godam!
you are a brave! A brave fellow!" and the Viscount reached out his hand
cordially to Lord Kew.

His purpose was evidently pacific. From Kew he turned to the great
guardsman, and taking him by the coat began to apostrophise him. "And
you, mon gros," says he, "is there no way of calming this hot blood
without a saignee? Have you a penny to the world? Can you hope to carry
off your Chimene, O Rodrigue, and live by robbing afterwards on the great
way? Suppose you kill ze Fazer, you kill Kiou, you kill Roostere, your
Chimene will have a pretty moon of honey."

"What the devil do you mean about your Chimene and your Rodrigue? Do you
mean, Viscount----?" says Belsize, "Jack Belsize once more, and he dashed
his hand across his eyes. Kew has riled me, and he drove me half wild. I
ain't much of a Frenchman, but I know enough of what you said, to say
it's true, by Jove, and that Frank Kew's a trump. That's what you mean.
Give us your hand, Frank. God bless you, old boy; don't be too hard upon
me, you know I'm d----d miserable, that I am. Hullo! What's this?" Jack's
pathetic speech was interrupted at this instant, for the Vicomte de
Florac in his enthusiasm rushed into his arms, and jumped up towards his
face and proceeded to kiss Jack. A roar of immense laughter, as he shook
the little Viscount off, cleared the air and ended this quarrel.

Everybody joined in this chorus, the Frenchman with the rest, who said,
"he loved to laugh meme when he did not know why." And now came the
moment of the evening, when Clive, according to Lord Kew's saying,
behaved so well and prevented Barnes from incurring a great danger. In
truth, what Mr. Clive did or said amounted exactly to nothing. What
moments can we not all remember in our lives when it would have been so
much wittier and wiser to say and do nothing?

Florac, a very sober drinker like most of his nation, was blessed with a
very fine appetite, which, as he said, renewed itself thrice a day at
least. He now proposed supper, and poor Jack was for supper too, and
especially more drink, champagne and seltzer-water; "bring champagne and
seltzer-water, there is nothing like it." Clive could not object to this
entertainment, which was ordered forthwith, and the four young men sat
down to share it.

Whilst Florac was partaking of his favourite ecrevisses, giving not only
his palate but his hands, his beard, his mustachios and cheeks a full
enjoyment of the sauce which he found so delicious, he chose to revert
now and again to the occurrences which had just passed, and which had
better perhaps have been forgotten, and gaily rallied Belsize upon his
warlike humour. "If ze petit pretendu was here, what would you have done
wiz him, Jac? You would croquer im, like zis ecrevisse, hein? You would
mache his bones, hein?"

Jack, who had forgotten to put the seltzer-water into his champagne,
writhed at the idea of having Barnes Newcome before him, and swore, could
he but see Barnes, he would take the little villain's life.

And but for Clive, Jack might actually have beheld his enemy. Young Clive
after the meal went to the window with his eternal cigar, and of course
began to look at That Other window. Here, as he looked, a carriage had at
the moment driven up. He saw two servants descend, then two gentlemen,
and then he heard a well-known voice swearing at the couriers. To his
credit be it said, he checked the exclamation which was on his lips, and
when he came back to the table did not announce to Kew or his right-hand
neighbour Belsize, that his uncle and Barnes had arrived. Belsize, by
this time, had had quite too much wine: when the viscount went away, poor
Jack's head was nodding; he had been awake all the night before;
sleepless for how many nights previous. He scarce took any notice of the
Frenchman's departure.

Lord Kew remained. He was for taking Jack to walk, and for reasoning with
him further, and for entering more at large than perhaps he chose to do
before the two others upon this family dispute. Clive took a moment to
whisper to Lord Kew, "My uncle and Barnes are arrived, don't let Belsize
go out; for goodness' sake let us get him to bed."

And lest the poor fellow should take a fancy to visit his mistress by
moonlight, when he was safe in his room Lord Kew softly turned the key in
Mr. Jack's door.




CHAPTER XXX

A Retreat


As Clive lay awake revolving the strange incidents of the day, and
speculating upon the tragedy in which he had been suddenly called to take
a certain part, a sure presentiment told him that his own happy holiday
was come to an end, and that the clouds and storm which he had always
somehow foreboded, were about to break and obscure this brief pleasant
period of sunshine. He rose at a very early hour, flung his windows open,
looked out no doubt towards those other windows in the neighbouring
hotel, where he may have fancied he saw a curtain stirring, drawn by a
hand that every hour now he longed more to press. He turned back into his
chamber with a sort of groan, and surveyed some of the relics of the last
night's little feast, which still remained on the table. There were the
champagne-flasks which poor Jack Belsize had emptied, the tall
seltzer-water bottle, from which the gases had issued and mingled with
the hot air of the previous night's talk; glasses with dregs of liquor,
ashes of cigars, or their black stumps, strewing the cloth; the dead men,
the burst guns of yesterday's battle. Early as it was, his neighbour J. J
had been up before him. Clive could hear him singing as was his wont when
the pencil went well, and the colours arranged themselves to his
satisfaction over his peaceful and happy work.

He pulled his own drawing-table to the window, set out his board and
colour-box, filled a great glass from the seltzer-water bottle, drank
some of the vapid liquor, and plunged his brushes in the rest, with which
he began to paint. The work all went wrong. There was no song for him
over his labour; he dashed brush and board aside after a while, opened
his drawers, pulled out his portmanteaus from under the bed, and fell to
packing mechanically. J. J. heard the noise from the next room, and came
in smiling, with a great painting-brush in his mouth.

"Have the bills in, J. J.," says Clive. "Leave your cards on your
friends, old boy; say good-bye to that pretty little strawberry-girl
whose picture you have been doing; polish it off to-day, and dry the
little thing's tears. I read P.P.C. in the stars last night, and my
familiar spirit came to me in a vision, and said, 'Clive, son of Thomas,
put thy travelling-boots on.'"

Lest any premature moralist should prepare to cry fie against the good,
pure-minded little J. J., I hereby state that his strawberry-girl was a
little village maiden of seven years old, whose sweet little picture a
bishop purchased at the next year's Exhibition.

"Are you going already?" cries J. J., removing the bit out of his mouth.
"I thought you had arranged parties for a week to come, and that the
princesses and the duchesses had positively forbidden the departure of
your lordship!"

"We have dallied at Capua long enough," says Clive; "and the legions have
the route for Rome. So wills Hannibal, the son of Hasdrubal."

"The son of Hasdrubal is quite right," his companion answered; "the
sooner we march the better. I have always said it; I will get all the
accounts in. Hannibal has been living like a voluptuous Carthaginian
prince. One, two, three champagne-bottles! There will be a deuce of a
bill to pay."

"Ah! there will be a deuce of a bill to pay," says Clive, with a groan
whereof J. J. knew the portent; for the young men had the confidence of
youth one in another. Clive was accustomed to pour out his full heart to
any crony who was near him; and indeed had he spoken never a word, his
growing attachment to his cousin was not hard to see. A hundred times,
and with the glowing language and feelings of youth, with the fire of his
twenty years, with the ardour of a painter, he had spoken of her and
described her. Her magnanimous simplicity, her courage and lofty scorn,
her kindness towards her little family, her form, her glorious colour of
rich carnation and dazzling white, her queenly grace when quiescent and
in motion, had constantly formed the subjects of this young gentleman's
ardent eulogies. As he looked at a great picture or statue, as the Venus
of Milo, calm and deep, unfathomably beautiful as the sea from which she
sprung; as he looked at the rushing Aurora of the Rospigliosi, or the
Assumption of Titian, more bright and glorious than sunshine, or that
divine Madonna and divine Infant, of Dresden, whose sweet faces must have
shone upon Raphael out of heaven; his heart sang hymns, as it were,
before these gracious altars; and, somewhat as he worshipped these
masterpieces of his art, he admired the beauty of Ethel.

J. J. felt these things exquisitely after his manner, and enjoyed honest
Clive's mode of celebration and rapturous fioriture of song; but Ridley's
natural note was much gentler, and he sang his hymns in plaintive minors.
Ethel was all that was bright and beautiful but--but she was engaged to
Lord Kew. The shrewd kind confidant used gently to hint the sad fact to
the impetuous hero of this piece. The impetuous hero knew this quite
well. As he was sitting over his painting-board he would break forth
frequently, after his manner, in which laughter and sentiment were
mingled, and roar out with all the force of his healthy young lungs----

   "But her heart it is another's, she never--can--be--mine;"

and then hero and confidant would laugh each at his drawing-table. Miss
Ethel went between the two gentlemen by the name of Alice Grey.

Very likely, Night, the Grey Mentor, had given Clive Newcome the benefit
of his sad counsel. Poor Belsize's agony, and the wretchedness of the
young lady who shared in the desperate passion, may have set our young
man a-thinking; and Lord Kew's frankness and courage, and honour, whereof
Clive had been a witness during the night, touched his heart with a
generous admiration, and manned him for a trial which he felt was indeed
severe. He thought of the dear old father ploughing the seas on the way
to his duty, and was determined, by Heaven's help, to do his own. Only
three weeks since, when strolling careless about Bonn he had lighted upon
Ethel and the laughing group of little cousins, he was a boy as they
were, thinking but of the enjoyment of the day and the sunshine, as
careless as those children. And now the thoughts and passions which had
sprung up in a week or two, had given him an experience such as years do
not always furnish; and our friend was to show, not only that he could
feel love in his heart, but that he could give proof of courage, and
self-denial, and honour.

"Do you remember, J. J.," says he, as boots and breeches went plunging
into the portmanteau, and with immense energy, he pummels down one upon
the other, "do you remember" (a dig into the snowy bosom of a dress
cambric shirt) "my dear old father's only campaign story of his running
away" (a frightful blow into the ribs of a waistcoat), "running away at
Asseer-Ghur?"

"Asseer-What?" says J. J. wondering.

"The siege of Asseer-Ghur!" says Clive, "fought in the eventful year
1803: Lieutenant Newcome, who has very neat legs, let me tell you, which
also he has imparted to his descendants, had put on a new pair of leather
breeches, for he likes to go handsomely dressed into action. His horse
was shot, the enemy were upon him, and the governor had to choose between
death and retreat. I have heard his brother-officers say that my dear old
father was the bravest man they ever knew, the coolest hand, sir. What do
you think it was Lieutenant Newcome's duty to do under these
circumstances? To remain alone as he was, his troop having turned about,
and to be cut down by the Mahratta horsemen--to perish or to run, sir?"

"I know which I should have done," says Ridley.

"Exactly. Lieutenant Newcome adopted that course. His bran-new leather
breeches were exceedingly tight, and greatly incommoded the rapidity of
his retreating movement, but he ran away, sir, and afterwards begot your
obedient servant. That is the history of the battle of Asseer-Ghur."

"And now for the moral," says J. J., not a little amused.

"J. J., old boy, this is my battle of Asseer-Ghur. I am off. Dip into the
money-bag: pay the people: be generous, J. J., but not too prodigal. The
chambermaid is ugly, yet let her not want for a crown to console her at
our departure. The waiters have been brisk and servile; reward the slaves
for their labours. Forget not the humble boots, so shall he bless us when
we depart. For artists are gentlemen, though Ethel does not think so. De
--No--God bless her, God bless her," groans out Clive, cramming his two
fists into his eyes. If Ridley admired him before, he thought none the
worse of him now. And if any generous young fellow in life reads the
Fable, which may possibly concern him, let him take a senior's counsel
and remember that there are perils in our battle, God help us, from which
the bravest had best run away.

Early as the morning yet was, Clive had a visitor, and the door opened to
let in Lord Kew's honest face. Ridley retreated before it into his own
den; the appearance of earls scared the modest painter, though he was
proud and pleased that his Clive should have their company. Lord Kew
indeed lived in more splendid apartments on the first floor of the hotel,
Clive and his friend occupying a couple of spacious chambers on the
second story. "You are an early bird," says Kew. "I got up myself in a
panic before daylight almost; Jack was making a deuce of a row in his
room, and fit to blow the door out. I have been coaxing him for this
hour; I wish we had thought of giving him a dose of laudanum last night;
if it finished him, poor old boy, it would do him no harm." And then,
laughing, he gave Clive an account of his interview with Barnes on the
previous night. "You seem to be packing up to go, too," says Lord Kew,
with a momentary glance of humour darting from his keen eyes. The weather
is breaking up here, and if you are going to cross the St. Gothard, as
the Newcomes told me, the sooner the better. It's bitter cold over the
mountains in October."

"Very cold," says Clive, biting his nails.

"Post or Vett.?" asks my lord.

"I bought a carriage at Frankfort," says Clive, in an offhand manner.

"Hulloh!" cries the other, who was perfectly kind, and entirely frank and
pleasant, and showed no difference in his conversation with men of any
degree, except perhaps that to his inferiors in station he was a little
more polite than to his equals; but who would as soon have thought of a
young artist leaving Baden in a carriage of his own as of his riding away
on a dragon.

"I only gave twenty pounds for the carriage; it's a little light thing,
we are two, a couple of horses carry us and our traps, you know, and we
can stop where we like. I don't depend upon my profession," Clive added,
with a blush. "I made three guineas once, and that is the only money I
ever gained in my life."

"Of course, my dear fellow, have not I been to your father's house? At
that pretty ball, and seen no end of fine people there? We are young
swells. I know that very well. We only paint for pleasure."

"We are artists, and we intend to paint for money, my lord," says Clive.
"Will your lordship give me an order?"

"My lordship serves me right," the other said. "I think, Newcome, as you
are going, I think you might do some folks here a good turn, though the
service is rather a disagreeable one. Jack Belsize is not fit to be left
alone. I can't go away from here just now for reasons of state. Do be a
good fellow and take him with you. Put the Alps between him and this
confounded business, and if I can serve you in any way I shall be
delighted, if you will furnish me with the occasion. Jack does not know
yet that our amiable Barnes is here. I know how fond you are of him. I
have heard the story--glass of claret and all. We all love Barnes. How
that poor Lady Clara can have accepted him the Lord knows. We are
fearfully and wonderfully made, especially women."

"Good heavens," Clive broke out, "can it be possible that a young
creature can have been brought to like such a selfish, insolent coxcomb
as that, such a cocktail as Barnes Newcome? You know very well, Lord Kew,
what his life is. There was a poor girl whom he brought out of a Newcome
factory when he was a boy himself, and might have had a heart one would
have thought, whom he ill-treated, whom he deserted, and flung out of
doors without a penny, upon some pretence of her infidelity towards him;
who came and actually sat down on the steps of Park Lane with a child on
each side of her, and not their cries and their hunger, but the fear of
his own shame and a dread of a police-court, forced him to give her a
maintenance. I never see the fellow but I loathe him, and long to kick
him out of window and this man is to marry a noble young lady because
forsooth he is a partner in a bank, and heir to seven or eight thousand a
year. Oh, it is a shame, it is a shame! It makes me sick when I think of
the lot which the poor thing is to endure."

"It is not a nice story," said Lord Kew, rolling a cigarette; "Barnes is
not a nice man. I give you that in. You have not heard it talked about in
the family, have you?"

"Good heavens! you don't suppose that I would speak to Ethel, to Miss
Newcome, about such a foul subject as that?" cries Clive. "I never
mentioned it to my own father. He would have turned Barnes out of his
doors if he had known it."

"It was the talk about town, I know," Kew said dryly. "Everything is told
in those confounded clubs. I told you I give up Barnes. I like him no
more than you do. He may have treated the woman ill, I suspect he has not
an angelical temper: but in this matter he has not been so bad, so very
bad as it would seem. The first step is wrong, of course--those factory
towns--that sort of thing, you know--well, well, the commencement of the
business is a sad one. But he is not the only sinner in London. He has
declared on his honour to me when the matter was talked about, and he was
coming on for election at Bays's, and was as nearly as any man I ever
knew in my life,--he declared on his word that he only parted from poor
Mrs. Delacy, (Mrs. Delacy, the devil used to call herself) because he
found that she had served him--as such women will serve men. He offered
to send his children to school in Yorkshire--rather a cheap school--but
she would not part with them. She made a scandal in order to get good
terms, and she succeeded. He was anxious to break the connexion: he owned
it had hung like a millstone round his neck and caused him a great deal
of remorse--annoyance you may call it. He was immensely cut up about it.
I remember, when that fellow was hanged for murdering a woman, Barnes
said he did not wonder at his having done it. Young men make those
connexions in their early lives and rue them all their days after. He was
heartily sorry, that we may take for granted. He wished to lead a proper
life. My grandmother managed this business with the Dorkings. Lady Kew
still pulls stroke oar in our boat, you know, and the old woman will not
give up her place. They know everything, the elders do. He is a clever
fellow. He is witty in his way. When he likes he can make himself quite
agreeable to some people. There has been no sort of force. You don't
suppose young ladies are confined in dungeons and subject to tortures, do
you? But there is a brood of Pulleyns at Chanticlere, and old Dorking has
nothing to give them. His daughter accepted Barnes of her own free will,
he knowing perfectly well of that previous affair with Jack. The poor
devil bursts into the place yesterday and the girl drops down in a faint.
She will see Belsize this very day if he likes. I took a note from Lady
Dorking to him at five o'clock this morning. If he fancies that there is
any constraint put upon Lady Clara's actions she will tell him with her
own lips that she has acted of her own free will. She will marry the
husband she has chosen and do her duty by him. You are quite a young un
who boil and froth up with indignation at the idea that a girl hardly off
with an old love should take on with a new----"

"I am not indignant with her," says Clive, "for breaking with Belsize,
but for marrying Barnes."

"You hate him, and you know he is your enemy; and, indeed, young fellow,
he does not compliment you in talking about you. A pretty young
scapegrace he has made you out to be, and very likely thinks you to be.
It depends on the colours in which a fellow is painted. Our friends and
our enemies draw us,--and I often think both pictures are like,"
continued the easy world-philosopher. "You hate Barnes, and cannot see
any good in him. He sees none in you. There have been tremendous shindies
in Park Lane a propos of your worship, and of a subject which I don't
care to mention," said Lord Kew, with some dignity; "and what is the
upshot of all this malevolence? I like you; I like your father, I think
he is a noble old boy; there are those who represented him as a sordid
schemer. Give Mr. Barnes the benefit of common charity at any rate; and
let others like him, if you do not.

"And as for this romance of love," the young nobleman went on, kindling
as he spoke, and forgetting the slang and colloquialisms with which we
garnish all our conversation--"this fine picture of Jenny and Jessamy
falling in love at first sight, billing and cooing in an arbour, and
retiring to a cottage afterwards to go on cooing and billing--Psha! what
folly is this! It is good for romances, and for misses to sigh about; but
any man who walks through the world with his eyes open, knows how
senseless is all this rubbish. I don't say that a young man and woman are
not to meet, and to fall in love that instant, and to marry that day
year, and love each other till they are a hundred; that is the supreme
lot--but that is the lot which the gods only grant to Baucis and
Philemon, and a very, very few besides. As for the rest, they must
compromise; make themselves as comfortable as they can, and take the good
and the bad together. And as for Jenny and Jessamy, by Jove! look round
among your friends, count up the love matches, and see what has been the
end of most of them! Love in a cottage! Who is to pay the landlord for
the cottage? Who is to pay for Jenny's tea and cream, and Jessamy's
mutton-chops? If he has cold mutton, he will quarrel with her. If there
is nothing in the cupboard, a pretty meal they make. No, you cry out
against people in our world making money marriages. Why, kings and queens
marry on the same understanding. My butcher has saved a stockingful of
money, and marries his daughter to a young salesman; Mr. and Mrs.
Salesman prosper in life, and get an alderman's daughter for their son.
My attorney looks out amongst his clients for an eligible husband for
Miss Deeds; sends his son to the bar, into Parliament, where he cuts a
figure and becomes attorney-general, makes a fortune, has a house in
Belgrave Square, and marries Miss Deeds of the second generation to a
peer. Do not accuse us of being more sordid than our neighbours. We do
but as the world does; and a girl in our society accepts the best party
which offers itself, just as Miss Chummey, when entreated by two young
gentlemen of the order of costermongers, inclines to the one who rides
from market on a moke, rather than to the gentleman who sells his greens
from a handbasket."

This tirade, which his lordship delivered with considerable spirit, was
intended no doubt to carry a moral for Clive's private hearing; and
which, to do him justice, the youth was not slow to comprehend. The point
was, "Young man, if certain persons of rank choose to receive you very
kindly, who have but a comely face, good manners, and three or four
hundred pounds a year, do not presume upon their good-nature, or indulge
in certain ambitious hopes which your vanity may induce you to form. Sail
down the stream with the brass-pots, Master Earthen-pot, but beware of
coming too near! You are a nice young man, but there are prizes which are
some too good for you, and are meant for your betters. And you might as
well ask the prime minister for the next vacant garter as expect to wear
on your breast such a star as Ethel Newcome."

Before Clive made his accustomed visit to his friends at the hotel
opposite, the last great potentiary had arrived who was to take part in
the family Congress of Baden. In place of Ethel's flushing cheeks and
bright eyes, Clive found, on entering Lady Anne Newcome's sitting-room,
the parchment-covered features and the well-known hooked beak of the old
Countess of Kew. To support the glances from beneath the bushy black
eyebrows on each side of that promontory was no pleasant matter. The
whole family cowered under Lady Kew's eyes and nose, and she ruled by
force of them. It was only Ethel whom these awful features did not
utterly subdue and dismay.

Besides Lady Kew, Clive had the pleasure of finding his lordship, her
grandson, Lady Anne and children of various sizes, and Mr. Barnes; not
one of whom was the person whom Clive desired to behold.

The queer glance in Kew's eye directed towards Clive, who was himself not
by any means deficient in perception, informed him that there had just
been a conversation in which his own name had figured. Having been
abusing Clive extravagantly as he did whenever he mentioned his cousin's
name, Barnes must needs hang his head when the young fellow came in. His
hand was yet on the chamber-door, and Barnes was calling his miscreant
and scoundrel within; so no wonder Barnes had a hangdog look. But as for
Lady Kew, that veteran diplomatist allowed no signs of discomfiture, or
any other emotion, to display themselves on her ancient countenance. Her
bushy eyebrows were groves of mystery, her unfathomable eyes were wells
of gloom.

She gratified Clive by a momentary loan of two knuckly old fingers, which
he was at liberty to hold or to drop; and then he went on to enjoy the
felicity of shaking hands with Mr. Barnes, who, observing and enjoying
his confusion over Lady Kew's reception, determined to try Clive in the
same way, and he gave Clive at the same time a supercilious "How de dah,"
which the other would have liked to drive down his throat. A constant
desire to throttle Mr. Barnes--to beat him on the nose--to send him
flying out of window, was a sentiment with which this singular young man
inspired many persons whom he accosted. A biographer ought to be
impartial, yet I own, in a modified degree, to have partaken of this
sentiment. He looked very much younger than his actual time of life, and
was not of commanding stature; but patronised his equals, nay, let us
say, his betters, so insufferably, that a common wish for his suppression
existed amongst many persons in society.

Clive told me of this little circumstance, and I am sorry to say of his
own subsequent ill behaviour. "We were standing apart from the ladies,"
so Clive narrated, "when Barnes and I had our little passage-of-arms. He
had tried the finger business upon me before, and I had before told him,
either to shake hands or to leave it alone. You know the way in which the
impudent little beggar stands astride, and sticks his little feet out. I
brought my heel well down on his confounded little varnished toe, and
gave it a scrunch which made Mr. Barnes shriek out one of his loudest
oaths."

"D--- clumsy ----!" screamed out Barnes.

Clive said, in a low voice, "I thought you only swore at women, Barnes."

"It is you that say things before women, Clive," cries his cousin,
looking very furious.

Mr. Clive lost all patience. "In what company, Barnes, would you like me
to say, that I think you are a snob? Will you have it on the Parade? Come
out and I will speak to you."

"Barnes can't go out on the Parade," cries Lord Kew, bursting out
laughing: "there's another gentleman there wanting him." And two of the
three young men enjoyed this joke exceedingly. I doubt whether Barnes
Newcome Newcome, Esq., of Newcome, was one of the persons amused.

"What wickedness are you three boys laughing at?" cries Lady Anne,
perfectly innocent and good-natured; "no good, I will be bound. Come
here, Clive." Our young friend, it must be premised, had no sooner
received the thrust of Lady Kew's two fingers on entering, than it had
been intimated to him that his interview with that gracious lady was at
an end. For she had instantly called her daughter to her, with whom her
ladyship fell a-whispering; and then it was that Clive retreated from
Lady Kew's hand, to fall into Barnes's.

"Clive trod on Barnes's toe," cries out cheery Lord Kew, "and has hurt
Barnes's favourite corn, so that he cannot go out, and is actually
obliged to keep the room. That's what we were laughing at."

"Hem!" growled Lady Kew. She knew to what her grandson alluded. Lord Kew
had represented Jack Belsize, and his thundering big stick, in the most
terrific colours to the family council. The joke was too good a one not
to serve twice.

Lady Anne, in her whispered conversation with the old Countess, had
possibly deprecated her mother's anger towards poor Clive, for when he
came up to the two ladies, the younger took his hand with great kindness,
and said, "My dear Clive, we are very sorry you are going. You were of
the greatest use to us on the journey. I am sure you have been uncommonly
good-natured and obliging, and we shall all miss you very much." Her
gentleness smote the generous young fellow, and an emotion of gratitude
towards her for being so compassionate to him in his misery, caused his
cheeks to blush and his eyes perhaps to moisten. "Thank you, dear aunt,"
says he, "you have been very good and kind to me. It is I that shall feel
lonely; but--but it is quite time that I should go to my work."

"Quite time!" said the severe possessor of the eagle beak. "Baden is a
bad place for young men. They make acquaintances here of which very
little good can come. They frequent the gambling-tables, and live with
the most disreputable French Viscounts. We have heard of your goings-on,
sir. It is a great pity that Colonel Newcome did not take you with him to
India."

"My dear mamma," cries Lady Anne, "I am sure Clive has been a very good
boy indeed." The old lady's morality put a stop to Clive's pathetic mood,
and he replied with a great deal of spirit, "Dear Lady Anne, you have
been always very good, and kindness is nothing surprising from you; but
Lady Kew's advice, which I should not have ventured to ask, is an
unexpected favour; my father knows the extent of the gambling
transactions to which your ladyship was pleased to allude, and introduced
me to the gentleman whose acquaintance you don't seem to think eligible."

"My good young man, I think it is time you were off," Lady Kew said, this
time with great good-humour; she liked Clive's spirit, and as long as he
interfered with none of her plans, was quite disposed to be friendly with
him. "Go to Rome, go to Florence, go wherever you like, and study very
hard, and make very good pictures, and come back again, and we shall all
be very glad to see you. You have very great talents--these sketches are
really capital."

"Is not he very clever, mamma?" said kind Lady Anne, eagerly. Clive felt
the pathetic mood coming on again, and an immense desire to hug Lady Anne
in his arms, and to kiss her. How grateful are we--how touched a frank
and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The
pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him
for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.

That cool old operator, who had taken Mr. Clive's case in hand, now
produced her shining knife, and executed the first cut with perfect
neatness and precision. "We are come here, as I suppose you know, Mr.
Newcome, upon family matters, and I frankly tell you that I think, for
your own sake, you would be much better away. I wrote my daughter a great
scolding when I heard that you were in this place."

"But it was by the merest chance, mamma, indeed it was," cries Lady Anne.

"Of course, by the merest chance, and by the merest chance I heard of it
too. A little bird came and told me at Kissingen. You have no more sense,
Anne, than a goose. I have told you so a hundred times. Lady Anne
requested you to stay, and I, my good young friend, request you to go
away."

"I needed no request," said Clive. "My going, Lady Kew, is my own act. I
was going without requiring any guide to show me to the door."

"No doubt you were, and my arrival is the signal for Mr. Newcome's bon
jour. I am Bogey, and I frighten everybody away. By the scene which you
witnessed yesterday, my good young friend, and all that painful esclandre
on the promenade, you must see how absurd, and dangerous, and wicked--
yes, wicked it is for parents to allow intimacies to spring up between
young people, which can only lead to disgrace and unhappiness. Lady
Dorking was another good-natured goose. I had not arrived yesterday ten
minutes, when my maid came running in to tell me of what had occurred on
the promenade; and, tired as I was, I went that instant to Jane Dorking
and passed the evening with her, and that poor little creature to whom
Captain Belsize behaved so cruelly. She does not care a fig for him--not
one fig. Her childish inclination is passed away these two years, whilst
Mr. Jack was performing his feats in prison; and if the wretch flatters
himself that it was on his account she was agitated yesterday, he is
perfectly mistaken, and you may tell him Lady Kew said so. She is subject
to fainting fits. Dr. Finck has been attending her ever since she has
been here. She fainted only last Tuesday at the sight of a rat walking
about their lodgings (they have dreadful lodgings, the Dorkings), and no
wonder she was frightened at the sight of that great coarse tipsy wretch!
She is engaged, as you know, to your connexion, my grandson, Barnes:--in
all respects a most eligible union. The rank of life of the parties suits
them to one another. She is a good young woman, and Barnes has
experienced from persons of another sort such horrors, that he will know
the blessing of domestic virtue. It was high time he should. I say all
this in perfect frankness to you.

"Go back again and play in the garden, little brats" (this to the
innocents who came frisking in from the lawn in front of the windows).
"You have been? And Barnes sent you in here? Go up to Miss Quigley. No,
stop. Go and tell Ethel to come down; bring her down with you. Do you
understand?"

The unconscious infants toddle upstairs to their sister; and Lady Kew
blandly says, "Ethel's engagement to my grandson, Lord Kew, has long been
settled in our family, though these things are best not talked about
until they are quite determined, you know, my dear Mr. Newcome. When we
saw you and your father in London, we heard that you too-that you too
were engaged to a young lady in your own rank of life, a Miss--what was
her name?--Miss MacPherson, Miss Mackenzie. Your aunt, Mrs. Hobson
Newcome, who I must say is a most blundering silly person, had set about
this story. It appears there is no truth in it. Do not look surprised
that I know about your affairs. I am an old witch, and know numbers of
things."

And, indeed, how Lady Kew came to know this fact, whether her maid
corresponded with Lady Anne's maid, what her ladyship's means of
information were, avowed or occult, this biographer has never been able
to ascertain. Very likely Ethel, who in these last three weeks had been
made aware of that interesting circumstance, had announced it to Lady Kew
in the course of a cross-examination, and there may have been a battle
between the granddaughter and the grandmother, of which the family
chronicler of the Newcomes has had no precise knowledge. That there were
many such I know--skirmishes, sieges, and general engagements. When we
hear the guns, and see the wounded, we know there has been a fight. Who
knows had there been a battle-royal, and was Miss Newcome having her
wounds dressed upstairs?

"You will like to say good-bye to your cousin, I know," Lady Kew
continued, with imperturbable placidity. "Ethel, my dear, here is Mr.
Clive Newcome, who has come to bid us all good-bye." The little girls
came trotting down at this moment, each holding a skirt of their elder
sister. She looked rather pale, but her expression was haughty--almost
fierce.

Clive rose up as she entered, from the sofa by the old Countess's side,
which place she had pointed him to take during the amputation. He rose up
and put his hair back off his face, and said very calmly, "Yes, I'm come
to say good-bye. My holidays are over, and Ridley and I are off for Rome;
good-bye, and God bless you, Ethel."

She gave him her hand and said, "Good-bye, Clive," but her hand did not
return his pressure, and dropped to her side, when he let it go.

Hearing the words good-bye, little Alice burst into a howl, and little
Maude, who was an impetuous little thing, stamped her little red shoes
and said, "It san't be good-bye. Tlive san't go." Alice, roaring, clung
hold of Clive's trousers. He took them up gaily, each on an arm, as he
had done a hundred times, and tossed the children on to his shoulders,
where they used to like to pull his yellow mustachios. He kissed the
little hands and faces, and a moment after was gone.

"Qu'as-tu?" says M. de Florac, meeting him going over the bridge to his
own hotel. "Qu'as-tu, mon petit Claive? Est-ce qu'on vient de t'arracher
une dent?"

"C'est ca," says Clive, and walked into the Hotel de France. "Hulloh! J.
J.! Ridley!" he sang out. "Order the trap out and let's be off." "I
thought we were not to march till to-morrow," says J. J., divining
perhaps that some catastrophe had occurred. Indeed, Mr. Clive was going a
day sooner than he had intended. He woke at Fribourg the next morning. It
was the grand old cathedral he looked at, not Baden of the pine-clad
hills, of the pretty walks and the lime-tree avenues. Not Baden, the
prettiest booth of all Vanity Fair. The crowds and the music, the
gambling-tables and the cadaverous croupiers and chinking gold, were far
out of sight and hearing. There was one window in the Hotel de Hollande
that he thought of, how a fair arm used to open it in the early morning,
how the muslin curtain in the morning air swayed to and fro. He would
have given how much to see it once more! Walking about at Fribourg in the
night, away from his companions, he had thought of ordering horses,
galloping back to Baden, and once again under that window, calling Ethel,
Ethel. But he came back to his room and the quiet J. J., and to poor Jack
Belsize, who had had his tooth taken out too.

We had almost forgotten Jack, who took a back seat in Clive's carriage,
as befits a secondary personage in this history, and Clive in truth had
almost forgotten him too. But Jack having his own cares and business, and
having rammed his own carpet-bag, brought it down without a word, and
Clive found him environed in smoke when he came down to take his place in
the little britzska. I wonder whether the window at the Hotel de Hollande
saw him go? There are some curtains behind which no historian, however
prying, is allowed to peep.

"Tiens, le petit part," says Florac of the cigar, who was always
sauntering. "Yes, we go," says Clive. "There is a fourth place, Viscount;
will you come too?"

339

"I would love it well," replies Florac, "but I am here in faction. My
cousin and seigneur M. le Duc d'Ivry is coming all the way from Bagneres
de Bigorre. He says he counts on me:--affaires mon cher, affaires
d'etat."

"How pleased the duchess will be! Easy with that bag!" shouts Clive. "How
pleased the princess will be!" In truth he hardly knew what he was
saying.

"Vous croyez; vous croyez," says M. de Florac. "As you have a fourth
place, I know who had best take it."

"And who is that?" asked the young traveller.

Lord Kew and Barnes, Esq., of Newcome, came out of the Hotel de Hollande
at this moment. Barnes slunk back, seeing Jack Belsize's hairy face. Kew
ran over the bridge. "Good-bye, Clive. Good-bye, Jack." "Good-bye, Kew."
It was a great handshake. Away goes the postillion blowing his horn, and
young Hannibal has left Capua behind him.




CHAPTER XXXI

Madame la Duchesse


In one of Clive Newcome's letters from Baden, the young man described to
me, with considerable humour and numerous illustrations as his wont was,
a great lady to whom he was presented at that watering-place by his
friend Lord Kew. Lord Kew had travelled in the East with Monsieur le Duc
and Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry--the prince being an old friend of his
lordship's family. He is the "Q" of Madame d'Ivry's book of travels,
Footprints of the Gazelles, by a daughter of the Crusaders, in which she
prays so fervently for Lord Kew's conversion. He is the "Q" who rescued
the princess from the Arabs, and performed many a feat which lives in her
glowing pages. He persists in saying that he never rescued Madame la
Princesse from any Arabs at all, except from one beggar who was bawling
out for bucksheesh, and whom Kew drove away with a stick. They made
pilgrimages to all the holy places, and a piteous sight it was, said Lord
Kew, to see the old prince in the Jerusalem processions at Easter pacing
with bare feet and a candle. Here Lord Kew separated from the prince's
party. His name does not occur in the last part of the Footprints; which,
in truth, are filled full of strange rhapsodies, adventures which nobody
was but the princess, and mystic disquisitions. She hesitates at nothing,
like other poets of her nation: not profoundly learned, she invents where
she has not acquired: mingles together religion and the opera; and
performs Parisian pas-de-ballet before the gates of monasteries and the
cells of anchorites. She describes, as if she had herself witnessed the
catastrophe, the passage of the Red Sea: and, as if there were no doubt
of the transaction, an unhappy love-affair between Pharaoh's eldest son
and Moses's daughter. At Cairo, apropos of Joseph's granaries, she enters
into a furious tirade against Putiphar, whom she paints as an old savage,
suspicious and a tyrant. They generally have a copy of the Footprints of
the Gazelles at the Circulating Library at Baden, as Madame d'Ivry
constantly visits that watering-place. M. le Duc was not pleased with the
book, which was published entirely without his concurrence, and which he
described as one of the ten thousand follies of Madame la Duchesse.

This nobleman was five-and-forty years older than his duchess. France is
the country where that sweet Christian institution of mariages de
convenance (which so many folks of the family about which this story
treats are engaged in arranging) is most in vogue. There the newspapers
daily announce that M. de Foy has a bureau de confiance, where families
may arrange marriages for their sons and daughters in perfect comfort and
security. It is but a question of money on one side and the other.
Mademoiselle has so many francs of dot; Monsieur has such and such rentes
or lands in possession or reversion, an etude d'avoue, a shop with a
certain clientele bringing him such and such an income, which may be
doubled by the judicious addition of so much capital, and the pretty
little matrimonial arrangement is concluded (the agent touching his
percentage), or broken off, and nobody unhappy, and the world none the
wiser. The consequences of the system I do not pretend personally to
know; but if the light literature of a country is a reflex of its
manners, and French novels are a picture of French life, a pretty society
must that be into the midst of which the London reader may walk in twelve
hours from this time of perusal, and from which only twenty miles of sea
separate us.

When the old Duke d'Ivry, of the ancient ancient nobility of France, an
emigrant with Artois, a warrior with Conde, an exile during the reign of
the Corsican usurper, a grand prince, a great nobleman afterwards, though
shorn of nineteen-twentieths of his wealth by the Revolution,--when the
Duke d'Ivry lost his two sons, and his son's son likewise died, as if
fate had determined to end the direct line of that noble house, which had
furnished queens to Europe, and renowned chiefs to the Crusaders--being
of an intrepid spirit, the Duke was ill disposed to yield to his
redoubtable energy, in spite of the cruel blows which the latter had
inflicted upon him, and when he was more than sixty years of age, three
months before the July Revolution broke out, a young lady of a sufficient
nobility, a virgin of sixteen, was brought out of the convent of the
Sacre Coeur at Paris, and married with immense splendour and ceremony to
this princely widower. The most august names signed the book of the civil
marriage. Madame la Dauphine and Madame la Duchesse de Berri complimented
the young bride with royal favours. Her portrait by Dubufe was in the
Exhibition next year, a charming young duchess indeed, with black eyes,
and black ringlets, pearls on her neck, and diamonds in her hair, as
beautiful as a princess of a fairy tale. M. d'Ivry, whose early life may
have been rather oragious, was yet a gentleman perfectly well conserved.
Resolute against fate his enemy (one would fancy fate was of an
aristocratic turn, and took especial delight in combats with princely
houses; the Atridae, the Borbonidae, the Ivrys,--the Browns and Joneses
being of no account), the prince seemed to be determined not only to
secure a progeny, but to defy age. At sixty he was still young, or seemed
to be so. His hair was as black as the princess's own, his teeth as
white. If you saw him on the Boulevard de Gand, sunning among the
youthful exquisites there, or riding au Bois, with a grace worthy of old
Franconi himself, you would take him for one of the young men, of whom
indeed up to his marriage he retained a number of the graceful follies
and amusements, though his manners had a dignity acquired in old days of
Versailles and the Trianon, which the moderns cannot hope to imitate. He
was as assiduous behind the scenes of the opera as any journalist, or any
young dandy of twenty years. He "ranged himself," as the French phrase
is, shortly before his marriage, just like any other young bachelor: took
leave of Phryne and Aspasie in the coulisses, and proposed to devote
himself henceforth to his charming young wife.

The affreux catastrophe of July arrived. The ancient Bourbons were once
more on the road to exile (save one wily old remnant of the race, who
rode grinning over the barricades, and distributing poignees de main to
the stout fists that had pummelled his family out of France). M. le Duc
d'Ivry, who lost his place at court, his appointments which helped his
income very much, and his peerage would no more acknowledge the usurper
of Neuilly, than him of Elba. The ex-peer retired to his terres. He
barricaded his house in Paris against all supporters of the citizen king;
his nearest kinsman, M. de Florac, among the rest, who for his part
cheerfully took his oath of fidelity, and his seat in Louis Philippe's
house of peers, having indeed been accustomed to swear to all dynasties
for some years past.

In due time Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry gave birth to a child, a daughter,
whom her noble father received with but small pleasure. What the Duke
desired, was an heir to his name, a Prince of Moncontour, to fill the
place of the sons and grandsons gone before him, to join their ancestors
in the tomb. No more children, however, blessed the old Duke's union.
Madame d'Ivry went the round of all the watering-places: pilgrimages were
tried: vows and gifts to all saints supposed to be favourable to the
d'Ivry family, or to families in general:--but the saints turned a deaf
ear; they were inexorable since the true religion and the elder Bourbons
were banished from France.

Living by themselves in their ancient castles, or their dreary mansion of
the Faubourg St. Germain, I suppose the Duke and Duchess grew tried of
one another, as persons who enter into a mariage de convenance sometimes,
nay, as those who light a flaming love-match, and run away with one
another, will be found to do. A lady of one-and-twenty, and a gentleman
of sixty-six, alone in a great castle, have not unfrequently a third
guest at their table, who comes without a card, and whom they cannot shut
out, though they keep their doors closed ever so. His name is Ennui, and
many a long hour and weary night must such folks pass in the
unbidden society of this Old Man of the Sea; this daily guest at the
board; this watchful attendant at the fireside; this assiduous companion
who will walk out with you; this sleepless restless bedfellow.

At first, M. d'Ivry, that well-conserved nobleman who never would allow
that he was not young, exhibited no sign of doubt regarding his own youth
except an extreme jealousy and avoidance of all other young fellows. Very
likely Madame la Duchesse may have thought men in general dyed their
hair, wore stays, and had the rheumatism. Coming out of the convent of
the Sacre Coeur, how was the innocent young lady to know better? You see,
in these mariages de convenance, though a coronet may be convenient to a
beautiful young creature, and a beautiful young creature may be
convenient to an old gentleman, there are articles which the
marriage-monger cannot make to convene at all: tempers over which M. de
Foy and his like have no control; and tastes which cannot be put into the
marriage settlements. So this couple were unhappy, and the Duke and
Duchess quarrelled with one another like the most vulgar pair who ever
fought across a table.

In this unhappy state of home affairs, madame took to literature,
monsieur to politics. She discovered that she was a great unappreciated
soul, and when a woman finds that treasure in her bosom of course she
sets her own price on the article. Did you ever see the first poems of
Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, Les Cris de l'Ame? She used to read them to
her very intimate friends, in white, with her hair a good deal down her
back. They had some success. Dubufe having painted her as a Duchess,
Scheffer depicted her as a Muse. That was in the third year of her
marriage, when she rebelled against the Duke her husband, insisted on
opening her saloons to art and literature, and, a fervent devotee still,
proposed to unite genius and religion. Poets had interviews with her.
Musicians came and twanged guitars to her.

Her husband, entering her room, would fall over the sabre and spurs of
Count Almaviva from the boulevard, or Don Basilio with his great sombrero
and shoe-buckles. The old gentleman was breathless and bewildered in
following her through all her vagaries. He was of old France, she of new.
What did he know of the Ecole Romantique, and these jeunes gens with
their Marie Tudors and Tours de Nesle, and sanguineous histories of
queens who sewed their lovers into sacks, emperors who had interviews
with robber captains in Charlemagne's tomb, Buridans and Hernanis, and
stuff? Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand was a man of genius as a
writer, certainly immortal; and M. de Lamartine was a young man extremely
bien pensant, but, ma foi, give him Crebillon fils, or a bonne farce of
M. Vade to make laugh; for the great sentiments, for the beautiful style,
give him M. de Lormian (although Bonapartist) or the Abbe de Lille. And
for the new school! bah! these little Dumass, and Hugos, and Mussets,
what is all that? "M. de Lormian shall be immortal, monsieur," he would
say, "when all these freluquets are forgotten." After his marriage he
frequented the coulisses of the opera no more; but he was a pretty
constant attendant at the Theatre Francais, where you might hear him
snoring over the chefs-d'oeuvres of French tragedy.

For some little time after 1830, the Duchesse was as great a Carlist as
her husband could wish; and they conspired together very comfortably at
first. Of an adventurous turn, eager for excitement of all kinds, nothing
would have better pleased the Duchesse than to follow MADAME in her
adventurous courses in La Vendee, disguised as a boy above all. She was
persuaded to stay at home, however, and aid the good cause at Paris;
while Monsieur le Duc went off to Brittany to offer his old sword to the
mother of his king. But MADAME was discovered up the chimney at Rennes,
and all sorts of things were discovered afterwards. The world said that
our silly little Duchess of Paris was partly the cause of the discovery.
Spies were put upon her, and to some people she would tell anything. M.
le Duc, on paying his annual visit to august exiles at Goritz, was very
badly received: Madame la Dauphine gave him a sermon. He had an awful
quarrel with Madame la Duchesse on returning to Paris. He provoked
Monsieur le Comte Tiercelin, le beau Tiercelin, an officer of ordonnance
of the Duke of Orleans, into a duel, a propos of a cup of coffee in a
salon; he actually wounded the beau Tiercelin--he sixty-five years of
age! his nephew, M. de Florac, was loud in praise of his kinsman's
bravery.

That pretty figure and complexion which still appear so captivating in M.
Dubufe's portrait of Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, have long existed--it
must be owned only in paint. "Je la prefere a l'huile," the Vicomte de
Florac said of his cousin. "She should get her blushes from Monsieur
Dubufe--those of her present furnishers are not near so natural."
Sometimes the Duchess appeared with these postiches roses, sometimes of a
mortal paleness. Sometimes she looked plump, on other occasions wofully
thin. "When she goes into the world," said the same chronicler, "ma
cousine surrounds herself with jupons--c'est pour defendre sa vertu: when
she is in a devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and
crinoline, and fait maigre absolument." To spite the Duke her husband,
she took up with the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast
him away. She took his brother, the Abbe de Florac, for a director, and
presently parted from him. "Mon frere, ce saint homme ne parle jamais de
Madame la Duchesse, maintenant," said the Vicomte. "She must have
confessed to him des choses affreuses--oh, oui!--affreuses ma parole
d'honneur!"

The Duke d'Ivry being archiroyaliste, Madame la Duchesse must make
herself ultra-Philippiste. "Oh, oui! tout ce qu'il y a de plus Madame
Adelaide au monde!" cried Florac. "She raffoles of M. le Regent. She used
to keep a fast of the day of the supplice of Philippe Egalite, Saint and
Martyr. I say used, for to make to enrage her husband, and to recall the
Abbe my brother, did she not advise herself to consult M. le Pasteur
Grigou, and to attend the preach at his Temple? When this sheep had
brought her shepherd back, she dismissed the Pasteur Grigou. Then she
tired of M. l'Abbe again, and my brother is come out from her, shaking
his good head. Ah! she must have put things into it which astonished the
good Abbe! You know he has since taken the Dominican robe? My word of
honour! I believe it was terror of her that drove him into a convent. You
shall see him at Rome, Clive. Give him news of his elder, and tell him
this gross prodigal is repenting amongst the swine. My word of honour! I
desire but the death of Madame la Vicomtesse de Florac, to marry and
range myself!

"After being Royalist, Philippist, Catholic, Huguenot, Madame d'Ivry must
take to Pantheism, to bearded philosophers who believe in nothing, not
even in clean linen, eclecticism, republicanism, what know I? All her
changes have been chronicled by books of her composition. Les Demons,
poem Catholic; Charles IX. is the hero and the demons are shot for the
most part at the catastrophe of St. Bartholomew. My good mother, all good
Catholic as she is, was startled by the boldness of this doctrine. Then
there came Une Dragonnade, par Mme. la Duchesse d'Ivry, which is all on
your side. That was of the time of the Pastor Grigou, that one. The last
was Les Dieux dechus, poeme en 20 chants, par Mme. la D---- d'I. Guard
yourself well from this Muse! If she takes a fancy to you she will never
leave you alone. If you see her often, she will fancy you are in love
with her, and tell her husband. She always tells my uncle--afterwards--
after she has quarrelled with you and grown tired of you! Eh, being in
London once, she had the idea to make herself a Quakre; wore the costume,
consulted a minister of that culte, and quarrelled with him as of rule.
It appears the Quakers do not beat themselves, otherwise my poor uncle
must have paid of his person.

"The turn of the philosophers then came, the chemists, the natural
historians, what know I? She made a laboratory in her hotel, and
rehearsed poisons like Madame de Brinvilliers--she spent hours in the
Jardin des Plantes. Since she has grown affreusenent maigre and wears
mounting robes, she has taken more than ever to the idea that she
resembles Mary Queen of Scots. She wears a little frill and a little cap.
Every man she loves, she says, has come to misfortune. She calls her
lodgings Lochleven. Eh! I pity the landlord of Lochleven! She calls ce
gros Blackball, vous savez, that pillar of estaminets, that prince of
mauvais-ton, her Bothwell; little Mijaud, the poor little pianist, she
named her Rizzio; young Lord Greenhorn who was here with governor, a
Monsieur of Oxfort, she christened her Darnley, and the Minister
Anglican, her John Knox! The poor man was quite enchanted! Beware of this
haggard siren, my little Clive!--mistrust her dangerous song! Her cave is
jonchee with the bones of her victims. Be you not one!"

Far from causing Clive to avoid Madame la Duchesse, these cautions very
likely would have made him only the more eager to make her acquaintance,
but that a much nobler attraction drew him elsewhere. At first, being
introduced to Madame d'Ivry's salon, he was pleased and flattered, and
behaved himself there merrily and agreeably enough. He had not studied
Horace Vernet for nothing; he drew a fine picture of Kew rescuing her
from the Arabs, with a plenty of sabres, pistols, burnouses, and
dromedaries. He made a pretty sketch of her little girl Antoinette, and a
wonderful likeness of Miss O'Grady, the little girl's governess, the
mother's dame de compagnie;--Miss O'Grady, with the richest Milesian
brogue, who had been engaged to give Antoinette the pure English accent.
But the French lady's great eyes and painted smiles would not bear
comparison with Ethel's natural brightness and beauty. Clive, who had
been appointed painter in ordinary to the Queen of Scots, neglected his
business, and went over to the English faction; so did one or two more of
the Princess's followers, leaving her Majesty by no means well pleased at
their desertion.

There had been many quarrels between M. d'Ivry and his next-of-kin.
Political differences, private differences--a long story. The Duke, who
had been wild himself, could not pardon the Vicomte de Florac for being
wild. Efforts at reconciliation had been made which ended unsuccessfully.
The Vicomte de Florac had been allowed for a brief space to be intimate
with the chief of his family, and then had been dismissed for being too
intimate. Right or wrong, the Duke was jealous of all young men who
approached the Duchesse. "He is suspicious," Madame de Florac indignantly
said, "because he remembers: and he thinks other men are like himself."
The Vicomte discreetly said, "My cousin has paid me the compliment to be
jealous of me," and acquiesced in his banishment with a shrug.

During the emigration the old Lord Kew had been very kind to exiles, M.
d'Ivry amongst the number; and that nobleman was anxious to return to all
Lord Kew's family when they came to France the hospitality which he had
received himself in England. He still remembered or professed to remember
Lady Kew's beauty. How many women are there, awful of aspect, at present,
of whom the same pleasing legend is not narrated! It must be true, for do
not they themselves confess it? I know of few things more remarkable or
suggestive of philosophic contemplation than those physical changes.

When the old Duke and the old Countess met together and talked
confidentially, their conversation bloomed into a jargon wonderful to
hear. Old scandals woke up, old naughtinesses rose out of their graves,
and danced, and smirked, and gibbered again, like those wicked nuns whom
Bertram and Robert le Diable evoke from their sepulchres whilst the
bassoon performs a diabolical incantation. The Brighton Pavilion was
tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers and masks;
Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of Wales.
Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together--a pretty dance. The old
Duke wore a jabot and ailes-de-pigeon, the old Countess a hoop, and a
cushion on her head. If haply the young folks came in, the elders
modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King George
and good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship was sister
of the Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that lamented
nobleman. Their family had relations in France (Lady Kew had always a
pied-a-terre at Paris, a bitter little scandal-shop, where les bien
pensants assembled and retailed the most awful stories against the
reigning dynasty). It was she who handed over le petit Kiou, when quite a
boy, to Monsieur and Madame d'Ivry, to be lanced into Parisian
society. He was treated as a son of the family by the Duke, one of whose
many Christian names, his lordship, Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew
and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew hated any one (and she could hate
very considerably) she hated her daughter-in-law, Walham's widow, and the
Methodists who surrounded her. Kew remain among a pack of psalm-singing
old women and parsons with his mother! Fi donc! Frank was Lady Kew's boy;
she would form him, marry him, leave him her money if he married to her
liking, and show him life. And so she showed it to him.

Have you taken your children to the National Gallery in London, and shown
them the "Marriage a la Mode?" Was the artist exceeding the privilege of
his calling in painting the catastrophe in which those guilty people all
suffer? If this fable were not true, if many and many of your young men
of pleasure had not acted it, and rued the moral, I would tear the page.
You know that in our Nursery Tales there is commonly a good fairy to
counsel, and a bad one to mislead the young prince. You perhaps feel that
in your own life there is a Good Principle imploring you to come into its
kind bosom, and a Bad Passion which tempts you into its arms. Be of easy
minds good-natured people! Let us disdain surprises and coups-de-theatre
for once; and tell those good souls who are interested about him, that
there is a Good Spirit coming to the rescue of our young Lord Kew.

Surrounded by her court and royal attendants, La Reine Marie used
graciously to attend the play-table, where luck occasionally declared
itself for and against her Majesty. Her appearance used to create not a
little excitement in the Saloon of Roulette, the game which she
patronised, it being more "fertile of emotions" than the slower
trente-et-quarante. She dreamed of numbers, had favourite incantations by
which to conjure them: noted the figures made by peels of peaches and so
forth, the numbers of houses, on hackney-coaches--was superstitious comme
toutes les rimes poetiques. She commonly brought a beautiful agate
bonbonniere full of gold pieces, when she played. It was wonderful to see
her grimaces: to watch her behaviour: her appeals to heaven, her delight
and despair. Madame la Baronne de la Cruchecassee played on one side of
her, Madame la Comtesse de Schlanigenbad on the other. When she had lost
all her money her Majesty would condescend to borrow--not from those
ladies:--knowing the royal peculiarity, they never had any money; they
always lost; they swiftly pocketed their winnings and never left a mass on
the table, or quitted it, as courtiers will, when they saw luck was going
against their sovereign. The officers of her household were Count Punter,
a Hanoverian, the Cavaliere Spada, Captain Blackball of a mysterious
English regiment, which might be any one of the hundred and twenty in the
Army List, and other noblemen and gentlemen, Greeks, Russians, and
Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Jones (of England), who had made the princess's
acquaintance at Bagneres (where her lord still remained in the gout) and
perseveringly followed her all the way to Baden, were dazzled by the
splendour of the company in which they found themselves. Miss Jones wrote
such letters to her dearest friend Miss Thompson, Cambridge Square,
London, as caused that young person to crever with envy. Bob Jones, who
had grown a pair of mustachios since he left home, began to think
slightingly of poor little Fanny Thompson, now he had got into "the best
Continental society." Might not he quarter a countess's coat on his
brougham along with the Jones arms, or, more slap-up still, have the two
shields painted on the panels with the coronet over? "Do you know the
princess calls herself the Queen of Scots, and she calls me Julian
Avenel?" says Jones delighted, to Clive, who wrote me about the
transmogrification of our schoolfellow, an attorney's son, whom I
recollected a snivelling little boy at Grey Friars. "I say, Newcome, the
princess is going to establish an order," cried Bob in ecstasy. Every one
of her aides-de-camp had a bunch of orders at his button, excepting, of
course, poor Jones.

Like all persons who beheld her, when Miss Newcome and her party made
their appearance at Baden, Monsieur de Florac was enraptured with her
beauty. "I speak of it constantly before the Duchesse. I know it pleases
her," so the Vicomte said. "You should have seen her looks when your
friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury.
Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac
d'argent that he was about to marry--an ingot of the cite--une fille de
Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the
Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait
l'ornement--I would present myself to the charmante meess and ride a
steeple-chase with Kiou!" That he should win it the Viscount never
doubted.

When Lady Anne Newcome first appeared in the ballroom at Baden, Madame la
Duchesse d'Ivry begged the Earl of Kew (notre filleul, she called him) to
present her to his aunt miladi and her charming daughter. "My filleul had
not prepared me for so much grace," she said, turning a look towards Lord
Kew, which caused his lordship some embarrassment. Her kindness and
graciousness were extreme. Her caresses and compliments never ceased all
the evening. She told the mother and the daughter too that she had never
seen any one so lovely as Ethel. Whenever she saw Lady Anne's children in
the walks she ran to them (so that Captain Blackball and Count Punter,
A.D.C., were amazed at her tenderness), she etouffed them with kisses.
What lilies and roses! What lovely little creatures! What companions for
her own Antoinette. "This is your governess, Miss Quigli; mademoiselle,
you must let me present you to Miss O'Gredi, your compatriot, and I hope
your children will be always together." The Irish Protestant governess
scowled at the Irish Catholic--there was a Boyne Water between them.

Little Antoinette; a lonely little girl, was glad to find any companions.
"Mamma kisses me on the promenade," she told them in her artless way.
"She never kisses me at home!" One day when Lord Kew with Florac and Clive
were playing with the children, Antoinette said, "Pourquoi ne venez-vous
plus chez nous, M. de Kew? And why does mamma say you are a lache? She
said so yesterday to ces messieurs. And why does mamma say thou art only
a vaurien, mon cousin? Thou art always very good for me. I love thee
better than all those messieurs. Ma tante Florac a ete bonne pour moi a
Paris aussi--Ah! qu'elle a ete bonne!"

"C'est que les anges aiment bien les petits cherubins, and my mother is
an angel, seest thou," cries Florac, kissing her.

"Thy mother is not dead," said little Antoinette, "then why dost thou
cry, my cousin?" And the three spectators were touched by this little
scene and speech.

Lady Anne Newcome received the caresses and compliments of Madame la
Duchesse with marked coldness on the part of one commonly so very
good-natured. Ethel's instinct told her that there was something wrong in
this woman, and she shrank from her with haughty reserve. The girl's
conduct was not likely to please the French lady, but she never relaxed
in her smiles and her compliments, her caresses, and her professions of
admiration. She was present when Clara Pulleyn fell; and, prodigal of
calineries and consolation, and shawls and scent-bottles, to the unhappy
young lady, she would accompany her home. She inquired perpetually after
the health of cette pauvre petite Miss Clara. Oh, how she railed against
ces Anglaises and their prudery! Can you fancy her and her circle, the
tea-table set in the twilight that evening, the court assembled, Madame
de la Cruchecassee and Madame de Schlangenbad; and their whiskered humble
servants, Baron Punter and Count Spada, and Marquis Iago, and Prince
Iachimo, and worthy Captain Blackball? Can you fancy a moonlight
conclave, and ghouls feasting on the fresh corpse of a reputation:--the
gibes and sarcasms, the laughing and the gnashing of teeth? How they tear
the dainty limbs, and relish the tender morsels!

"The air of this place is not good for you, believe me, my little Kew; it
is dangerous. Have pressing affairs in England; let your chateau burn
down; or your intendant run away, and pursue him. Partez, mon petit Kiou;
partez, or evil will come of it." Such was the advice which a friend of
Lord Kew gave the young nobleman.




CHAPTER XXXII

Barnes's Courtship


Ethel had made various attempts to become intimate with her future
sister-in-law; had walked, and ridden, and talked with Lady Clara before
Barnes's arrival. She had come away not very much impressed with respect
for Lady Clara's mental powers; indeed, we have said that Miss Ethel was
rather more prone to attack women than to admire them, and was a little
hard upon the fashionable young persons of her acquaintance and sex. In
after life, care and thought subdued her pride, and she learned to look
at society more good-naturedly; but at this time, and for some years
after, she was impatient of commonplace people, and did not choose to
conceal her scorn. Lady Clara was very much afraid of her. Those timid
little thoughts, which would come out, and frisk and gambol with pretty
graceful antics, and advance confidingly at the sound of Jack Belsize's
jolly voice, and nibble crumbs out of his hand, shrank away before Ethel,
severe nymph with the bright eyes, and hid themselves under the thickets
and in the shade. Who has not overheard a simple couple of girls, or of
lovers possibly, pouring out their little hearts, laughing at their own
little jokes, prattling and prattling away unceasingly, until mamma
appears with her awful didactic countenance, or the governess with her
dry moralities, and the colloquy straightway ceases, the laughter stops,
the chirp of the harmless little birds is hushed. Lady Clara being of a
timid nature, stood in as much awe of Ethel as of her father and mother;
whereas her next sister, a brisk young creature of seventeen, who was of
the order of romps or tomboys, was by no means afraid of Miss Newcome,
and indeed a much greater favourite with her than her placid elder
sister.

Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their
sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful
nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that
people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion: and, I believe,
what are called broken hearts are very rare articles indeed. Tom is
jilted--is for a while in a dreadful state--bores all his male
acquaintance with his groans and his frenzy--rallies from the complaint--
eats his dinner very kindly--takes an interest in the next turf event,
and is found at Newmarket, as usual, bawling out the odds which he will
give or take. Miss has her paroxysm and recovery--Madame Crinoline's new
importations from Paris interest the young creature--she deigns to
consider whether pink or blue will become her most--she conspires with
her maid to make the spring morning dresses answer for the autumn--she
resumes her books, piano, and music (giving up certain songs perhaps that
she used to sing)--she waltzes with the Captain--gets a colour--waltzes
longer, better, and ten times quicker than Lucy, who is dancing with the
Major--replies in an animated manner to the Captain's delightful remarks
--takes a little supper--and looks quite kindly at him before she pulls
up the carriage windows.

Clive may not like his cousin Barnes Newcome, and many other men share in
that antipathy, but all ladies do not. It is a fact that Barnes, when he
likes, can make himself a very pleasant fellow. He is dreadfully
satirical, that is certain; but many persons are amused by those dreadful
satirical young men: and to hear fun made of our neighbours, even of some
of our friends, does not make us very angry. Barnes is one of the very
best waltzers in all society, that is the truth; whereas it must be
confessed Some One Else was very heavy and slow, his great foot always
crushing you, and he always begging your pardon. Barnes whirls a partner
round a room ages after she is ready to faint. What wicked fun he makes
of other people when he stops! He is not handsome, but in his face there
is something odd-looking and distinguished. It is certain he has
beautiful small feet and hands.

He comes every day from the City, drops in, in his quiet unobtrusive way,
and drinks tea at five o'clock; always brings a budget of the funniest
stories with him, makes mamma laugh, Clara laugh, Henrietta, who is in
the schoolroom still, die of laughing. Papa has the highest opinion of
Mr. Newcome as a man of business: if he had had such a friend in early
life his affairs would not be where they now are, poor dear kind papa! Do
they want to go anywhere, is not Mr. Newcome always ready? Did he not
procure that delightful room for them to witness the Lord Mayor's show;
and make Clara die of laughing at those odd City people at the Mansion
House ball? He is at every party, and never tired though he gets up so
early: he waltzes with nobody else: he is always there to put Lady Clara
in the carriage: at the drawing-room he looked quite handsome in his
uniform of the Newcome Hussars, bottle-green and silver lace: he speaks
Politics so exceedingly well with papa and gentlemen after dinner: he is
a sound conservative, full of practical good sense and information, with
no dangerous new-fangled ideas, such as young men have. When poor dear
Sir Brian Newcome's health gives way quite, Mr. Newcome will go into
Parliament, and then he will resume the old barony which has been in
abeyance in the family since the reign of Richard the Third. They had
fallen quite, quite low. Mr. Newcome's grandfather came to London with a
satchel on his back, like Whittington. Isn't it romantic?

This process has been going on for months. It is not in one day that poor
Lady Clara has been made to forget the past, and to lay aside her
mourning. Day after day, very likely, the undeniable faults and many
peccadilloes of--of that other person, have been exposed to her. People
around the young lady may desire to spare her feelings, but can have no
interest in screening Poor Jack from condign reprobation. A wild
prodigal--a disgrace to his order--a son of old Highgate's leading such a
life, and making such a scandal! Lord Dorking believes Mr. Belsize to be
an abandoned monster and fiend in human shape; gathers and relates all
the stories that ever have been told to the young man's disadvantage, and
of these be sure there are enough, and speaks of him with transports of
indignation. At the end of months of unwearied courtship, Mr. Barnes
Newcome is honestly accepted, and Lady Clara is waiting for him at Baden,
not unhappy to receive him; when walking on the promenade with her
father, the ghost of her dead love suddenly rises before her, and the
young lady faints to the ground.

When Barnes Newcome thinks fit he can be perfectly placable in his
demeanour and delicate in his conduct. What he said upon this painful
subject was delivered with the greatest propriety. He did not for one
moment consider that Lady Clara's agitation arose from any present
feeling in Mr. Belsize's favour, but that she was naturally moved by the
remembrance of the past, and the sudden appearance which recalled it.
"And but that a lady's name should never be made the subject of dispute
between men," Newcome said to Lord Dorking, with great dignity, "and that
Captain Belsize has opportunely quitted the place, I should certainly
have chastised him. He and another adventurer, against whom I have had to
warn my own family, have quitted Baden this afternoon. I am glad that
both are gone, Captain Belsize especially; for my temper, my lord, is
hot, and I do not think I should have commanded it."

Lord Kew, when the elder lord informed him of this admirable speech of
Barnes Newcome's, upon whose character, prudence, and dignity the Earl of
Dorking pronounced a fervent eulogium, shook his head gravely, and said,
"Yes, Barnes was a dead shot, and a most determined fellow:" and did not
burst out laughing until he and Lord Dorking had parted. Then to be sure
he took his fill of laughter, he told the story to Ethel, he complimented
Barnes on his heroic self-denial; the joke of the thundering big stick
was nothing to it. Barnes Newcome laughed too; he had plenty of humour,
Barnes. "I think you might have whopped Jack when he came out from his
interview with the Dorkings," Kew said: "the poor devil was so bewildered
and weak, that Alfred might have thrashed him. At other times you would
find it more difficult, Barnes my man." Mr. B. Newcome resumed his
dignity; said a joke was a joke, and there was quite enough of this one;
which assertion we may be sure he conscientiously made.

That meeting and parting between the old lovers passed with a great deal
of calm and propriety on both sides. Miss's parents of course were
present when Jack at their summons waited upon them and their daughter,
and made his hang-dog bow. My Lord Dorking said (poor Jack in the anguish
of his heart had poured out the story to Clive Newcome afterwards), "Mr.
Belsize, I have to apologise for words which I used in my heat yesterday,
and which I recall and regret, as I am sure you do that there should have
been any occasion for them."

Mr. Belsize looking at the carpet said he was very sorry.

Lady Dorking here remarked, that as Captain Belsize was now at Baden, he
might wish to hear from Lady Clara Pulleyn's own lips that the engagement
into which she had entered was formed by herself, certainly with the
consent and advice of her family. "Is it not so, my dear?"

Lady Clara said, "Yes, mamma," with a low curtsey.

"We have now to wish you good-bye, Charles Belsize," said my lord, with
some feeling. "As your relative, and your father's old friend, I wish you
well. I hope your future course in life may not be so unfortunate as the
past year. I request that we may part friends. Good-bye, Charles. Clara,
shake hands with Captain Belsize. My Lady Dorking, you will please to
give Charles your hand. You have known him since he was a child; and--
and--we are sorry to be obliged to part in this way." In this wise Mr.
Jack Belsize's tooth was finally extracted; and for the moment we wish
him and his brother-patient a good journey.

Little lynx-eyed Dr. Von Finck, who attends most of the polite company at
Baden, drove ceaselessly about the place that day, with the real version
of the fainting-fit story, about which we may be sure the wicked and
malicious, and the uninitiated, had a hundred absurd details. Lady Clara
ever engaged to Captain Belsize? Fiddle-de-dee! Everybody knew the
Captain's affairs, and that he could no more think of marrying than
flying. Lady Clara faint at seeing him! she fainted before he came up;
she was always fainting, and had done so thrice in the last week to his
knowledge. Lord Dorking had a nervous affection of his right arm, and was
always shaking his stick. He did not say Villain, he said William;
Captain Belsize's name is William. It is not so in the Peerage? Is he
called Jack in the Peerage? Those Peerages are always wrong. These candid
explanations of course had their effect. Wicked tongues were of course
instantaneously silent. People were entirely satisfied; they always are.
The next night being Assembly night, Lady Clara appeared at the rooms and
danced with Lord Kew and Mr. Barnes Newcome. All the society was as
gracious and good-humoured as possible, and there was no more question of
fainting than of burning down the Conversation-house. But Madame de
Cruchecassee, and Madame de Schlangenbad, and those horrid people whom
the men speak to, but whom the women salute with silent curtseys,
persisted in declaring that there was no prude like an English prude; and
to Dr. Finck's oaths, assertions, explanations, only replied, with a
shrug of their bold shoulders, "Taisez-vous, Docteur, vous n'ete qu'une
vieille bete."

Lady Kew was at the rooms, uncommonly gracious. Miss Ethel took a few
turns of the waltz with Lord Kew, but this nymph looked more farouche
than upon ordinary days. Bob Jones, who admired her hugely, asked leave
to waltz with her, and entertained her with recollections of Clive
Newcome at school. He remembered a fight in which Clive had been engaged,
and recounted that action to Miss Newcome, who seemed to be interested.
He was pleased to deplore Clive's fancy for turning artist, and that Miss
Newcome recommended him to have his likeness taken, for she said his
appearance was exceedingly picturesque. He was going on with further
prattle, but she suddenly cut Mr. Jones short, making him a bow, and
going to sit down by Lady Kew. "And the next day, sir," said Bob, with
whom the present writer had the happiness of dining at a mess dinner at
the Upper Temple, "when I met her on the walk, sir, she cut me as dead as
a stone. The airs those swells give themselves is enough to make any man
turn republican."

Miss Ethel indeed was haughty, very haughty, and of a difficult temper.
She spared none of her party except her kind mother, to whom Ethel always
was kind, and her father, whom, since his illnesses, she tended with much
benevolence and care. But she did battle with Lady Kew repeatedly, coming
to her Aunt Julia's rescue, on whom her mother as usual exercised her
powers of torturing. She made Barnes quail before her by the shafts of
contempt which she flashed at him; and she did not spare Lord Kew, whose
good-nature was no shield against her scorn. The old queen-mother was
fairly afraid of her; she even left off beating Lady Julia when Ethel
came in, of course taking her revenge in the young girl's absence, but
trying in her presence to soothe and please her. Against Lord Kew the
young girl's anger was most unjust, and the more cruel because the kindly
young nobleman never spoke a hard word of any one mortal soul, and,
carrying no arms, should have been assaulted by none. But his very
good-nature seemed to make his young opponent only the more wrathful; she
shot because his honest breast was bare; it bled at the wounds which she
inflicted. Her relatives looked at her surprised at her cruelty, and the
young man himself was shocked in his dignity and best feelings by his
cousin's wanton ill-humour.

Lady Kew fancied she understood the cause of this peevishness, and
remonstrated with Miss Ethel. "Shall we write a letter to Lucerne, and
order Dick Tinto back again?" said her ladyship. "Are you such a fool,
Ethel, as to be hankering after that young scapegrace, and his yellow
beard? His drawings are very pretty. Why, I think he might earn a couple
of hundred a year as a teacher, and nothing would be easier than to break
your engagement with Kew, and whistle the drawing-master back again."

Ethel took up the whole heap of Clive's drawings, lighted a taper,
carried the drawings to the fireplace, and set them in a blaze. "A very
pretty piece of work," says Lady Kew, "and which proves satisfactorily
that you don't care for the young Clive at all. Have we arranged a
correspondence? We are cousins, you know; we may write pretty cousinly
letters to one another." A month before the old lady would have attacked
her with other arms than sarcasm, but she was scared now, and dared to
use no coarser weapons. "Oh!" cried Ethel in a transport, "what a life
ours is, and how you buy and sell, and haggle over your children! It is
not Clive I care about, poor boy. Our ways of life are separate. I cannot
break from my own family, and I know very well how yon would receive him
in it. Had he money, it would be different. You would receive him, and
welcome him, and hold out your hands to him; but he is only a poor
painter, and we forsooth are bankers in the City; and he comes among us
on sufferance, like those concert-singers whom mamma treats with so much
politeness, and who go down and have supper by themselves. Why should
they not be as good as we are?"

"M. de C----, my dear, is of a noble family," interposed Lady Kew; "when
he has given up singing and made his fortune, no doubt he can go back
into the world again."

"Made his fortune, yes," Ethel continued, "that is the cry. There never
were, since the world began, people so unblushingly sordid! We own it,
and are proud of it. We barter rank against money, and money against
rank, day after day. Why did you marry my father to my mother? Was it for
his wit? You know he might have been an angel and you would have scorned
him. Your daughter was bought with papa's money as surely as ever Newcome
was. Will there be no day when this mammon-worship will cease among us?"

"Not in my time or yours, Ethel," the elder said, not unkindly; perhaps
she thought of a day long ago before she was old herself.

"We are sold," the young girl went on, "we are as much sold as Turkish
women; the only difference being that our masters may have but one
Circassian at a time. No, there is no freedom for us. I wear my green
ticket, and wait till my master comes. But every day as I think of our
slavery, I revolt against it more. That poor wretch, that poor girl whom
my brother is to marry, why did she not revolt and fly? I would, if I
loved a man sufficiently, loved him better than the world, than wealth,
than rank, than fine houses and titles,--and I feel I love these best,--I
would give up all to follow him. But what can I be with my name and my
parents? I belong to the world like all the rest of my family. It is you
who have bred us up; you who are answerable for us. Why are there no
convents to which we can fly? You make a fine marriage for me; you
provide me with a good husband, a kind soul, not very wise, but very
kind; you make me what you call happy, and I would rather be at the
plough like the women here."

"No, you wouldn't, Ethel," replies the grandmother, drily. "These are the
fine speeches of schoolgirls. The showers of rain would spoil your
complexion--you would be perfectly tired in an hour, and come back to
luncheon--you belong to your belongings, my dear, and are not better than
the rest of the world:--very good-looking, as you know perfectly well,
and not very good-tempered. It is lucky that Kew is. Calm your temper, at
least before marriage; such a prize does not fall to a pretty girl's lot
every day. Why, you sent him away quite seared by your cruelty; and if he
is not playing at roulette, or at billiards, I dare say he is thinking
what a little termagant you are, and that he had beat pause while it is
yet time. Before I was married, your poor grandfather never knew I had a
temper; of after-days I say nothing; but trials are good for all of us,
and he bore his like an angel."

Lady Kew, too, on this occasion at least, was admirably good-humoured.
She also when it was necessary could put a restraint on her temper, and,
having this match very much at heart, chose to coax and to soothe her
granddaughter rather than to endeavour to scold and frighten her.

"Why do you desire this marriage so much, grandmamma," the girl asked.
"My cousin is not very much in love,--at least I should fancy not," she
added, blushing. "I am bound to own Lord Kew is not in the least eager,
and I think if you were to tell him to wait for five years he would be
quite willing. Why should you be so very anxious?"

"Why, my dear? Because I think young ladies who want to go and work in
the fields, should make hay while the sun shines; because I think it is
high time that Kew should ranger himself; because I am sure he will make
the best husband, and Ethel the prettiest Countess in England." And the
old lady, seldom exhibiting any signs of affection, looked at her
granddaughter very fondly. From her Ethel looked up into the glass, which
very likely repeated on its shining face the truth her elder had just
uttered. Shall we quarrel with the girl for that dazzling reflection; for
owning that charming truth, and submitting to the conscious triumph? Give
her her part of vanity, of youth, of desire to rule and be admired.
Meanwhile Mr. Clive's drawings have been crackling in the fireplace at
her feet, and the last spark of that combustion is twinkling out
unheeded.




CHAPTER XXXIII

Lady Kew at the Congress


When Lady Kew heard that Madame d'Ivry was at Baden, and was informed at
once of the French lady's graciousness towards the Newcome family, and of
her fury against Lord Kew, the old Countess gave a loose to that
energetic temper with which nature had gifted her; a temper which she
tied up sometimes and kept from barking and biting; but which when
unmuzzled was an animal of whom all her ladyship's family had a just
apprehension. Not one of them but in his or her time had been wounded,
lacerated, tumbled over, otherwise frightened or injured by this unruly
brute. The cowards brought it sops and patted it; the prudent gave it a
clear berth, and walked round so as not to meet it; but woe be to those
of the family who had to bring the meal, and prepare the litter, and (to
speak respectfully) share the kennel with Lady Kew's "Black Dog!" Surely
a fine furious temper, if accompanied with a certain magnanimity and
bravery which often go together with it, is one of the most precious and
fortunate gifts with which a gentleman or lady can be endowed. A person
always ready to fight is certain of the greatest consideration amongst
his or her family circle. The lazy grow tired of contending with him; the
timid coax and flatter him; and as almost every one is timid or lazy, a
bad-tempered man is sure to have his own way. It is he who commands, and
all the others obey. If he is a gourmand, he has' what he likes for
dinner; and the tastes of all the rest are subservient to him. She (we
playfully transfer the gender, as a bad temper is of both sexes) has the
place which she likes best in the drawing-room; nor do her parents, nor
her brothers and sisters, venture to take her favourite chair. If she
wants to go to a party, mamma will dress herself in spite of her
headache; and papa, who hates those dreadful soirees, will go upstairs
after dinner and put on his poor old white neckcloth, though he has been
toiling at chambers all day, and must be there early in the morning--he
will go out with her, we say, and stay for the cotillon. If the family
are taking their tour in the summer, it is she who ordains whither they
shall go, and when they shall stop. If he comes home late, the dinner is
kept for him, and not one dares to say a word though ever so hungry. If
he is in a good humour, how every one frisks about and is happy! How the
servants jump up at his bell and run to wait upon him! How they sit up
patiently, and how eagerly they rush out to fetch cabs in the rain!
Whereas for you and me, who have the tempers of angels, and never were
known to be angry or to complain, nobody cares whether we are pleased or
not. Our wives go to the milliners and send us the bill, and we pay it;
our John finishes reading the newspaper before he answers our bell, and
brings it to us; our sons loll in the arm-chair which we should like;
fill the house with their young men, and smoke in the dining-room; our
tailors fit us badly; our butchers give us the youngest mutton; our
tradesmen dun us much more quickly than other people's, because they know
we are good-natured; and our servants go out whenever they like, and
openly have their friends to supper in the kitchen. When Lady Kew said
Sic volo, sic jubeo, I promise you few persons of her ladyship's
belongings stopped, before they did her biddings, to ask her reasons.

If, which very seldom happens, there are two such imperious and
domineering spirits in a family, unpleasantries of course will arise from
their contentions; or, if out of doors the family Bajazet meets with some
other violent Turk, dreadful battles ensue, all the allies on either side
are brought in, and the surrounding neighbours perforce engaged in the
quarrel. This was unluckily the case in the present instance. Lady Kew,
unaccustomed to have her will questioned at home, liked to impose it
abroad. She judged the persons around her with great freedom of speech.
Her opinions were quoted, as people's sayings will be; and if she made
bitter speeches, depend on it they lost nothing in the carrying. She was
furious against Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, and exploded in various
companies whenever that lady's name was mentioned. "Why was she not with
her husband? Why was the poor old Duke left to his gout, and this woman
trailing through the country with her vagabond court of billiard-markers
at her heels? She to call herself Mary Queen of Scots, forsooth!--well,
she merited the title in some respects, though she had not murdered her
husband as yet. Ah! I should like to be Queen Elizabeth if the Duchess is
Queen of Scots!" said the old lady, shaking her old fist. And these
sentiments being uttered in public, upon the promenade, to mutual
friends, of course the Duchess had the benefit of Lady Kew's remarks a
few minutes after they were uttered; and her grace, and the distinguished
princes, counts, and noblemen in her court, designated as
billiard-markers by the old Countess, returned the latter's compliments
with pretty speeches of their own. Scandals were dug up respecting her
ladyship, so old that one would have thought them forgotten these forty
years,--so old that they happened before most of the Newcomes now extant
were born, and surely therefore are out of the province of this
contemporary biography. Lady Kew was indignant with her daughter (there
were some moments when any conduct of her friends did not meet her
ladyship's approbation) even for the scant civility with which Lady Anne
had received the Duchess's advances. "Leave a card upon her!--yes, send a
card by one of your footmen; but go in to see her--because she was at the
window and saw you drive up.--Are you mad, Anne? That was the very reason
you should not have come out of your carriage. But you are so weak and
good-natured, that if a highwayman stopped you, you would say, 'Thank
you, sir,' as you gave him your purse: yes, and if Mrs. Macheath called
on you afterwards you would return the visit!"

Even had these speeches been made about the Duchess, and some of them not
addressed to her, things might have gone on pretty well. If we quarrelled
with all the people who abuse us behind our backs, and began to tear
their eyes out as soon as we set ours on them, what a life it would be,
and when should we have any quiet? Backbiting is all fair in society.
Abuse me, and I will abuse you; but let us be friends when we meet. Have
not we all entered a dozen rooms, and been sure, from the countenances of
the amiable persons present, that they had been discussing our little
peculiarities, perhaps as we were on the stairs? Was our visit,
therefore, the less agreeable? Did we quarrel and say hard words to one
another's faces? No--we wait until some of our dear friends take their
leave, and then comes our turn. My back is at my neighbour's service; as
soon as that is turned let him make what faces he thinks proper: but when
we meet we grin and shake hands like well-bred folk, to whom clean linen
is not more necessary than a clean sweet-looking countenance, and a
nicely got-up smile, for company.

Here was Lady Kew's mistake. She wanted, for some reason, to drive Madame
d'Ivry out of Baden; and thought there were no better means of effecting
this object than by using the high hand, and practising those frowns upon
the Duchess which had scared away so many other persons. But the Queen of
Scots was resolute, too, and her band of courtiers fought stoutly round
about her. Some of them could not pay their bills, and could not retreat:
others had courage, and did not choose to fly. Instead of coaxing and
soothing Madame d'Ivry, Madame de Kew thought by a brisk attack to rout
and dislodge her. She began on almost the very first occasion when the
ladies met. "I was so sorry to hear that Monsieur le Duc was ill at
Bagneres, Madame la Duchesse," the old lady began on their very first
meeting, after the usual salutations had taken place.

"Madame la Comtesse is very kind to interest herself in Monsieur d'Ivry's
health. Monsieur le Duc at his age is not disposed to travel. You, dear
miladi, are more happy in being always able to retain the gout des
voyages!"

"I come to my family! my dear Duchess."

"How charmed they must be to possess you! Miladi Anne, you must be
inexpressibly consoled by the presence of a mother so tender! Permit me
to present Madame la Comtesse de la Cruchecassee to Madame la Comtesse de
Kew. Miladi is sister to that amiable Marquis of Steyne, whom you have
known, Ambrosine! Madame la Baronne de Schlangenbad, Miladi Kew. Do you
not see the resemblance to milor? These ladies have enjoyed the
hospitalities--the splendours of Gaunt House. They were of those famous
routs of which the charming Mistress Crawley, la semillante Becki, made
part! How sad the Hotel de Gaunt must be under the present circumstances!
Have you heard, miladi, of the charming Mistress Becki? Monsieur le Duc
describes her as the most spirituelle Englishwoman he ever met." The
Queen of Scots turns and whispers her lady of honour, and shrugs and taps
her forehead. Lady Kew knows that Madame d'Ivry speaks of her nephew, the
present Lord Steyne, who is not in his right mind. The Duchess looks
round, and sees a friend in the distance whom she beckons. "Comtesse, you
know already monsieur the Captain Blackball? He makes the delight of our
society!" A dreadful man with a large cigar, a florid waistcoat, and
billiards written on his countenance, swaggers forward at the Duchess's
summons. The Countess of Kew has not gained much by her attack. She has
been presented to Cruchecassee and Schlangenbad. She sees herself on the
eve of becoming the acquaintance of Captain Blackball.

"Permit me, Duchess, to choose my English friends at least for myself,"
says Lady Kew, drumming her foot.

"But, madam, assuredly! You do not love this good Monsieur de Blackball?
Eh! the English manners are droll, pardon me for saying so. It is
wonderful how proud you are as a nation, and how ashamed you are of your
compatriots!"

"There are some persons who are ashamed of nothing, Madame la Duchesse,"
cries Lady Kew; losing her temper.

"Is that gracieusete for me? How much goodness! This good Monsieur de
Blackball is not very well bred; but, for an Englishman, he is not too
bad. I have met with people who are more ill-bred than Englishmen in my
travels."

"And they are?" said Lady Anne, who had been in vain endeavouring to put
an end to this colloquy.

"Englishwomen, madam! I speak not for you. You are kind; you--you are too
soft, dear Lady Anne, for a persecutor."

The counsels of the worldly woman who governed and directed that branch
of the Newcome family of whom it is our business to speak now for a
little while, bore other results than those which the elderly lady
desired and foresaw. Who can foresee everything and always? Not the
wisest among us. When his Majesty Louis XIV., jockeyed his grandson on to
the throne of Spain (founding thereby the present revered dynasty of that
country), did he expect to peril his own, and bring all Europe about his
royal ears? Could a late King of France, eager for the advantageous
establishment of one of his darling sons, and anxious to procure a
beautiful Spanish princess, with a crown and kingdom in reversion, for
the simple and obedient youth, ever suppose that the welfare of his whole
august race and reign would be upset by that smart speculation? We take
only the most noble examples to illustrate the conduct of such a noble
old personage as her ladyship of Kew, who brought a prodigious deal of
trouble upon some of the innocent members of her family, whom no doubt
she thought to better in life by her experienced guidance and undoubted
worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as Jesuits, know the world ever so
well, lay the best-ordered plans, and the profoundest combinations, and
by a certain not unnatural turn of fate, we, and our plans and
combinations, are sent flying before the wind. We may be as wise as Louis
Philippe, that many-counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world admired
so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill, after
coaxing, wheedling, doubling, bullying, wisdom, behold yet stronger
powers interpose: and schemes, and skill and violence, are nought.

Frank and Ethel, Lady Kew's grandchildren, were both the obedient
subjects of this ancient despot: this imperious old Louis XIV. in a black
front and a cap and ribbon, this scheming old Louis Philippe in tabinet;
but their blood was good and their tempers high; and for all her bitting
and driving, and the training of her mange, the generous young colts were
hard to break. Ethel, at this time, was especially stubborn in training,
rebellious to the whip, and wild under harness; and the way in which Lady
Kew managed her won the admiration of her family: for it was a maxim
among these folks that no one could manage Ethel but Lady Kew. Barnes
said no one could manage his sister but his grandmother. He couldn't,
that was certain. Mamma never tried, and indeed was so good-natured, that
rather than ride the filly, she would put the saddle on her own back and
let the filly ride her; no, there was no one but her ladyship capable of
managing that girl, Barnes owned, who held Lady Kew in much respect and
awe. "If the tightest hand were not kept on her, there's no knowing what
she mightn't do," said her brother. "Ethel Newcome, by Jove, is capable
of running away with the writing-master."

After poor Jack Belsize's mishap and departure, Barnes's own bride showed
no spirit at all, save one of placid contentment. She came at call and
instantly, and went through whatever paces her owner demanded of her. She
laughed whenever need was, simpered and smiled when spoken to, danced
whenever she was asked; drove out at Barnes's side in Kew's phaeton, and
received him certainly not with warmth, but with politeness and welcome.
It is difficult to describe the scorn with which her sister-in-law
regarded her. The sight of the patient timid little thing chafed Ethel,
who was always more haughty and flighty and bold when in Clara's presence
than at any other time. Her ladyship's brother, Captain Lord Viscount
Rooster, before mentioned, joined the family party at this interesting
juncture. My Lord Rooster found himself surprised, delighted, subjugated
by Miss Newcome, her wit and spirit. "By Jove, she is a plucky one," his
lordship exclaimed. "To dance with her is the best fun in life. How she
pulls all the other girls to pieces, by Jove, and how splendidly she
chaffs everybody! But," he added with the shrewdness and sense of humour
which distinguished the young officer, "I'd rather dance with her than
marry her--by a doosid long score--I don't envy you that part of the
business, Kew, my boy." Lord Kew did not set himself up as a person to be
envied. He thought his cousin beautiful: and with his grandmother, that
she would make a very handsome Countess; and he thought the money which
Lady Kew would give or leave to the young couple a very welcome addition
to his means.

On the next night, when there was a ball at the room, Miss Ethel chose to
appear in a toilette the very grandest and finest which she had ever
assumed, who was ordinarily exceedingly simple in her attire, and dressed
below the mark of the rest of the world. Her clustering ringlets, her
shining white shoulders, her splendid raiment (I believe indeed it was
her court-dress which the young lady assumed) astonished all beholders.
She ecrased all other beauties by her appearance; so much so that Madame
d'Ivry's court could not but look, the men in admiration, the women in
dislike, at this dazzling young creature. None of the countesses,
duchesses, princesses, Russ, Spanish, Italian, were so fine or so
handsome. There were some New York ladies at Baden as there are
everywhere else in Europe now. Not even these were more magnificent
than Miss Ethel. General Jeremiah J. Bung's lady owned that Miss Newcome
was fit to appear in any party in Fourth Avenue. She was the only
well-dressed English girl Mrs. Bung had seen in Europe. A young German
Durchlaucht deigned to explain to his aide-de-camp how very handsome he
thought Miss Newcome. All our acquaintances were of one mind. Mr. Jones
of England pronounced her stunning; the admirable Captain Blackball
examined her points with the skill of an amateur, and described them with
agreeable frankness. Lord Rooster was charmed as he surveyed her, and
complimented his late companion-in-arms on the possession of such a
paragon. Only Lord Kew was not delighted--nor did Miss Ethel mean that he
should be. She looked as splendid as Cinderella in the prince's palace.
But what need for all this splendour? this wonderful toilette? this
dazzling neck and shoulders, whereof the brightness and beauty blinded
the eyes of lookers-on? She was dressed as gaudily as an actress of the
Varietes going to a supper at Trois Freres. "It was Mademoiselle Mabille
en habit de coeur," Madame d'Ivry remarked to Madame Schlangenbad.
Barnes, who with his bride-elect for a partner made a vis-a-vis for his
sister and the admiring Lord Rooster, was puzzled likewise by Ethel's
countenance and appearance. Little Lady Clara looked like a little
schoolgirl dancing before her.

One, two, three, of the attendants of her Majesty the Queen of Scots were
carried off in the course of the evening by the victorious young beauty,
whose triumph had the effect, which the headstrong girl perhaps herself
anticipated, of mortifying the Duchesse d'Ivry, of exasperating old Lady
Kew, and of annoying the young nobleman to whom Miss Ethel was engaged.
The girl seemed to take a pleasure in defying all three, a something
embittered her, alike against her friends and her enemies. The old
dowager chaffed and vented her wrath upon Lady Anne and Barnes. Ethel
kept the ball alive by herself almost. She refused to go home, declining
hints and commands alike. She was engaged for ever so many dances more.
Not dance with Count Punter? it would be rude to leave him after
promising him. Not waltz with Captain Blackball? He was not a proper
partner for her? Why then did Kew know him? Lord Kew walked and talked
with Captain Blackball every day. Was she to be so proud as not to know
Lord Kew's friends? She greeted the Captain with a most fascinating smile
as he came up whilst the controversy was pending, and ended it by
whirling round the room in his arms.

Madame d'Ivry viewed with such pleasure as might be expected the
defection of her adherents, and the triumph of her youthful rival, who
seemed to grow more beautiful with each waltz, so that the other dancers
paused to look at her, the men breaking out in enthusiasm, the reluctant
women being forced to join in the applause. Angry as she was, and knowing
how Ethel's conduct angered her grandson, old Lady Kew could not help
admiring the rebellious beauty, whose girlish spirit was more than a
match for the imperious dowager's tough old resolution. As for Mr.
Barnes's displeasure, the girl tossed her saucy head, shrugged her fair
shoulders, and passed on with a scornful laugh. In a word, Miss Ethel
conducted herself as a most reckless and intrepid young flirt, using her
eyes with the most consummate effect, chattering with astounding gaiety,
prodigal of smiles, gracious thanks and killing glances. What wicked
spirit moved her? Perhaps had she known the mischief she was doing, she
would have continued it still.

The sight of this wilfulness and levity smote poor Lord Kew's honest
heart with cruel pangs of mortification. The easy young nobleman had
passed many a year of his life in all sorts of wild company. The
chaumiere knew him, and the balls of Parisian actresses, the coulisses of
the opera at home and abroad. Those pretty heads of ladies whom nobody
knows, used to nod their shining ringlets at Kew, from private boxes at
theatres, or dubious Park broughams. He had run the career of young men
of pleasure, and laughed and feasted with jolly prodigals and their
company. He was tired of it: perhaps he remembered an earlier and purer
life, and was sighing to return to it. Living as he had done amongst the
outcasts, his ideal of domestic virtue was high and pure. He chose to
believe that good women were entirely good. Duplicity he could not
understand; ill-temper shocked him: wilfulness he seemed to fancy
belonged only to the profane and wicked; not to good girls, with good
mothers, in honest homes. Their nature was to love their families; to
obey their parents; to tend their poor; to honour their husbands; to
cherish their children. Ethel's laugh woke him up from one of these
simple reveries very likely, and then she swept round the ballroom
rapidly, to the brazen notes of the orchestra. He never offered to dance
with her more than once in the evening; went away to play, and returned
to find her still whirling to the music. Madame d'Ivry remarked his
tribulation and gloomy face, though she took no pleasure at his
discomfiture, knowing that Ethel's behaviour caused it.

In plays and novels, and I dare say in real life too sometimes, when the
wanton heroine chooses to exert her powers of fascination, and to flirt
with Sir Harry or the Captain, the hero, in a pique, goes off and makes
love to somebody else: both acknowledge their folly after a while, shake
hands, and are reconciled, and the curtain drops, or the volume ends. But
there are some people too noble and simple for these amorous scenes and
smirking artifices. When Kew was pleased he laughed, when he was grieved
he was silent. He did not deign to hide his grief or pleasure under
disguises. His error, perhaps, was in forgetting that Ethel was very
young; that her conduct was not design so much as girlish mischief and
high spirits; and that if young men have their frolics, sow their wild
oats, and enjoy their pleasure, young women may be permitted sometimes
their more harmless vagaries of gaiety, and sportive outbreaks of wilful
humour.

When she consented to go home at length, Lord Kew brought Miss Newcome's
little white cloak for her (under the hood of which her glossy curls, her
blushing cheeks, and bright eyes looked provokingly handsome), and
encased her in this pretty garment without uttering one single word. She
made him a saucy curtsey in return for this act of politeness, which
salutation he received with a grave bow; and then he proceeded to cover
up old Lady Kew, and to conduct her ladyship to her chariot. Miss Ethel
chose to be displeased at her cousin's displeasure. What were balls made
for but that people should dance? She a flirt? She displease Lord Kew? If
she chose to dance, she would dance; she had no idea of his giving
himself airs; besides it was such fun taking away the gentlemen of Mary
Queen of Scots' court from her; such capital fun! So she went to bed,
singing and performing wonderful roulades as she lighted her candle and
retired to her room. She had had such a jolly evening!! such famous fun,
and, I dare say (but how shall a novelist penetrate these mysteries?),
when her chamber door was closed, she scolded her maid and was as cross
as two sticks. You see there come moments of sorrow after the most
brilliant victories; and you conquer and rout the enemy utterly, and then
regret that you fought.




CHAPTER XXXIV

The End of the Congress of Baden


Mention has been made of an elderly young person from Ireland, engaged by
Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, as companion and teacher of English for her
little daughter. When Miss O'Grady, as she did some time afterwards,
quitted Madame d'Ivry's family, she spoke with great freedom regarding
the behaviour of that duchess, and recounted horrors which she, the
latter, had committed. A number of the most terrific anecdotes issued
from the lips of the indignant Miss, whose volubility Lord Kew was
obliged to check, not choosing that his countess, with whom he was paying
a bridal visit to Paris, should hear such dreadful legends. It was there
that Miss O'Grady, finding herself in misfortune, and reading of Lord
Kew's arrival at the Hotel Bristol, waited upon his lordship and the
Countess of Kew, begging them to take tickets in a raffle for an
invaluable ivory writing-desk, sole relic of her former prosperity, which
she proposed to give her friends the chance of acquiring: in fact, Miss
O'Grady lived for some years on the produce of repeated raffles for this
beautiful desk: many religious ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain taking
an interest in her misfortunes, and alleviating them by the simple
lottery system. Protestants as well as Catholics were permitted to take
shares in Miss O'Grady's raffles; and Lord Kew, good-natured then as
always, purchased so many tickets, that the contrite O'Grady informed him
of a transaction which had nearly affected his happiness, and in which
she took a not very creditable share. "Had I known your lordship's real
character," Miss O'G was pleased to say, "no tortures would have induced
me to do an act for which I have undergone penance. It was that
black-hearted woman, my lord, who maligned your lordship to me: that
woman whom I called friend once, but who is the most false, depraved, and
dangerous of her sex." In this way do ladies' companions sometimes speak
of ladies when quarrels separate them, when confidential attendants are
dismissed, bearing away family secrets in their minds, and revenge in
their hearts.

The day after Miss Ethel's feats at the assembly, old Lady Kew went over
to advise her granddaughter, and to give her a little timely warning
about the impropriety of flirtations; above all, with such men as are to
be found at watering-places, persons who are never seen elsewhere in
society. "Remark the peculiarities of Kew's temper, who never flies into
a passion like you and me, my dear," said the old lady (being determined
to be particularly gracious and cautious); "when once angry he remains
so, and is so obstinate that it is almost impossible to coax him into
good-humour. It is much better, my love, to be like us," continued the
old lady, "to fly out in a rage and have it over; but que voulez-vous?
such is Frank's temper, and we must manage him." So she went on, backing
her advice by a crowd of examples drawn from the family history; showing
how Kew was like his grandfather, her own poor husband; still more like
his late father, Lord Walham; between whom and his mother there had been
differences, chiefly brought on by my Lady Walham, of course, which had
ended in the almost total estrangement of mother and son. Lady Kew then
administered her advice, and told her stories with Ethel alone for a
listener; and in a most edifying manner, she besought Miss Newcome to
menager Lord Kew's susceptibilities, as she valued her own future comfort
in life, as well as the happiness of a most amiable man, of whom, if
properly managed, Ethel might make what she pleased. We have said Lady
Kew managed everybody, and that most of the members of her family allowed
themselves to be managed by her ladyship.

Ethel, who had permitted her grandmother to continue her sententious
advice, while she herself sat tapping her feet on the floor, and
performing the most rapid variations of that air which is called the
Devil's Tattoo, burst out, at length, to the elder lady's surprise, with
an outbreak of indignation, a flushing face, and a voice quivering with
anger.

"This most amiable man," she cried out, "that you design for me, I know
everything about this most amiable man, and thank you and my family for
the present you make me! For the past year, what have you been doing?
Every one of you! my father, my brother, and you yourself, have been
filling my ears wit cruel reports against a poor boy, whom you chose to
depict as everything that was dissolute and wicked, when there was nothing
against him; nothing, but that he was poor. Yes, you yourself,
grandmamma, have told me many and many a time, that Clive Newcome was not
a fit companion for us; warned me against his bad courses, and painted
him as extravagant, unprincipled, I don't know how bad. How bad! I know
how good he is; how upright, generous, and truth-telling: though there
was not a day until lately, that Barnes did not make some wicked story
against him,--Barnes, who, I believe, is bad himself, like--like other
young men. Yes, I am sure there was something about Barnes in that
newspaper which my father took away from me. And you come, and you lift
up your hands, and shake your head, because I dance with one gentleman or
another. You tell me I am wrong; mamma has told me so this morning.
Barnes, of course, has told me so, and you bring me Frank as a pattern,
and tell me to love and honour and obey him! Look here," and she drew out
a paper and put it into Lady Kew's hands. "Here is Kew's history, and I
believe it is true; yes, I am sure it is true."

The old dowager lifted her eyeglass to her black eyebrow, and read a
paper written in English, and bearing no signature, in which many
circumstances of Lord Kew's life were narrated for poor Ethel's benefit.
It was not a worse life than that of a thousand young men of pleasure,
but there were Kew's many misdeeds set down in order: such a catalogue as
we laugh at when Leporello trolls it, and sings his master's victories in
France, Italy, and Spain. Madame d'Ivry's name was not mentioned in this
list, and Lady Kew felt sure that the outrage came from her.

With real ardour Lady Kew sought to defend her grandson from some of the
attacks here made against him; and showed Ethel that the person who could
use such means of calumniating him, would not scruple to resort to
falsehood in order to effect her purpose.

"Her purpose!" cries Ethel. "How do you know it is a woman?" Lady Kew
lapsed into generalities. She thought the handwriting was a woman's--at
least it was not likely that a man should think of addressing an
anonymous letter to a young lady, and so wreaking his hatred upon Lord
Kew. "Besides, Frank has had no rivals--except--except one young
gentleman who has carried his paint-boxes to Italy," says Lady Kew. "You
don't think your dear Colonel's son would leave such a piece of mischief
behind him? You must act, my dear," continued her ladyship, "as if this
letter had never been written at all; the person who wrote it no doubt
will watch you. Of course we are too proud to allow him to see that we
are wounded; and pray, pray do not think of letting poor Frank know a
word about this horrid transaction."

"Then the letter is true?" burst out Ethel. "You know it is true,
grandmamma, and that is why you would have me keep it a secret from my
cousin; besides," she added, with a little hesitation, "your caution
comes too late, Lord Kew has seen the letter."

"You fool!" screamed the old lady, "you were not so mad as to show it to
him?"

"I am sure the letter is true," Ethel said, rising up very haughtily. "It
is not by calling me bad names that your ladyship will disprove it. Keep
them, if you please, for my Aunt Julia; she is sick and weak, and can't
defend herself. I do not choose to bear abuse from you, or lectures from
Lord Kew. He happened to be here a short while since, when the letter
arrived. He had been good enough to come to preach me a sermon on his own
account. He to find fault with my actions!" cried Miss Ethel, quivering
with wrath and clenching the luckless paper in her hand. "He to accuse me
of levity, and to warn me against making improper acquaintances! He began
his lectures too soon. I am not a lawful slave yet, and prefer to remain
unmolested, at least as long as I am free."

"And you told Frank all this, Miss Newcome, and you showed him that
letter?" said the old lady.

"The letter was actually brought to me whilst his lordship was in the
midst of his sermon," Ethel replied. "I read it as he was making his
speech," she continued, gathering anger and scorn as she recalled the
circumstances of the interview. "He was perfectly polite in his language.
He did not call me a fool or use a single other bad name. He was good
enough to advise me and to make such virtuous pretty speeches, that if he
had been a bishop he could not have spoken better; and as I thought the
letter was a nice commentary on his lordship's sermon, I gave it to him.
I gave it to him," cried the young woman, "and much good may it do him. I
don't think my Lord Kew will preach to me again for some time."

"I don't think he will indeed," said Lady Kew, in a hard dry voice. "You
don't know what you may have done. Will you be pleased to ring the bell
and order my carriage? I congratulate you on having performed a most
charming morning's work."

Ethel made her grandmother a very stately curtsey. I pity Lady Julia's
condition when her mother reached home.

All who know Lord Kew may be pretty sure that in that unlucky interview
with Ethel, to which the young lady has alluded, he just said no single
word to her that was not kind, and just, and gentle. Considering the
relation between them, he thought himself justified in remonstrating with
her as to the conduct which she chose to pursue, and in warning her
against acquaintances of whom his own experience had taught him the
dangerous character. He knew Madame d'Ivry and her friends so well that
he would not have his wife-elect a member of their circle. He could not
tell Ethel what he knew of those women and their history. She chose not
to understand his hints--did not, very likely, comprehend them. She was
quite young, and the stories of such lives as theirs had never been told
before her. She was indignant at the surveillance which Lord Kew exerted
over her, and the authority which he began to assume. At another moment
and in a better frame of mind she would have been thankful for his care,
and very soon and ever after she did justice to his many admirable
qualities--his frankness, honesty, and sweet temper. Only her high spirit
was in perpetual revolt at this time against the bondage in which her
family strove to keep her. The very worldly advantages of the position
which they offered her served but to chafe her the more. Had her proposed
husband been a young prince with a crown to lay at her feet, she had been
yet more indignant very likely, and more rebellious. Had Kew's younger
brother been her suitor, or Kew in his place, she had been not unwilling
to follow her parents' wishes. Hence the revolt in which she was engaged
--the wayward freaks and outbreaks her haughty temper indulged in. No
doubt she saw the justice of Lord Kew's reproofs. That self-consciousness
was not likely to add to her good-humour. No doubt she was sorry for
having shown Lord Kew the letter the moment after she had done that act,
of which the poor young lady could not calculate the consequences that
were now to ensue.

Lord Kew, on glancing over the letter, at once divined the quarter whence
it came. The portrait drawn of him was not unlike, as our characters
described by those who hate us are not unlike. He had passed a reckless
youth; indeed he was sad and ashamed of that past life, longed like the
poor prodigal to return to better courses, and had embraced eagerly the
chance afforded him of a union with a woman young, virtuous, and
beautiful, against whom and against heaven he hoped to sin no more. If we
have told or hinted at more of his story than will please the ear of
modern conventionalism, I beseech the reader to believe that the writer's
purpose at least is not dishonest, nor unkindly. The young gentleman hung
his head with sorrow over that sad detail of his life and its follies.
What would he have given to be able to say to Ethel, "This is not true"

His reproaches to Miss Newcome of course were at once stopped by this
terrible assault on himself. The letter had been put in the Baden
post-box, and so had come to its destination. It was in a disguised
handwriting. Lord Kew could form no idea even of the sex of the scribe.
He put the envelope in his pocket, when Ethel's back was turned. He
examined the paper when he left her. He could make little of the
superscription or of the wafer which had served to close the note. He did
not choose to caution Ethel as to whether she should burn the letter or
divulge it to her friends. He took his share of the pain, as a boy at
school takes his flogging, stoutly and in silence.

When he saw Ethel again, which he did in an hour's time, the generous
young gentleman held his hand out to her. "My dear," he said, "if you had
loved me you never would have shown me that letter." It was his only
reproof. After that he never again reproved or advised her.

Ethel blushed. "You are very brave and generous, Frank," said, bending
her head, "and I am captious and wicked." He felt the hot tear blotting
on his hand from his cousin's downcast eyes.

He kissed her little hand. Lady Anne, who was in the room with her
children when these few words passed between the two in a very low tone,
thought it was a reconciliation. Ethel knew it was a renunciation on
Kew's part--she never liked him so much as at that moment. The young man
was too modest and simple to guess himself what the girl's feelings were.
Could he have told them, his fate and hers might have been changed.

"You must not allow our kind letter-writing friend," Lord Kew continued,
"to fancy we are hurt. We must walk out this afternoon, and we must
appear very good friends."

"Yes, always, Kew," said Ethel, holding out her hand again. The next
minute her cousin was at the table carving roast-fowls, and distributing
the portions to the hungry children.

The assembly of the previous evening had been one of those which the
fermier des jeux at Baden beneficently provides for the frequenters of
the place, and now was to come off a much more brilliant entertainment,
in which poor Clive, who is far into Switzerland by this time, was to
have taken a share. The Bachelors had agreed to give a ball, one of the
last entertainments of the season: a dozen or more of them had subscribed
the funds, and we may be sure Lord Kew's name was at the head of the
list, as it was of any list, of any scheme, whether of charity or fun.
The English were invited, and the Russians were invited; the Spaniards
and Italians, Poles, Prussians, and Hebrews; all the motley frequenters
of the place, and the warriors in the Duke of Baden's army. Unlimited
supper was set in the restaurant. The dancing-room glittered with extra
lights, and a profusion of cut-paper flowers decorated the festive scene.
Everybody was present, those crowds with whom our story has nothing to
do, and those two or three groups of persons who enact minor or greater
parts in it. Madame d'Ivry came in a dress of stupendous splendour, even
more brilliant than that in which Miss Ethel had figured at the last
assembly. If the Duchess intended to ecraser Miss Newcome by the superior
magnificence of her toilet, she was disappointed. Miss Newcome wore a
plain white frock on the occasion, and resumed, Madame d'Ivry said, her
role of ingenue for that night.

During the brief season in which gentlemen enjoyed the favour of Mary
Queen of Scots, that wandering sovereign led them through all the paces
and vagaries of a regular passion. As in a fair, where time is short and
pleasures numerous, the master of the theatrical booth shows you a
tragedy, a farce, and a pantomime, all in a quarter of an hour, having a
dozen new audiences to witness his entertainments in the course of the
forenoon; so this lady with her platonic lovers went through the complete
dramatic course,--tragedies of jealousy, pantomimes of rapture, and
farces of parting. There were billets on one side and the other; hints of
a fatal destiny, and a ruthless, lynx-eyed tyrant, who held a demoniac
grasp over the Duchess by means of certain secrets which he knew: there
were regrets that we had not known each other sooner: why were we brought
out of our convent and sacrificed to Monsieur le Duc? There were frolic
interchanges of fancy and poesy: pretty bouderies; sweet reconciliations;
yawns finally--and separation. Adolphe went out and Alphonse came in. It
was the new audience; for which the bell rang, the band played, and the
curtain rose; and the tragedy, comedy, and farce were repeated.

Those Greenwich performers who appear in the theatrical pieces
above-mentioned, make a great deal more noise than your stationary
tragedians; and if they have to denounce a villain, to declare a passion,
or to threaten an enemy, they roar, stamp, shake their fists, and
brandish their sabres, so that every man who sees the play has surely a
full pennyworth for his penny. Thus Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry perhaps a
little exaggerated her heroines' parts liking to strike her audiences
quickly, and also to change them often. Like good performers, she flung
herself heart and soul into the business of the stage, and was what she
acted. She was Phedre, and if in the first part of the play she was
uncommonly tender to Hippolyte, in the second she hated him furiously.
She was Medea, and if Jason was volage, woe to Creusa! Perhaps our poor
Lord Kew had taken the first character in a performance with Madame
d'Ivry; for his behaviour in which part it was difficult enough to
forgive him; but when he appeared at Baden the affianced husband of one
of the most beautiful young creatures in Europe,--when his relatives
scorned Madame d'Ivry,--no wonder she was maddened and enraged, and would
have recourse to revenge, steel, poison.

There was in the Duchess's court a young fellow from the South of France,
whose friends had sent him to faire son droit at Paris, where he had gone
through the usual course of pleasure and studies of the young inhabitants
of the Latin Quarter. He had at one time exalted republican opinions, and
had fired his shot with distinction at St. Meri. He was a poet of some
little note--a book of his lyrics, Les Rales d'un Asphyxie, having made a
sensation at the time of their appearance. He drank great quantities of
absinthe of a morning; smoked incessantly; played roulette whenever he
could get a few pieces; contributed to a small journal, and was
especially great in his hatred of l'infame Angleterre. Delenda est
Carthago was tattooed beneath his shirt-sleeves. Fifine and Clarisse,
young milliners of the students' district, had punctured this terrible
motto on his manly right arm. Le leopard, emblem of England, was his
aversion; he shook his fist at the caged monster in the Garden of Plants.
He desired to have "Here lies an enemy of England" engraved upon his
early tomb. He was skilled at billiards and dominoes, adroit in the use
of arms, of unquestionable courage and fierceness. Mr. Jones of England
was afraid of M. de Castillonnes, and cowered before his scowls and
sarcasms. Captain Blackball, the other English aide-de-camp of the
Duchesse d'Ivry, a warrior of undoubted courage, who had been "on the
ground" more than once, gave him a wide berth, and wondered what the
little beggar meant when he used to say, "Since the days of the Prince
Noir, monsieur, my family has been at feud with l'Angleterre!" His family
were grocers at Bordeaux, and his father's name was M. Cabasse. He had
married a noble in the revolutionary times; and the son at Paris himself
himself Victor Cabasse de Castillonnes; then Victor C. de Castillonnes;
then M. de Castillonnes. One of the followers of the Black Prince had
insulted a lady of the house of Castillonnes, when the English were lords
of Guienne; hence our friend's wrath against the Leopard. He had written,
and afterwards dramatised a terrific legend describing the circumstances,
and the punishment of the Briton by a knight of the Castillonnes family.
A more awful coward never existed in a melodrama than that felon English
knight. His blanche-fille, of course, died of hopeless love for the
conquering Frenchman, her father's murderer. The paper in which the
feuilleton appeared died at the sixth number of the story. The theatre of
the Boulevard refused the drama; so the author's rage against l'infame
Albion was yet unappeased. On beholding Miss Newcome, Victor had fancied
a resemblance between her and Agnes de Calverley, the blanche Miss of his
novel and drama, and cast an eye of favour upon the young creature. He
even composed verses in her honour (for I presume that the "Miss Betti"
and the Princess Crimhilde of the poems which he subsequently published,
were no other than Miss Newcome, and the Duchess, her rival). He had been
one of the lucky gentlemen who had danced with Ethel on the previous
evening. On the occasion of the ball, he came to her with a highflown
compliment, and a request to be once more allowed to waltz with her--a
request to which he expected a favourable answer, thinking, no doubt,
that his wit, his powers of conversation, and the amour qui flambait dans
son regard, had had their effect upon the charming Meess. Perhaps he had
a copy of the very verses in his breast-pocket, with which he intended to
complete his work of fascination. For her sake alone, he had been heard
to say that he would enter into a truce with England, and forget the
hereditary wrongs of his race.

But the blanche Miss on this evening declined to waltz with him. His
compliments were not of the least avail. He retired with them and his
unuttered verses in his crumpled bosom. Miss Newcome only danced in one
quadrille with Lord Kew, and left the party quite early, to the despair
of many of the bachelors, who lost the fairest ornament of their ball.

Lord Kew, however, had been seen walking with her in public, and
particularly attentive to her during her brief appearance in the
ballroom; and the old Dowager, who regularly attended all places of
amusement, and was at twenty parties and six dinners the week before she
died, thought fit to be particularly gracious to Madame d'Ivry upon this
evening, and, far from shunning the Duchesse's presence or being rude to
her, as on former occasions, was entirely smiling and good-humoured. Lady
Kew, too, thought there had been a reconciliation between Ethel and her
cousin. Lady Anne had given her mother some account of the handshaking.
Kew's walk with Ethel, the quadrille which she had danced with him alone,
induced the elder lady to believe that matters had been made up between
the young people.

So, by way of showing the Duchesse that her little shot of the morning
had failed in its effect, as Frank left the room with his cousin, Lady
Kew gaily hinted, "that the young earl was aux petits soins with Miss
Ethel; that she was sure her old friend, the Duc d'Ivry, would be glad to
hear that his godson was about to range himself. He would settle down on
his estates. He would attend to his duties as an English peer and a
country gentleman. We shall go home," says the benevolent Countess, "and
kill the veau gras, and you shall see our dear prodigal will become a
very quiet gentleman."

The Duchesse said, "my Lady Kew's plan was most edifying. She was charmed
to hear that Lady Kew loved veal; there were some who thought that meat
rather insipid." A waltzer came to claim her hand at this moment; and as
she twirled round the room upon that gentleman's arm, wafting odours as
she moved, her pink silks, pink feathers, pink ribands, making a mighty
rustling, the Countess of Kew had the satisfaction of thinking that she
had planted an arrow in that shrivelled little waist, which Count
Punter's arms embraced, and had returned the stab which Madame d'Ivry had
delivered in the morning.

Mr. Barnes, and his elect bride, had also appeared, danced, and
disappeared. Lady Kew soon followed her young ones; and the ball went on
very gaily, in spite of the absence of these respectable personages.

Being one of the managers of the entertainment, Lord Kew returned to it
after conducting Lady Anne and her daughter to their carriage, and now
danced with great vigour, and with his usual kindness, selecting those
ladies whom other waltzers rejected because they were too old, or too
plain, or too stout, or what not. But he did not ask Madame d'Ivry to
dance. He could condescend to dissemble so far as to hide the pain which
he felt; but did not care to engage in that more advanced hypocrisy of
friendship, which for her part, his old grandmother had not shown the
least scruple in assuming.

Amongst other partners, my lord selected that intrepid waltzer, the
Graefinn von Gumpelheim, who, in spite of her age, size, and large
family, never lost a chance of enjoying her favourite recreation. "Look
with what a camel my lord waltzes," said M. Victor to Madame d'Ivry,
whose slim waist he had the honour of embracing to the same music. "What
man but an Englishman would ever select such a dromedary?"

"Avant de se marier," said Madame d'Ivry, "il faut avouer que my lord se
permet d'enormes distractions."

"My lord marries himself! And when and whom?" cried the Duchesse's
partner.

"Miss Newcome. Do not you approve of his choice? I thought the eyes of
Stenio" (the Duchess called M. Victor, Stenio) "looked with some favour
upon that little person. She is handsome, even very handsome. Is it not
so often in life, Stenio? Are not youth and innocence (I give Miss Ethel
the compliment of her innocence, now surtout that the little painter is
dismissed)--are we not cast into the arms of jaded roues? Tender young
flowers, are we not torn from our convent gardens, and flung into a world
of which the air poisons our pure life, and withers the sainted buds of
hope and love and faith? Faith! The mocking world tramples on it,
n'est-ce pas? Love! The brutal world strangles the heaven-born infant at
its birth. Hope! It smiled at me in my little convent chamber, played
among the flowers which I cherished, warbled with the birds that I loved.
But it quitted me at the door of the world, Stenio. It folded its white
wings and veiled its radiant face! In return for my young love, they gave
me--sixty years, the dregs of a selfish heart, egotism cowering over its
fire, and cold for all its mantle of ermine! In place of the sweet
flowers of my young years, they gave me these, Stenio!" and she pointed
to her feathers and her artificial roses. "Oh, I should like to crush
them under my feet!" and she put out the neatest little slipper. The
Duchesse was great upon her wrongs, and paraded her blighted innocence to
every one who would feel interested by that piteous spectacle. The music
here burst out more swiftly and melodiously than before; the pretty
little feet forgot their desire to trample upon the world. She shrugged
the lean little shoulders--"Eh!" said the Queen of Scots, "dansons et
oublions;" and Stenio's arm once more surrounded her fairy waist (she
called herself a fairy; other ladies called her a skeleton); and they
whirled away in the waltz again and presently she and Stenio came bumping
up against the stalwart Lord Kew and the ponderous Madame de Gumpelheim,
as a wherry dashes against the oaken ribs of a steamer.

The little couple did not fall; they were struck on to a neighbouring
bench, luckily: but there was a laugh at the expense of Stenio and the
Queen of Scots--and Lord Kew, settling his panting partner on to a seat,
came up to make excuses for his awkwardness to the lady who had been its
victim. At the laugh produced by the catastrophe, the Duchesse's eyes
gleamed with anger.

"M. de Castillonnes," she said to her partner, "have you had any quarrel
with that Englishman?"

"With ce milor? But no," said Stenio.

"He did it on purpose. There has been no day but his family has insulted
me!" hissed out the Duchesse, and at this moment Lord Kew came up to make
his apologies. He asked a thousand pardons of Madame la Duchesse for
being so maladroit.

"Maladroit! et tres maladroit, monsieur," says Stenio, curling his
moustache; "c'est bien le mot, monsieur!

"Also, I make my excuses to Madame la Duchesse, which I hope she will
receive," said Lord Kew. The Duchesse shrugged her shoulders and sunk her
head.

"When one does not know how to dance, one ought not to dance," continued
the Duchesse's knight.

"Monsieur is very good to give me lessons in dancing," said Lord Kew.

"Any lessons which you please, milor!" cries Stenio; "and everywhere
where you will them."

Lord Kew looked at the little man with surprise. He could not understand
so much anger for so trifling an accident, which happens a dozen times in
every crowded ball. He again bowed to the Duchesse, and walked away.

"This is your Englishman--your Kew, whom you vaunt everywhere," said
Stenio to M. de Florac, who was standing by and witnessed the scene. "Is
he simply bete, or is he poltron as well? I believe him to be both."

"Silence, Victor!" cried Florac, seizing his arm, and drawing him away.
"You know me, and that I am neither one or the other. Believe my word,
that my Lord Kew wants neither courage nor wit!"

"Will you be my witness, Florac?" continues the other.

"To take him your excuses? yes. It is you who have insulted--"

"Yes, parbleu, I have insulted!" says the Gascon.

"--A man who never willingly offended soul alive. A man full of heart:
the most frank: the most loyal. I have seen him put to the proof, and
believe me he is all I say."

"Eh! so much the better for me!" cried the Southron. "I shall have the
honour of meeting a gallant man: and there will be two on the field."

"They are making a tool of you, my poor Gascon," said M. de Florac, who
saw Madame d'Ivry's eyes watching the couple. She presently took the arm
of the noble Count de Punter, and went for fresh air into the adjoining
apartment, where play was going on as usual; and Lord Kew and his friend
Lord Rooster were pacing the room apart from the gamblers.

My Lord Rooster, at something which Kew said, looked puzzled, and said,
"Pooh, stuff, damned little Frenchman! Confounded nonsense!"

"I was searching you, milor!" said Madame d'Ivry, in a most winning tone,
tripping behind him with her noiseless little feet. "Allow me a little
word. Your arm! You used to give it me once, mon filleul! I hope you
think nothing of the rudeness of M. de Castillonnes; he is a foolish
Gascon: he must have been too often to the buffet this evening."

Lord Kew said, No, indeed, he thought nothing of de Castillonnes'
rudeness.

"I am so glad! These heroes of the salle-d'armes have not the commonest
manners. These Gascons are always flamberge au vent. What would the
charming Miss Ethel say, if she heard of the dispute?"

"Indeed there is no reason why she should hear of it," said Lord Kew,
"unless some obliging friend should communicate it to her."

"Communicate it to her--the poor dear! who would be so cruel as to give
her pain?" asked the innocent Duchesse. "Why do you look at me so,
Frank?"

"Because I admire you," said her interlocutor, with a bow. "I have never
seen Madame la Duchesse to such advantage as to-day."

"You speak in enigmas! Come back with me to the ballroom. Come and dance
with me once more. You used to dance with me. Let us have one waltz more,
Kew. And then, and then, in a day or two I shall go back to Monsieur le
Duc, and tell him that his filleul is going to marry the fairest of all
Englishwomen and to turn hermit in the country, and orator in the Chamber
of Peers. You have wit! ah si--you have wit!" And she led back Lord Kew,
rather amazed himself at what he was doing, into the ballroom; so that
the good-natured people who were there, and who beheld them dancing,
could not refrain from clapping their hands at the sight of this couple.

The Duchess danced as if she was bitten by that Neapolitan spider which,
according to the legend, is such a wonderful dance-incentor. She would
have the music quicker and quicker. She sank on Kew's arm, and clung on
his support. She poured out all the light of her languishing eyes into
his face. Their glances rather confused than charmed him. But the
bystanders were pleased; they thought it so good-hearted of the Duchesse,
after the little quarrel, to make a public avowal of reconciliation!

Lord Rooster looking on, at the entrance of the dancing-room, over
Monsieur de Florac's shoulder, said, "It's all right! She's a clipper to
dance, the little Duchess."

"The viper!" said Florac, "how she writhes!"

"I suppose that business with the Frenchman is all over," says Lord
Rooster. "Confounded piece of nonsense."

"You believe it finished? We shall see!" said Florac, who perhaps knew
his fair cousin better. When the waltz was over, Kew led his partner to a
seat, and bowed to her; but though she made room for him at her side,
pointing to it, and gathering up her rustling robes so that he might sit
down, he moved away, his face full of gloom. He never wished to be near
her again. There was something more odious to him in her friendship than
her hatred. He knew hers was the hand that had dealt that stab at him and
Ethel in the morning. He went back and talked with his two friends in the
doorway. "Couch yourself, my little Kiou," said Florac. "You are all
pale. You were best in bed, mon garcon!"

"She has made me promise to take her in to supper," Kew said, with a
sigh.

"She will poison you," said the other. "Why have they abolished the roue
chez nous? My word of honour they should retabliche it for this woman."

"There is one in the next room," said Kew, with a laugh, "Come, Vicomte,
let us try our fortune," and he walked back into the play-room.

That was the last night on which Lord Kew ever played a gambling game. He
won constantly. The double zero seemed to obey him; so that the croupiers
wondered at his fortune. Florac backed it; saying with the superstition
of a gambler, "I am sure something goes to arrive to this boy." From time
to time M. de Florac went back to the dancing-room, leaving his mise
under Kew's charge. He always found his heaps increased; indeed the
worthy Vicomte wanted a turn of luck in his favour. On one occasion he
returned with a grave face, saying to Lord Rooster, "She has the other
one in hand. We are going to see." "Trente-six encor! et rouge gagne,"
cried the croupier with his nasal tone, Monsieur de Florac's pockets
overflowed with double Napoleons, and he stopped his play, luckily, for
Kew putting down his winnings, once, twice, thrice, lost them all.

When Lord Kew had left the dancing-room, Madame d'Ivry saw Stenio
following him with fierce looks, and called back that bearded bard. "You
were going to pursue M. de Kew," she said: "I knew you were. Sit down
here, sir," and she patted him down on her seat with her fan.

"Do you wish that I should call him back, madame?" said the poet, with
the deepest tragic accents.

"I can bring him when I want him, Victor," said the lady.

"Let us hope others will be equally fortunate," the Gascon said, with one
hand in his breast, the other stroking his moustache.

"Fi, monsieur, que vous sentez le tabac! je vous le defends,
entendez-vous, monsieur?"

"Pourtant, I have seen the day when Madame la Duchesse did not disdain a
cigar," said Victor. "If the odour incommodes, permit that I retire."

"And you also would quit me, Stenio? Do you think I did not mark your
eyes towards Miss Newcome? your anger when she refused you to dance? Ah!
we see all. A woman does not deceive herself, do you see? You send me
beautiful verses, Poet. You can write as well of a statue or a picture,
of a rose or a sunset, as of the heart of a woman. You were angry just
now because I danced with M. de Kew. Do you think in a woman's eyes
jealousy is unpardonable?"

"You know how to provoke it, madame," continued the tragedian.

"Monsieur," replied the lady, with dignity, "am I to render you an
account of all my actions, and ask your permission for a walk?"

"In fact, I am but the slave, madame," groaned the Gascon, "I am not the
master."

"You are a very rebellious slave, monsieur," continues the lady, with a
pretty moue, and a glance of the large eyes artfully brightened by her
rouge. "Suppose--suppose I danced with M. de Kew, not for his sake--
Heaven knows to dance with him is not a pleasure--but for yours. Suppose
I do not want a foolish quarrel to proceed. Suppose I know that he is ni
sot ni poltron as you pretend. I overheard you, sir, talking with one of
the basest of men, my good cousin, M. de Florac: but it is not of him I
speak. Suppose I know the Comte de Kew to be a man, cold and insolent,
ill-bred, and grossier, as the men of his nation are--but one who lacks
no courage--one who is terrible when roused; might I have no occasion to
fear, not for him, but----"

"But for me! Ah, Marie! Ah, madame! Believe you that a man of my blood
will yield a foot to any Englishman? Do you know the story of my race? do
you know that since my childhood I have vowed hatred to that nation?
Tenez, madame, this M. Jones who frequents your salon, it was but respect
for you that has enabled me to keep my patience with this stupid
islander. This Captain Blackball, whom you distinguish, who certainly
shoots well, who mounts well to horse, I have always thought his manners
were those of the marker of a billiard. But I respect him because he has
made war with Don Carlos against the English. But this young M. de Kew,
his laugh crisps me the nerves; his insolent air makes me bound; in
beholding him I said to myself, I hate you; think whether I love him
better after having seen him as I did but now, madame!" Also, but this
Victor did not say, he thought Kew had laughed at him at the beginning of
the evening, when the blanche Miss had refused to dance with him.

"Ah, Victor, it is not him, but you that I would save," said the Duchess.
And the people round about, and the Duchess herself, afterwards said,
yes, certainly, she had a good heart. She entreated Lord Kew; she
implored M. Victor; she did everything in her power to appease the
quarrel between him and the Frenchman.

After the ball came the supper, which was laid at separate little tables,
where parties of half a dozen enjoyed themselves. Lord Kew was of the
Duchess's party, where our Gascon friend had not a seat. But being one of
the managers of the entertainment, his lordship went about from table to
table, seeing that the guests at each lacked nothing. He supposed too
that the dispute with the Gascon had possibly come to an end; at any
rate, disagreeable as the other's speech had been, he had resolved to put
up with it, not having the least inclination to drink the Frenchman's
blood, or to part with his own on so absurd a quarrel. He asked people in
his good-natured way to drink wine with him; and catching M. Victor's eye
scowling at him from a distant table, he sent a waiter with a
champagne-bottle to his late opponent, and lifted his glass as a friendly
challenge. The waiter carried the message to M. Victor, who, when he
heard it, turned up his glass, and folded his arms in a stately manner.
"M. de Castillonnes dit qu'il refuse, milor," said the waiter, rather
scared. "He charged me to bring that message to milor." Florac ran across
to the angry Gascon. It was not while at Madame d'Ivry's table that Lord
Kew sent his challenge and received his reply; his duties as steward had
carried him away from that pretty early.

Meanwhile the glimmering dawn peered into the windows of the
refreshment-room, and behold, the sun broke in and scared all the
revellers. The ladies scurried away like so many ghosts at cock-crow,
some of them not caring to face that detective luminary. Cigars had been
lighted ere this; the men remained smoking them with those sleepless
German waiters still bringing fresh supplies of drink. Lord Kew gave the
Duchesse d'Ivry his arm, and was leading her out; M. de Castillonnes
stood scowling directly in their way, upon which, with rather an abrupt
turn of the shoulder, and a "Pardon, monsieur," Lord Kew pushed by, and
conducted the Duchesse to her carriage. She did not in the least see what
had happened between the two gentlemen in the passage; she ogled, and
nodded, and kissed her hands quite affectionately to Kew as the fly drove
away.

Florac in the meanwhile had seized his compatriot, who had drunk
champagne copiously with others, if not with Kew, and was in vain
endeavouring to make him hear reason. The Gascon was furious; he vowed
that Lord Kew had struck him. "By the tomb of my mother," he bellowed, "I
swear I will have his blood!" Lord Rooster was bawling out, "D--- him,
carry him to bed, and shut him up;" which remarks Victor did not
understand, or two victims would doubtless have been sacrificed on his
mamma's mausoleum.

When Kew came back (as he was only too sure to do), the little Gascon
rushed forward with a glove in his hand, and having an audience of
smokers round about him, made a furious speech about England, leopards,
cowardice, insolent islanders, and Napoleon at St. Helena; and demanded
reason for Kew's conduct during the night. As he spoke, he advanced
towards Lord Kew, glove in hand, and lifted it as if he was actually
going to strike.

"There is no need for further words," said Lord Kew, taking his cigar out
of his mouth. "If you don't drop that glove, upon my word I will pitch
you out of the window. Ha!--Pick the man up, somebody. You'll bear
witness, gentlemen, I couldn't help myself. If he wants me in the
morning, he knows where to find me."

"I declare that my Lord Kew has acted with great forbearance, and under
the most brutal provocation--the most brutal provocation, entendez-vows,
M. Cabasse?" cried out M. de Florac, rushing forward to the Gascon, who
had now risen; "monsieur's conduct has been unworthy of a Frenchman and a
gallant homme."

"D--- it, he has had it on his nob, though," said Lord Viscount Rooster,
laconically.

"Ah, Roosterre! ceci n'est pas pour rire," Florac cried sadly, as they
both walked away with Lord Kew; "I wish that first blood was all that was
to be shed in this quarrel"

"Gaw! how he did go down!" cried Rooster, convulsed with laughter.

"I am very sorry for it," said Kew, quite seriously; "I couldn't help it.
God forgive me." And he hung down his head. He thought of the past, and
its levities, and punishment coming after him pede claudo. It was with
all his heart the contrite young man said "God forgive me." He would take
what was to follow as the penalty of what had gone before.

"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat, mon pauvre Kiou," said his French
friend. And Lord Rooster, whose classical education had been much
neglected, turned round and said, "Hullo, mate, what ship's that?"

Viscount Rooster had not been two hours in bed, when the Count de Punter
(formerly of the Black Jaegers) waited upon him upon the part of M. de
Castillonnes and the Earl of Kew, who had referred him to the Viscount to
arrange matters for a meeting between them. As the meeting must take
place out of the Baden territory, and they ought to move before the
police prevented them, the Count proposed that they should at once make
for France; where, as it was an affair of honneur, they would assuredly
be let to enter without passports.

Lady Anne and Lady Kew heard that the gentlemen after the ball had all
gone out on a hunting-party, and were not alarmed for four-and-twenty
hours at least. On the next day none of them returned; and on the day
after, the family heard that Lord Kew had met with rather a dangerous
accident; but all the town knew he had been shot by M. de Castillonnes on
one of the islands on the Rhine, opposite Kehl, where he was now lying.




CHAPTER XXXV

Across the Alps


Our discursive muse must now take her place in the little britzska in
which Clive Newcome and his companions are travelling, and cross the Alps
in that vehicle, beholding the snows on St. Gothard, and the beautiful
region through which the Ticino rushes on its way to the Lombard lakes,
and the corn-covered great plains of the Milanese; and that royal city,
with the cathedral for its glittering crown, only less magnificent than
the imperial dome of Rome. I have some long letters from Mr. Clive,
written during this youthful tour, every step of which, from the
departure at Baden, to the gate of Milan, he describes as beautiful; and
doubtless, the delightful scenes through which the young man went, had
their effect in soothing any private annoyances with which his journey
commenced. The aspect of nature, in that fortunate route which he took,
is so noble and cheering, that our private affairs and troubles shrink
away abashed before that serene splendour. O sweet peaceful scene of
azure lake, and snow-crowned mountain, so wonderfully lovely is your
aspect, that it seems like heaven almost, and as if grief and care could
not enter it! What young Clive's private cares were I knew not as yet in
those days; and he kept them out of his letters; it was only in the
intimacy of future life that some of these pains were revealed to me.

Some three months after taking leave of Miss Ethel, our young gentleman
found himself at Rome, with his friend Ridley still for a companion. Many
of us, young or middle-aged, have felt that delightful shock which the
first sight of the great city inspires. There is one other place of which
the view strikes one with an emotion even greater than that with which we
look at Rome, where Augustus was reigning when He saw the day, whose
birthplace is separated but by a hill or two from the awful gates of
Jerusalem. Who that has beheld both can forget that first aspect of
either? At the end of years the emotion occasioned by the sight still
thrills in your memory, and it smites you as at the moment when you first
viewed it.

The business of the present novel, however, lies neither with priest nor
pagan, but with Mr. Clive Newcome, and his affairs and his companions at
this period of his life. Nor, if the gracious reader expects to hear of
cardinals in scarlet, and noble Roman princes and princesses, will he
find such in this history. The only noble Roman into whose mansion our
friend got admission was the Prince Polonia, whose footmen wear the
liveries of the English royal family, who gives gentlemen and even
painters cash upon good letters of credit; and, once or twice in a
season, opens his transtiberine palace and treats his customers to a
ball. Our friend Clive used jocularly to say, he believed there were no
Romans. There were priests in portentous hats; there were friars with
shaven crowns; there were the sham peasantry, who dressed themselves out
in masquerade costumes, with bagpipe and goatskin, with crossed leggings
and scarlet petticoats, who let themselves out to artists at so many
pauls per sitting; but he never passed a Roman's door except to buy a
cigar or to purchase a handkerchief. Thither, as elsewhere, we carry our
insular habits with us. We have a little England at Paris, a little
England at Munich, Dresden, everywhere. Our friend is an Englishman, and
did at Rome as the English do.

There was the polite English society, the society that flocks to see the
Colosseum lighted up with blue fire, that flocks to the Vatican to behold
the statues by torchlight, that hustles into the churches on public
festivals in black veils and deputy-lieutenants' uniforms, and stares,
and talks, and uses opera-glasses while the pontiffs of the Roman Church
are performing its ancient rites, and the crowds of faithful are kneeling
round the altars; the society which gives its balls and dinners, has its
scandal and bickerings, its aristocrats, parvenus, toadies imported from
Belgravia; has its club, its hunt, and its Hyde Park on the Pincio: and
there is the other little English world, the broad-hatted, long-bearded,
velvet-jacketed, jovial colony of the artists, who have their own feasts,
haunts, and amusements by the side of their aristocratic compatriots,
with whom but few of them have the honour to mingle.

J. J. and Clive engaged pleasant lofty apartments in the Via Gregoriana.
Generations of painters had occupied these chambers and gone their way.
The windows of their painting-room looked into a quaint old garden, where
there were ancient statues of the Imperial time, a babbling fountain and
noble orange-trees with broad clustering leaves and golden balls of
fruit, glorious to look upon. Their walks abroad were endlessly pleasant
and delightful. In every street there were scores of pictures of the
graceful characteristic Italian life, which our painters seem one and all
to reject, preferring to depict their quack brigands, contadini,
pifferari, and the like, because Thompson painted them before Jones, and
Jones before Thompson, and so on, backwards into time. There were the
children at play, the women huddled round the steps of the open doorways,
in the kindly Roman winter; grim, portentous old hags, such as Michael
Angelo painted, draped in majestic raggery; mothers and swarming bambins;
slouching countrymen, dark of beard and noble of countenance, posed in
superb attitudes, lazy, tattered, and majestic. There came the red
troops, the black troops, the blue troops of the army of priests; the
snuffy regiments of Capuchins, grave and grotesque; the trim French
abbes; my lord the bishop, with his footman (those wonderful footmen); my
lord the cardinal, in his ramshackle coach and his two, nay three,
footmen behind him;--flunkeys, that look as if they had been dressed by
the costumier of a British pantomime; coach with prodigious emblazonments
of hats and coats-of-arms, that seems as if it came out of the pantomime
too, and was about to turn into something else. So it is, that what is
grand to some persons' eyes appears grotesque to others; and for certain
sceptical persons, that step, which we have heard of, between the sublime
and the ridiculous, is not visible.

"I wish it were not so," writes Clive, in one of the letters wherein he
used to pour his full heart out in those days. "I see these people at
their devotions, and envy them their rapture. A friend, who belongs to
the old religion, took me, last week, into a church where the Virgin
lately appeared in person to a Jewish gentleman, flashed down upon him
from heaven in light and splendour celestial, and, of course, straightway
converted him. My friend bade me look at the picture, and, kneeling down
beside me, I know prayed with all his honest heart that the truth might
shine down upon me too; but I saw no glimpse of heaven at all. I saw but
a poor picture, an altar with blinking candles, a church hung with tawdry
strips of red and white calico. The good, kind W---- went away, humbly
saying 'that such might have happened again if heaven so willed it.' I
could not but feel a kindness and admiration for the good man. I know his
works are made to square with his faith, that he dines on a crust, lives
as chaste as a hermit, and gives his all to the poor.

"Our friend J. J., very different to myself in so many respects, so
superior in all, is immensely touched by these ceremonies. They seem to
answer to some spiritual want of his nature, and he comes away satisfied
as from a feast, where I have only found vacancy. Of course our first
pilgrimage was to St. Peter's. What a walk! Under what noble shadows does
one pass; how great and liberal the houses are, with generous casements
and courts, and great grey portals which giants might get through and
keep their turbans on. Why, the houses are twice as tall as Lamb Court
itself; and over them hangs a noble dinge, a venerable mouldy splendour.
Over the solemn portals are ancient mystic escutcheons--vast shields of
princes and cardinals, such as Ariosto's knights might take down; and
every figure about them is a picture by himself. At every turn there is a
temple: in every court a brawling fountain. Besides the people of the
streets and houses, and the army of priests black and brown, there's a
great silent population of marble. There are battered gods tumbled out of
Olympus and broken in the fall, and set up under niches and over
fountains; there are senators namelessly, noselessly, noiselessly seated
under archways, or lurking in courts and gardens. And then, besides these
defunct ones, of whom these old figures may be said to be the corpses,
there is the reigning family, a countless carved hierarchy of angels,
saints, confessors of the latter dynasty which has conquered the court of
Jove. I say, Pen, I wish Warrington would write the history of the Last
of the Pagans. Did you never have a sympathy for them as the monks came
rushing into their temples, kicking down their poor altars, smashing the
fair calm faces of their gods, and sending their vestals a-flying? They
are always preaching here about the persecution of the Christians. Are
not the churches full of martyrs with choppers in their meek heads;
virgins on gridirons; riddled St. Sebastians, and the like? But have they
never persecuted in their turn? O me! You and I know better, who were
bred up near to the pens of Smithfield, where Protestants and Catholics
have taken their turn to be roasted.

"You pass through an avenue of angels and saints on the bridge across
Tiber, all in action; their great wings seem clanking, their marble
garments clapping; St. Michael, descending upon the Fiend, has been
caught and bronzified just as he lighted on the Castle of St. Angelo: his
enemy doubtless fell crushing through the roof and so downwards. He is as
natural as blank verse--that bronze angel-set, rhythmic, grandiose.
You'll see, some day or other, he's a great sonnet, sir, I'm sure of
that. Milton wrote in bronze; I am sure Virgil polished off his Georgics
in marble--sweet calm shapes! exquisite harmonies of line! As for the
Aeneid; that, sir, I consider to be so many bas-reliefs, mural ornaments
which affect me not much.

"I think I have lost sight of St. Peter's, haven't I? Yet it is big
enough. How it makes your heart beat when you first see it! Ours did as
we came in at night from Civita Vecchia, and saw a great ghostly darkling
dome rising solemnly up into the grey night, and keeping us company ever
so long as we drove, as if it had been an orb fallen out of heaven with
its light put out. As you look at it from the Pincio, and the sun sets
behind it, surely that aspect of earth and sky is one of the grandest in
the world. I don't like to say that the facade of the church is ugly and
obtrusive. As long as the dome overawes, that facade is supportable. You
advance towards it--through, oh, such a noble court! with fountains
flashing up to meet the sunbeams; and right and left of you two sweeping
half-crescents of great columns; but you pass by the courtiers and up to
the steps of the throne, and the dome seems to disappear behind it. It is
as if the throne was upset, and the king had toppled over.

"There must be moments, in Rome especially, when every man of friendly
heart, who writes himself English and Protestant, must feel a pang at
thinking that he and his countrymen are insulated from European
Christendom. An ocean separates us. From one shore or the other one can
see the neighbour cliffs on clear days: one must wish sometimes that
there were no stormy gulf between us; and from Canterbury to Rome a
pilgrim could pass, and not drown beyond Dover. Of the beautiful parts of
the great Mother Church I believe among us many people have no idea; we
think of lazy friars, of pining cloistered virgins, of ignorant peasants
worshipping wood and stones, bought and sold indulgences, absolutions,
and the like commonplaces of Protestant satire. Lo! yonder inscription,
which blazes round the dome of the temple, so great and glorious it looks
like heaven almost, and as if the words were written in stars, it
proclaims to all the world, this is that Peter, and on this rock the
Church shall be built, against which Hell shall not prevail. Under the
bronze canopy his throne is lit with lights that have been burning before
it for ages. Round this stupendous chamber are ranged the grandees of his
court. Faith seems to be realised in their marble figures. Some of them
were alive but yesterday; others, to be as blessed as they, walk the
world even now doubtless; and the commissioners of heaven, here holding
their court a hundred years hence, shall authoritatively announce their
beatification. The signs of their power shall not be wanting. They heal
the sick, open the eyes of the blind, cause the lame to walk to-day as
they did eighteen centuries ago. Are there not crowds ready to bear
witness to their wonders? Isn't there a tribunal appointed to try their
claims; advocates to plead for and against; prelates and clergy and
multitudes of faithful to back and believe them? Thus you shall kiss the
hand of a priest to-day, who has given his to a friar whose bones are
already beginning to work miracles, who has been the disciple of another
whom the Church has just proclaimed a saint,--hand in hand they hold by
one another till the line is lost up in heaven. Come, friend, let us
acknowledge this, and go and kiss the toe of St. Peter. Alas! there's the
Channel always between us; and we no more believe in the miracles of St.
Thomas of Canterbury, than that the bones of His Grace John Bird, who
sits in St. Thomas's chair presently, will work wondrous cures in the
year 2000: that his statue will speak, or his portrait by Sir Thomas
Lawrence will wink.

"So, you see, at those grand ceremonies which the Roman Church exhibits
at Christmas, I looked on as a Protestant. Holy Father on his throne or
in his palanquin, cardinals with their tails and their train-bearers,
mitred bishops and abbots, regiments of friars and clergy, relics exposed
for adoration, columns draped, altars illuminated, incense smoking,
organs pealing, and boxes of piping soprani, Swiss guards with slashed
breeches and fringed halberts;--between us and all this splendour of
old-world ceremony, there's an ocean flowing: and yonder old statue of
Peter might have been Jupiter again, surrounded by a procession of
flamens and augurs, and Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, to inspect the
sacrifices,--and my feelings at the spectacle had been, doubtless, pretty
much the same.

"Shall I utter any more heresies? I am an unbeliever in Raphael's
'Transfiguration'--the scream of that devil-possessed boy, in the lower
part of the figure of eight (a stolen boy too), jars the whole music of
the composition. On Michael Angelo's great wall, the grotesque and
terrible are not out of place. What an awful achievement! Fancy the state
of mind of the man who worked it--as alone, day after day, he devised and
drew those dreadful figures! Suppose in the days of the Olympian dynasty,
the subdued Titan rebels had been set to ornament a palace for Jove, they
would have brought in some such tremendous work: or suppose that Michael
descended to the Shades, and brought up this picture out of the halls of
Limbo. I like a thousand and a thousand times better to think of
Raphael's loving spirit. As he looked at women and children, his
beautiful face must have shone like sunshine: his kind hand must have
caressed the sweet figures as he formed them. If I protest against the
'Transfiguration,' and refuse to worship at that altar before which so
many generations have knelt, there are hundreds of others which I salute
thankfully. It is not so much in the set harangues (to take another
metaphor), as in the daily tones and talk that his voice is so delicious.
Sweet poetry, and music, and tender hymns drop from him: he lifts his
pencil, and something gracious falls from it on the paper. How noble his
mind must have been! it seems but to receive, and his eye seems only to
rest on, what is great, and generous, and lovely. You walk through
crowded galleries, where are pictures ever so large and pretentious; and
come upon a grey paper, or a little fresco, bearing his mark-and over all
the brawl and the throng recognise his sweet presence. 'I would like to
have you been Giulio Romano,' J. J. says (who does not care for Giulio's
pictures), 'because then I would have been Raphael's favourite pupil.' We
agreed that we would rather have seen him and William Shakspeare, than
all the men we ever read of. Fancy poisoning a fellow out of envy--as
Spagnoletto did! There are some men whose admiration takes that bilious
shape. There's a fellow in our mess at the Lepre, a clever enough fellow
too--and not a bad fellow to the poor. He was a Gandishite. He is a genre
and portrait painter, by the name of Haggard. He hates J. J. because Lord
Fareham, who is here, has given J. J. an order; and he hates me, because
I wear a clean shirt, and ride a cock-horse.

"I wish you could come to our mess at the Lepre. It's such a dinner: such
a tablecloth: such a waiter: such a company! Every man has a beard and a
sombrero: and you would fancy we were a band of brigands. We are regaled
with woodcocks, snipes, wild swans, ducks, robins, and owls and oionoisi
te pasi for dinner; and with three pauls' worth of wines and victuals the
hungriest has enough, even Claypole the sculptor. Did you ever know him?
He used to come to the Haunt. He looks like the Saracen's head with his
beard now. There is a French table still more hairy than ours, a German
table, an American table. After dinner we go and have coffee and
mezzo-caldo at the Cafe Greco over the way. Mezzo-caldo is not a bad
drink--a little rum--a slice of fresh citron--lots of pounded sugar, and
boiling water for the rest. Here in various parts of the cavern (it is a
vaulted low place) the various nations have their assigned quarters, and
we drink our coffee and strong waters, and abuse Guido, or Rubens, or
Bernini selon les gouts, and blow such a cloud of smoke as would make
Warrington's lungs dilate with pleasure. We get very good cigars for a
bajoccho and half--that is very good for us, cheap tobaccanalians; and
capital when you have got no others. M'Collop is here: he made a great
figure at a cardinal's reception in the tartan of the M'Collop. He is
splendid at the tomb of the Stuarts, and wanted to cleave Haggard down to
the chine with his claymore for saying that Charles Edward was often
drunk.

"Some of us have our breakfasts at the Cafe Greco at dawn. The birds are
very early birds here; and you'll see the great sculptors--the old Dons,
you know, who look down on us young fellows--at their coffee here when it
is yet twilight. As I am a swell, and have a servant, J. J. and I
breakfast at our lodgings. I wish you could see Terribile our attendant,
and Ottavia our old woman! You will see both of them on the canvas one
day. When he hasn't blacked our boots and has got our breakfast,
Terribile the valet-de-chambre becomes Terribile the model. He has
figured on a hundred canvases ere this, and almost ever since he was
born. All his family were models. His mother having been a Venus, is now
a Witch of Endor. His father is in the patriarchal line: he has himself
done the cherubs, the shepherd-boys, and now is a grown man, and ready as
a warrior, a pifferaro, a capuchin, or what you will.

"After the coffee and the Cafe Greco we all go to the Life Academy. After
the Life Academy, those who belong to the world dress and go out to
tea-parties just as if we were in London. Those who are not in society
have plenty of fun of their own--and better fun than the tea-party fun
too. Jack Screwby has a night once a week, sardines and ham for supper,
and a cask of Marsala in the corner. Your humble servant entertains on
Thursdays: which is Lady Fitch's night too; and I flatter myself some of
the London dandies who are passing the winter here, prefer the cigars and
humble liquors which we dispense, to tea and Miss Fitch's performance on
the pianoforte.

"What is that I read in Galignani about Lord K-- and an affair of honour
at Baden? Is it my dear kind jolly Kew with whom some one has quarrelled?
I know those who will be even more grieved than I am, should anything
happen to the best of good fellows. A great friend of Lord Kew's, Jack
Belsize commonly called, came with us from Baden through Switzerland, and
we left him at Milan. I see by the paper that his elder brother is dead
and so poor Jack will be a great man some day. I wish the chance had
happened sooner if it was to befall at all. So my amiable cousin, Barnes
Newcome Newcome, Esq., has married my Lady Clara Pulleyn; I wish her joy
of her bridegroom. All I have heard of that family is from the newspaper.
If you meet them, tell me anything about them.--We had a very pleasant
time altogether at Baden. I suppose the accident to Kew will put off his
marriage with Miss Newcome. They have been engaged, you know, ever so
long.--And--do, do write to me and tell me something about London. It's
best I should--should stay here and work this winter and the next. J. J.
has done a famous picture, and if I send a couple home, you'll give them
a notice in the Pall Mall Gazette--won't you?--for the sake of old times
and yours affectionately,                    Clive Newcome."




CHAPTER XXXVI

In which M. de Florac is promoted


However much Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry was disposed to admire and praise
her own conduct in the affair which ended so unfortunately for poor Lord
Kew, between whom and the Gascon her grace vowed that she had done
everything in her power to prevent a battle, the old Duke, her lord, was,
it appeared, by no means delighted with his wife's behaviour, nay,
visited her with his very sternest displeasure. Miss O'Grady, the
Duchesse's companion, and her little girl's instructress, at this time
resigned her functions in the Ivry family; it is possible that in the
recriminations consequent upon the governess's dismissal, the Miss
Irlandaise, in whom the family had put so much confidence, divulged
stories unfavourable to her patroness, and caused the indignation of the
Duke, her husband. Between Florac and the Duchesse there was also open
war and rupture. He had been one of Kew's seconds in the latter's affair
with the Vicomte's countryman. He had even cried out for fresh pistols,
and proposed to engage Castillonnes, when his gallant principal fell; and
though a second duel was luckily averted as murderous and needless, M. de
Florac never hesitated afterwards, and in all companies, to denounce with
the utmost virulence the instigator and the champion of the odious
original quarrel. He vowed that the Duchesse had shot le petit Kiou as
effectually as if she had herself fired the pistol at his breast.
Murderer, poisoner, Brinvilliers, a hundred more such epithets he used
against his kinswoman, regretting that the good old times were past--that
there was no Chambre Ardente to try her, and no rack and wheel to give
her her due.

The biographer of the Newcomes has no need (although he possesses the
fullest information) to touch upon the Duchesse's doings, further than as
they relate to that most respectable English family. When the Duke took
his wife into the country, Florac never hesitated to say that to live
with her was dangerous for the old man, and to cry out to his friends of
the Boulevards or the Jockey Club, "Ma parole d'honneur, cette femme le
tuera!"

Do you know, O gentle and unsuspicious readers, or have you ever reckoned
as you have made your calculation of society, how many most respectable
husbands help to kill their wives--how many respectable wives aid in
sending their husbands to Hades? The wife of a chimney-sweep or a
journeyman butcher comes shuddering before a police magistrate--her head
bound up--her body scarred and bleeding with wounds, which the drunken
ruffian, her lord, has administered: a poor shopkeeper or mechanic is
driven out of his home by the furious ill-temper of the shrill virago his
wife--takes to the public-house--to evil courses--to neglecting his
business--to the gin-bottle--to delirium tremens--to perdition. Bow
Street, and policemen, and the newspaper reporters, have cognisance and a
certain jurisdiction over these vulgar matrimonial crimes; but in politer
company how many murderous assaults are there by husband or wife--where
the woman is not felled by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks
under blows quite as cruel and effectual; where, with old wounds yet
unhealed, which she strives to hide under a smiling face from the world,
she has to bear up and to be stricken down and to rise to her feet again,
under fresh daily strokes of torture; where the husband, fond and
faithful, has to suffer slights, coldness, insult, desertion, his
children sneered away from their love for him, his friends driven from
his door by jealousy, his happiness strangled, his whole life embittered,
poisoned, destroyed! If you were acquainted with the history of every
family in your street, don't you know that in two or three of the houses
there such tragedies have been playing? Is not the young mistress of
Number 20 already pining at her husband's desertion? The kind master of
Number 30 racking his fevered brains and toiling through sleepless nights
to pay for the jewels on his wife's neck, and the carriage out of which
she ogles Lothario in the Park? The fate under which man or woman falls,
blow of brutal tyranny, heartless desertion, weight of domestic care too
heavy to bear--are not blows such as these constantly striking people
down? In this long parenthesis we are wandering ever so far away from M.
le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, and from the vivacious Florac's
statement regarding his kinsman, that that woman will kill him.

There is this at least to be said, that if the Duc d'Ivry did die he was
a very old gentleman, and had been a great viveur for at least threescore
years of his life. As Prince de Moncontour in his father's time before
the Revolution, during the Emigration, even after the Restoration, M. le
Duc had vecu with an extraordinary vitality. He had gone through good and
bad fortune: extreme poverty, display and splendour, affairs of love--
affairs of honour,--and of one disease or another a man must die at the
end. After the Baden business--and he had dragged off his wife to
Champagne--the Duke became greatly broken; he brought his little daughter
to a convent at Paris, putting the child under the special guardianship
of Madame de Florac, with whom and with whose family in these latter days
the old chief of the house effected a complete reconciliation. The Duke
was now for ever coming to Madame de Florac; he poured all his wrongs and
griefs into her ear with garrulous senile eagerness. "That little
Duchesse is a monstre, a femme d'Eugene Sue," the Vicomte used to say;
"the poor old Duke he cry--ma parole d'honneur, he cry and I cry too when
he comes to recount to my poor mother, whose sainted heart is the asile
of all griefs, a real Hotel Dieu, my word the most sacred, with beds for
all the afflicted, with sweet words, like Sisters of Charity, to minister
to them:--I cry, mon bon Pendennis, when this vieillard tells his stories
about his wife and tears his white hairs to the feet of my mother."

When the little Antoinette was separated by her father from her mother,
the Duchesse d'Ivry, it might have been expected that that poetess would
have dashed off a few more cris de l'ame, shrieking according to her
wont, and baring and beating that shrivelled maternal bosom of hers, from
which her child had been just torn. The child skipped and laughed to go
away to the convent. It was only when she left Madame de Florac that she
used to cry; and when urged by that good lady to exhibit a little
decorous sentiment in writing to her mamma, Antoinette would ask, in her
artless way, "Pourquoi? Mamma used never to speak to me except sometimes
before the world, before ladies, that understands itself. When her
gentleman came, she put me to the door; then she gave me tapes, o oui,
she gave me tapes! I cry no more; she has so much made to cry M. le Duc,
that it is quite enough of one in a family." So Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry
did not weep, even in print, for the loss of her pretty little
Antoinette; besides, she was engaged, at that time, by other sentimental
occupations. A young grazier of their neighbouring town, of an aspiring
mind and remarkable poetic talents, engrossed the Duchesse's platonic
affections at this juncture. When he had sold his beasts at market, he
would ride over and read Rousseau and Schiller with Madame la Duchesse,
who formed him. His pretty young wife was rendered miserable by all these
readings, but what could the poor little ignorant countrywoman know of
Platonism? Faugh! there is more than one woman we see in society smiling
about from house to house, pleasant and sentimental and formosa superne
enough; but I fancy a fish's tail is flapping under her fine flounces,
and a forked fin at the end of it!

Finer flounces, finer bonnets, more lovely wreaths, more beautiful lace,
smarter carriages, bigger white bows, larger footmen, were not seen,
during all the season of 18--, than appeared round about St. George's,
Hanover Square, in the beautiful month of June succeeding that September
when so many of our friends the Newcomes were assembled at Baden. Those
flaunting carriages, powdered and favoured footmen, were in attendance
upon members of the Newcome family and their connexions, who were
celebrating what is called a marriage in high life in the temple within.
Shall we set down a catalogue of the dukes, marquises, earls, who were
present; cousins of the lovely bride? Are they not already in the Morning
Herald and Court Journal, as well as in the Newcome Chronicle and
Independent, and the Dorking Intelligencer and Chanticleer Weekly
Gazette? There they are, all printed at full length sure enough; the name
of the bride, Lady Clara Pulleyn, the lovely and accomplished daughter of
the Earl and Countess of Dorking; of the beautiful bridesmaids, the
Ladies Henrietta, Belinda, Adelaide Pulleyn, Miss Newcome, Miss Alice
Newcome, Miss Maude Newcome, Miss Anna Maria (Hobson) Newcome; and all
the other persons engaged in the ceremony. It was performed by the Right
Honourable Viscount Gallowglass, Bishop of Ballyshannon, brother-in-law
to the bride, assisted by the Honourable and Reverend Hercules O'Grady,
his lordship's chaplain, and the Reverend John Bulders, Rector of St.
Mary's, Newcome. Then follow the names of all the nobility who were
present, and of the noble and distinguished personages who signed the
book. Then comes an account of the principal dresses, chefs-d'oeuvre of
Madame Crinoline; of the bride's coronal of brilliants, supplied by
Messrs. Morr and Stortimer;--of the veil of priceless Chantilly lace, the
gift of the Dowager Countess of Kew. Then there is a description of the
wedding-breakfast at the house of the bride's noble parents, and of the
cake, decorated by Messrs. Gunter with the most delicious taste and the
sweetest hymeneal allusions.

No mention was made by the fashionable chronicler of a slight disturbance
which occurred at St. George's, and which was indeed out of the province
of such a genteel purveyor of news. Before the marriage service began, a
woman of vulgar appearance and disorderly aspect, accompanied by two
scared children who took no part in the disorder occasioned by their
mother's proceeding, except by their tears and outcries to augment the
disquiet, made her appearance in one of the pews of the church, was noted
there by persons in the vestry, was requested to retire by a beadle, and
was finally induced to quit the sacred precincts of the building by the
very strongest persuasion of a couple of policemen; X and Y laughed at
one another, and nodded their heads knowingly as the poor wretch with her
whimpering boys was led away. They understood very well who the personage
was who had come to disturb the matrimonial ceremony; it did not commence
until Mrs. De Lacy (as this lady chose to be called) had quitted this
temple of Hymen. She slunk through the throng of emblazoned carriages,
and the press of footmen arrayed as splendidly as Solomon in his glory.
John jeered at Thomas, William turned his powdered head, and signalled
Jeames, who answered with a corresponding grin, as the woman with sobs,
and wild imprecations, and frantic appeals, made her way through the
splendid crowd escorted by her aides-de-camp in blue. I dare say her
little history was discussed at many a dinner-table that day in the
basement story of several fashionable houses. I know that at clubs in St.
James's the facetious little anecdote was narrated. A young fellow came
to Bays's after the marriage breakfast and mentioned the circumstance
with funny comments; although the Morning Post, in describing this affair
in high life, naturally omitted all mention of such low people as Mrs. De
Lacy and her children.

Those people who knew the noble families whose union had been celebrated
by such a profusion of grandees, fine equipages, and footmen, brass
bands, brilliant toilets, and wedding favours, asked how it was that Lord
Kew did not assist at Barnes Newcome's marriage; other persons in society
inquired waggishly why Jack Belsize was not present to give Lady Clara
away.

As for Jack Belsize, his clubs had not been ornamented by his presence
for a year past. It was said he had broken the bank at Hombourg last
autumn; had been heard of during the winter at Milan, Venice, and Vienna;
and when, a few months after the marriage of Barnes Newcome and Lady
Clara, Jack's elder brother died, and he himself became the next in
succession to the title and estates of Highgate, many folks said it was a
pity little Barney's marriage had taken place so soon. Lord Kew was not
present, because Kew was still abroad; he had had a gambling duel with a
Frenchman, and a narrow squeak for his life. He had turned Roman
Catholic, some men said; others vowed that he had joined the Methodist
persuasion. At all events Kew had given up his wild courses, broken with
the turf, and sold his stud off; he was delicate yet, and his mother was
taking care of him; between whom and the old dowager of Kew, who had made
up Barney's marriage, as everybody knew, there was no love lost.

Then who was the Prince de Moncontour, who, with his princess, figured at
this noble marriage? There was a Moncontour, the Duc d'Ivry's son, but he
died at Paris before the revolution of '30: one or two of the oldsters at
Bays's, Major Pendennis, General Tufto, old Cackleby--the old fogies, in
a word--remembered the Duke of Ivry when he was here during the
Emigration, and when he was called Prince de Moncontour, the title of the
eldest son of the family. Ivry was dead, having buried his son before
him, and having left only a daughter by that young woman whom he married,
and who led him such a life. Who was this present Moncontour?

He was a gentleman to whom the reader has already been presented, though
when we lately saw him at Baden he did not enjoy so magnificent a title.
Early in the year of Barnes Newcome's marriage, there came to England,
and to our modest apartment in the Temple, a gentleman bringing a letter
of recommendation from our dear young Clive, who said that the bearer,
the Vicomte de Florac, was a great friend of his, and of the Colonel's,
who had known his family from boyhood. A friend of our Clive and our
Colonel was sure of a welcome in Lamb Court; we gave him the hand of
hospitality, the best cigar in the box, the easy-chair with only one
broken leg; the dinner in chambers and at the club, the banquet at
Greenwich (where, ma foi, the little whites baits elicited his profound
satisfaction); in a word, did our best to honour that bill which our
young Clive had drawn upon us. We considered the young one in the light
of a nephew of our own; we took a pride in him, and were fond of him; and
as for the Colonel, did we not love and honour him; would we not do our
utmost in behalf of any stranger who came recommended to us by Thomas
Newcome's good word? So Florac was straightway admitted to our
companionship. We showed him the town, and some of the modest pleasures
thereof; we introduced him to the Haunt, and astonished him by the
company which he met there. Between Brent's "Deserter" and Mark Wilder's
"Garryowen," Florac sang--

   Tiens voici ma pipe, voila mon bri--quet;
   Et quand la Tulipe fait le noir tra--jet
   Que tu sois la seule dans le regi--ment
   Avec la brule-gueule de ton cher z'a--mant;

to the delight of Tom Sarjent, who, though he only partially comprehended
the words of the song, pronounced the singer to be a rare gentleman, full
of most excellent differences. We took our Florac to the Derby; we
presented him in Fitzroy Square, whither we still occasionally went, for
Clive's and our dear Colonel's sake.

The Vicomte pronounced himself strongly in favour of the blanche misse
little Rosey Mackenzie, of whom we have lost sight for some few chapters.
Mrs. Mac he considered, my faith, to be a woman superb. He used to kiss
the tips of his own fingers, in token of his admiration for the lovely
widow; he pronounced her again more pretty than her daughter; and paid
her a thousand compliments, which she received with exceeding
good-humour. If the Vicomte gave us to understand presently that Rosey
and her mother were both in love with him, but that for all the world he
would not meddle with the happiness of his dear little Clive, nothing
unfavourable to the character or constancy of the before-mentioned ladies
must be inferred from M. de Florac's speech; his firm conviction being,
that no woman could pass many hours in his society without danger to her
subsequent peace of mind.

For some little time we had no reason to suspect that our French friend
was not particularly well furnished with the current coin of the realm.
Without making any show of wealth, he would, at first, cheerfully engage
in our little parties: his lodgings in the neighbourhood of Leicester
Square, though dingy, were such as many noble foreign exiles have
inhabited. It was not until he refused to join some pleasure-trip which
we of Lamb Court proposed, honestly confessing his poverty, that we were
made aware of the Vicomte's little temporary calamity; and, as we became
more intimate with him, he acquainted us, with great openness, with the
history of all his fortunes. He described energetically that splendid run
of luck which had set in at Baden with Clive's loan: his winnings, at
that fortunate period, had carried him through the winter with
considerable brilliancy, but bouillotte and Mademoiselle Atala, of the
Varietes (une ogresse, mon cher, who devours thirty of our young men
every year in her cavern, in the Rue de Breda), had declared against him,
and the poor Vicomte's pockets were almost empty when he came to London.

He was amiably communicative regarding himself, and told us his virtues
and his faults (if indeed a passion for play and for women could be
considered as faults in a gay young fellow of two or three and forty),
with a like engaging frankness. He would weep in describing his angel
mother: he would fly off again into tirades respecting the wickedness,
the wit, the extravagance, the charms of the young lady of the Varietes.
He would then (in conversation) introduce us to Madame de Florac, nee
Higg, of Manchesterre. His prattle was incessant, and to my friend Mr.
Warrington especially he was an object of endless delight and amusement
and wonder. He would roll and smoke countless paper cigars, talking
unrestrainedly when we were not busy, silent when we were engaged; he
would only rarely partake of our meals, and altogether refused all offers
of pecuniary aid. He disappeared at dinner-time into the mysterious
purlieus of Leicester Square, and dark ordinaries only frequented by
Frenchmen. As we walked with him in the Regent Street precincts, he would
exchange marks of recognition with many dusky personages, smoking bravos;
and whiskered refugees of his nation.

"That gentleman," he would say, "who has done me the honour to salute me,
is a coiffeur of the most celebrated; he forms the deuces of our
table-d'hote. 'Bon jour, mon cher monsieur!' We are friends, though not
of the same opinion. Monsieur is a republican of the most distinguished;
conspirator of profession, and at this time engaged in constructing an
infernal machine to the address of His Majesty, Louis Philippe, King of
the French." "Who is my friend with the scarlet beard and the white
paletot? My good Warrington! you do not move in the world; you make
yourself a hermit, my dear! Not know monsieur!--monsieur is secretary to
Mademoiselle Caracoline, the lovely rider at the circus of Astley; I
shall be charmed to introduce you to this amiable society some day at our
table-d'hote."

Warrington vowed that the company of Florac's friends would be infinitely
more amusing than the noblest society ever chronicled in the Morning
Post; but we were neither sufficiently familiar with the French language
to make conversation in that tongue as pleasant to us as talking in our
own; and so were content with Florac's description of his compatriots,
which the Vicomte delivered in that charming French-English of which he
was a master.

However threadbare in his garments, poor in purse, and eccentric in
morals our friend was, his manners were always perfectly gentlemanlike,
and he draped himself in his poverty with the grace of a Spanish grandee.
It must be confessed, that the grandee loved the estaminet where he could
play billiards with the first comer; that he had a passion for the
gambling-house; that he was a loose and disorderly nobleman: but, in
whatever company he found himself, a certain kindness, simplicity, and
politeness distinguished him always. He bowed to the damsel who sold him
a penny cigar, as graciously as to a duchess; he crushed a manant's
impertinence or familiarity as haughtily as his noble ancestors ever did
at the Louvre, at Marli, or Versailles. He declined to obtemperer to his
landlady's request to pay his rent, but he refused with a dignity which
struck the woman with awe; and King Alfred, over the celebrated muffin
(on which Gandish and other painters have exercised their genius), could
not have looked more noble than Florac in a robe-de-chambre, once
gorgeous, but shady now as became its owner's clouded fortunes; toasting
his bit of bacon at his lodgings, when the fare even of his table-d'hote
had grown too dear for him.

As we know from Gandish's work, that better times were in store for the
wandering monarch, and that the officers came acquainting him that his
people demanded his presence a grands cris, when of course King Alfred
laid down the toast and resumed the sceptre; so in the case of Florac,
two humble gentlemen, inhabitants of Lamb Court, and members of the Upper
temple, had the good luck to be the heralds as it were, nay indeed, the
occasion, of the rising fortunes of the Prince de Moncontour. Florac had
informed us of the death of his cousin the Duc d'Ivry, by whose demise
the Vicomte's father, the old Count de Florac, became the representative
of the house of Ivry, and possessor, through his relative's bequest, of
an old chateau still more gloomy and spacious than the count's own house
in the Faubourg St. Germain--a chateau, of which the woods, domains, and
appurtenances had been lopped off by the Revolution. "Monsieur le Comte,"
Florac says, "has not wished to change his name at his age; he has
shrugged his old shoulder, and said it was not the trouble to make to
engrave a new card; and for me," the philosophical Vicomte added, "of
what good shall be a title of prince in the position where I find
myself?" It is wonderful for us who inhabit a country where rank is
worshipped with so admirable a reverence, to think that there are many
gentlemen in France who actually have authentic titles and do not choose
to bear them.

Mr. George Warrington was hugely amused with this notion of Florac's
ranks and dignities. The idea of the Prince purchasing penny cigars; of
the Prince mildly expostulating with his landlady regarding the rent; of
his punting for half-crowns at a neighbouring hall in Air Street, whither
the poor gentleman desperately ran when he had money in his pocket,
tickled George's sense of humour. It was Warrington who gravely saluted
the Vicomte, and compared him to King Alfred, on that afternoon when we
happened to call upon him and found him engaged in cooking his modest
dinner.

We were bent upon an excursion to Greenwich, and on having our friend's
company on that voyage, and we induced the Vicomte to forgo his bacon,
and be our guest for once. George Warrington chose to indulge in a great
deal of ironical pleasantry in the course of the afternoon's excursion.
As we went down the river, he pointed out to Florac the very window in
the Tower where the captive Duke of Orleans used to sit when he was an
inhabitant of that fortress. At Greenwich, which palace Florac informed
us was built by Queen Elizabeth, George showed the very spot where
Raleigh laid his cloak down to enable Her Majesty to step over a puddle.
In a word, he mystified M. de Florac; such was Mr. Warrington's
reprehensible spirit.

It happened that Mr. Barnes Newcome came to dine at Greenwich on the same
day when our little party took place. He had come down to meet Rooster
and one or two other noble friends whose names he took care to give us,
cursing them at the same time for having thrown him over. Having missed
his own company, Mr. Barnes condescended to join ours, Warrington gravely
thanking him for the great honour which he conferred upon us by
volunteering to take a place at our table. Barnes drank freely, and was
good enough to resume his acquaintance with Monsieur de Florac, whom he
perfectly well recollected at Baden, but had thought proper to forget on
the one or two occasions when they had met in public since the Vicomte's
arrival in this country. There are few men who can drop and resume an
acquaintance with such admirable self-possession as Barnes Newcome. When,
over our dessert, by which time all tongues were unloosed and each man
talked gaily, George Warrington feelingly thanked Barnes in a little mock
speech, for his great kindness in noticing us, presenting him at the same
time to Florac as the ornament of the City, the greatest banker of his
age, the beloved kinsman of their friend Clive, who was always writing
about him; Barnes said, with one of his accustomed curses, he did not
know whether Mr. Warrington was "chaffing" him or not, and indeed could
never make him out. Warrington replied that he never could make himself
out: and if ever Mr. Barnes could, George would thank him for information
on that subject.

Florac, like most Frenchmen very sober in his potations, left us for a
while over ours, which were conducted after the more liberal English
manner, and retired to smoke his cigar on the terrace. Barnes then freely
uttered his sentiments regarding him, which were not more favourable than
those which the young gentleman generally emitted respecting gentlemen
whose backs were turned. He had known a little of Florac the year before
at Baden: he had been mixed up with Kew in that confounded row in which
Kew was hit; he was an adventurer, a pauper, a blackleg, a regular Greek;
he had heard Florac was of old family, that was true; but what of that?
He was only one of those d----- French counts; everybody was a count in
France confound 'em! The claret was beastly--not fit for a gentleman to
drink!--He swigged off a great bumper as he was making the remark: for
Barnes Newcome abuses the men and things which he uses, and perhaps is
better served than more grateful persons.

"Count!" cries Warrington, "what do you mean by talking about beggarly
counts? Florac's family is one of the noblest and most ancient in Europe.
It is more ancient than your illustrious friend, the barber-surgeon; it
was illustrious before the house, ay, or the pagoda of Kew was in
existence." And he went on to describe how Florac by the demise of his
kinsman, was now actually Prince de Moncontour, though he did not choose
to assume that title. Very likely the noble Gascon drink in which George
had been indulging, imparted a certain warmth and eloquence to his
descriptions of Florac's good qualities, high birth, and considerable
patrimony; Barnes looked quite amazed and scared at these announcements,
then laughed and declared once more that Warrington was chaffing him.

"As sure as the Black Prince was lord of Acquitaine--as sure as the
English were masters of Bordeaux--and why did we ever lose the country?"
cries George, filling himself a bumper,--"every word I have said about
Florac is true;" and Florac coming in at this juncture havin just
finished his cigar, George turned round and made him a fine speech in the
French language, in which he lauded his constancy and good-humour under
evil fortune, paid him two or three more cordial compliments, and
finished by drinking another great bumper to his good health.

Florac took a little wine, replied "with effusion" to the toast which his
excellent, his noble friend had just carried. We rapped our glasses at
the end of the speech. The landlord himself seemed deeply touched by it
as he stood by with a fresh bottle. "It is good wine--it is honest wine--
it is capital wine" says George, "and honni soit qui mal y pence! What
business have you, you little beggar, to abuse it? My ancestor drank the
wine and wore the motto round his leg long before a Newcome ever showed
his pale face in Lombard Street." George Warrington never bragged about
his pedigree except under certain influences. I am inclined to think that
on this occasion he really did find the claret very good.

"You don't mean to say," says Barnes, addressing Florac in French, on
which he piqued himself, "que vous avez un tel manche a votre nom, et que
vous ne l'usez pas?"

Florac shrugged his shoulders; he at first did not understand that
familiar figure of English speech, or what was meant by "having a handle
to your name." "Moncontour cannot dine better than Florac," he said.
"Florac has two louis in his pocket, and Moncontour exactly forty
shillings. Florac's proprietor will ask Moncontour to-morrow for five
weeks' rent; and as for Florac's friends, my dear, they will burst out
laughing to Moncontour's nose!" "How droll you English are!" this acute
French observer afterwards said, laughing, and recalling the incident.
Did you not see how that little Barnes, as soon as he knew my title of
Prince, changed his manner and became all respect towards me? This,
indeed, Monsieur de Florac's two friends remarked with no little
amusement. Barnes began quite well to remember their pleasant days at
Baden, and talked of their acquaintance there: Barnes offered the Prince
the vacant seat in his brougham, and was ready to set him down anywhere
that he wished in town.

"Bah!" says Florac; "we came by the steamer, and I prefer the peniboat."
But the hospitable Barnes, nevertheless, called upon Florac the next day.
And now having partially explained how the Prince de Moncontour was
present at Mr. Barnes Newcome's wedding, let us show how it was that
Barnes's first-cousin, the Earl of Kew, did not attend that ceremony.




CHAPTER XXXVII

Return to Lord Kew


We do not propose to describe at length or with precision the
circumstances of the duel which ended so unfortunately for young Lord
Kew. The meeting was inevitable: after the public acts and insult of the
morning, the maddened Frenchman went to it convinced that his antagonist
had wilfully outraged him, eager to show his bravery upon the body of an
Englishman, and as proud as if he had been going into actual war. That
commandment, the sixth in our decalogue, which forbids the doing of
murder, and the injunction which directly follows on the same table, have
been repealed by a very great number of Frenchmen for many years past;
and to take the neighbour's wife, and his life subsequently, has not been
an uncommon practice with the politest people in the world. Castillonnes
had no idea but that he was going to the field of honour; stood with an
undaunted scowl before his enemy's pistol; and discharged his own and
brought down his opponent with a grim satisfaction, and a comfortable
conviction afterwards that he had acted en galant homme. "It was well for
this milor that he fell at the first shot, my dear," the exemplary young
Frenchman remarked; "a second might have been yet more fatal to him;
ordinarily I am sure of my coup, and you conceive that in an affair so
grave it was absolutely necessary that one or other should remain on the
ground." Nay, should M. de Kew recover from his wound, it was M. de
Castillonnes' intention to propose a second encounter between himself and
that nobleman. It had been Lord Kew's determination never to fire upon
his opponent, a confession which he made not to his second, poor scared
Lord Rooster, who bore the young Earl to Kehl, but to some of his nearest
relatives, who happened fortunately to be not far from him when he
received his wound, and who came with all the eagerness of love to watch
by his bedside.

We have said that Lord Kew's mother, Lady Walham, and her second son were
staying at Hombourg, when the Earl's disaster occurred. They had proposed
to come to Baden to see Kew's new bride, and to welcome her; but the
presence of her mother-in-law deterred Lady Walham, who gave up her
heart's wish in bitterness of spirit, knowing very well that a meeting
between the old Countess and herself could only produce the wrath, pain,
and humiliation which their coming together always occasioned. It was
Lord Kew who bade Rooster send for his mother, and not for Lady Kew; and
as soon as she received those sad tidings, you may be sure the poor lady
hastened to the bed where her wounded boy lay.

The fever had declared itself, and the young man had been delirious more
than once. His wan face lighted up with joy when he saw his mother; he
put his little feverish hand out of the bed to her--"I knew you would
come, dear," he said, "and you know I never would have fired upon the
poor Frenchman." The fond mother allowed no sign of terror or grief to
appear upon her face, so as to disturb her first-born and darling; but no
doubt she prayed by his side as such loving hearts know how to pray, for
the forgiveness of his trespass, who had forgiven those who sinned
against him. "I knew I should be hit, George," said Kew to his brother
when they were alone; "I always expected some such end as this. My life
has been very wild and reckless; and you, George, have always been
faithful to our mother. You will make a better Lord Kew than I have been,
George. God bless you." George flung himself down with sobs by his
brother's bedside, and swore Frank had always been the best fellow, the
best brother, the kindest heart, the warmest friend in the world. Love--
prayer--repentance, thus met over the young man's bed. Anxious and humble
hearts, his own the least anxious and the most humble, awaited the dread
award of life or death; and the world, and its ambition and vanities,
were shut out from the darkened chamber where the awful issue was being
tried.

Our history has had little to do with characters resembling this lady. It
is of the world, and things pertaining to it. Things beyond it, as the
writer imagines, scarcely belong to the novelist's province. Who is he,
that he should assume the divine's office; or turn his desk into a
preacher's pulpit? In that career of pleasure, of idleness, of crime we
might call it (but that the chronicler of worldly matters had best be
chary of applying hard names to acts which young men are doing in the
world every day), the gentle widowed lady, mother of Lord Kew, could but
keep aloof, deploring the course upon which her dear young prodigal had
entered; and praying with that saintly love, those pure supplications,
with which good mothers follow their children, for her boy's repentance
and return. Very likely her mind was narrow; very likely the precautions
which she had used in the lad's early days, the tutors and directors she
had set about him, the religious studies and practices to which she would
have subjected him, had served only to vex and weary the young pupil, and
to drive his high spirit into revolt. It is hard to convince a woman
perfectly pure in her life and intentions, ready to die if need were for
her own faith, having absolute confidence in the instruction of her
teachers, that she and they (with all their sermons) may be doing harm.
When the young catechist yawns over his reverence's discourse, who knows
but it is the doctor's vanity which is enraged, and not Heaven which is
offended? It may have been, in the differences which took place between
her son and her, the good Lady Walham never could comprehend the lad's
side of the argument; or how his Protestantism against her doctrines
should exhibit itself on the turf, the gaming-table, or the stage of the
opera-house; and thus but for the misfortune under which poor Kew now lay
bleeding, these two loving hearts might have remained through life
asunder. But by the boy's bedside; in the paroxysms of his fever; in the
wild talk of his delirium; in the sweet patience and kindness with which
he received his dear nurse's attentions; the gratefulness with which he
thanked the servants who waited on him; the fortitude with which he
suffered the surgeon's dealings with his wounds;--the widowed woman had
an opportunity to admire with an exquisite thankfulness the generous
goodness of her son; and in those hours, those sacred hours passed in her
own chamber, of prayers, fears, hopes, recollections, and passionate
maternal love, wrestling with fate for her darling's life;--no doubt the
humbled creature came to acknowledge that her own course regarding him
had been wrong; and, even more for herself than for him, implored
forgiveness.

For some time George Barnes had to send but doubtful and melancholy
bulletins to Lady Kew and the Newcome family at Baden, who were all
greatly moved and affected by the accident which had befallen poor Kew.
Lady Kew broke out in wrath, and indignation. We may be sure the Duchesse
d'Ivry offered to condole with her upon Kew's mishap the day after the
news arrived at Baden; and, indeed, came to visit her. The old lady had
just received other disquieting intelligence. She was just going out, but
she bade her servant to inform the Duchess that she was never more at
home to the Duchesse d'Ivry. The message was not delivered properly, or
the person for whom it was intended did not choose to understand it, for
presently, as the Countess was hobbling across the walk on her way to her
daughter's residence, she met the Duchesse d'Ivry, who saluted her with a
demure curtsey and a commonplace expression of condolence. The Queen of
Scots was surrounded by the chief part of her court, saving of course MM.
Castillonnes and Punter absent on service. "We were speaking of this
deplorable affair," said Madame d'Ivry (which indeed was the truth,
although she said it). "How we pity you, madame!" Blackball and Loder,
Cruchecassee and Schlangenbad, assumed sympathetic countenances.

Trembling on her cane, the old Countess glared out upon Madame d'Ivry. "I
pray you, madame," she said in French, "never again to address me the
word. If I had, like you, assassins in my pay, I would have you killed;
do you hear me?" and she hobbled on her way. The household to which she
went was in terrible agitation; the kind Lady Anne frightened beyond
measure, poor Ethel full of dread, and feeling guilty almost as if she
had been the cause, as indeed she was the occasion, of Kew's misfortune.
And the family had further cause of alarm from the shock which the news
had given to Sir Brian. It has been said that he had had illnesses of
late which caused his friends much anxiety. He had passed two months at
Aix-la-Chapelle, his physicians dreading a paralytic attack; and Madame
d'Ivry's party still sauntering on the walk, the men smoking their
cigars, the women breathing their scandal, now beheld Dr. Finck issuing
from Lady Anne's apartments, and wearing such a face of anxiety, that the
Duchesse asked with some emotion, "Had there been a fresh bulletin from
Kehl?"

"No, there had been no fresh bulletin from Kehl; but two hours since Sir
Brian Newcome had had a paralytic seizure."

"Is he very bad?"

"No," says Dr. Finck, "he is not very bad."

"How inconsolable M. Barnes will be!" said the Duchesse, shrugging her
haggard shoulders. Whereas the fact was that Mr. Barnes retained perfect
presence of mind under both of the misfortunes which had befallen his
family. Two days afterwards the Duchesse's husband arrived himself, when
we may presume that exemplary woman was too much engaged with her own
affairs to be able to be interested about the doings of other people.
With the Duke's arrival the court of Mary Queen of Scots was broken up.
Her Majesty was conducted to Lochleven, where her tyrant soon dismissed
her very last lady-in-waiting, the confidential Irish secretary, whose
performance had produced such a fine effect amongst the Newcomes.

Had poor Sir Brian Newcome's seizure occurred at an earlier period of the
autumn, his illness no doubt would have kept him for some months confined
at Baden; but as he was pretty nearly the last of Dr. Von Finck's bath
patients, and that eminent physician longed to be off to the Residenz, he
was pronounced in a fit condition for easy travelling in rather a brief
period after his attack, and it was determined to transport him to
Mannheim, and thence by water to London and Newcome.

During all this period of their father's misfortune no sister of charity
could have been more tender, active, cheerful, and watchful than Miss
Ethel. She had to wear a kind face, and exhibit no anxiety when
occasionally the feeble invalid made inquiries regarding poor Kew at
Baden; to catch the phrases as they came from him; to acquiesce, or not
to deny, when Sir Brian talked of the marriages--both marriages--taking
place at Christmas. Sir Brian was especially eager for his daughter's,
and repeatedly, with his broken words, and smiles, and caresses, which
were now quite senile, declared that his Ethel would make the prettiest
countess in England. There came a letter or two from Clive, no doubt, to
the young nurse in her sick-room. Manly and generous, full of tenderness
and affection, as those letters surely were, they could give but little
pleasure to the young lady--indeed, only add to her doubts and pain.

She had told none of her friends as yet of those last words of Kew's,
which she interpreted as a farewell on the young nobleman's part. Had she
told them they were likely would not have understood Kew's meaning as she
did, and persisted in thinking that the two were reconciled. At any rate,
whilst he and her father were still lying stricken by the blows which had
prostrated them both, all questions of love and marriage had been put
aside. Did she love him? She felt such a kind pity for his misfortune,
such an admiration for his generous gallantry, such a remorse for her own
wayward conduct and cruel behaviour towards this most honest, and kindly,
and affectionate gentleman, that the sum of regard which she could bestow
upon him might surely be said to amount to love. For such a union as that
contemplated between them, perhaps for any marriage, no greater degree of
attachment was necessary as the common cement. Warm friendship and
thorough esteem and confidence (I do not say that our young lady
calculated in this matter-of-fact way) are safe properties invested in
the prudent marriage stock, multiplying and bearing an increasing value
with every year. Many a young couple of spendthrifts get through their
capital of passion in the first twelve months, and have no love left for
the daily demands of after life. O me! for the day when the bank account
is closed, and the cupboard is empty, and the firm of Damon and Phyllis
insolvent!

Miss Newcome, we say, without doubt, did not make her calculations in
this debtor and creditor fashion; it was only the gentlemen of that
family who went to Lombard Street. But suppose she thought that regard,
and esteem, and, affection being sufficient, she could joyfully, and with
almost all her heart bring such a portion to Lord Kew; that her harshness
towards him as contrasted with his own generosity, and above all with his
present pain, infinitely touched her; and suppose she fancied that there
was another person in the world to whom, did fates permit, she could
offer not esteem, affection, pity only, but something ten thousand times
more precious? We are not in the young lady's secrets, but if she has
some as she sits by her father's chair and bed, who day or night will
have no other attendant; and, as she busies herself to interpret his
wants, silently moves on his errands, administers his potions, and
watches his sleep, thinks of Clive absent and unhappy, of Kew wounded and
in danger, she must have subject enough of thought and pain. Little
wonder that her cheeks are pale and her eyes look red; she has her cares
to endure now in the world, and her burden to bear in it, and somehow she
feels she is alone, since that day when poor Clive's carriage drove away.

In a mood of more than ordinary depression and weakness Lady Kew must
have found her granddaughter, upon one of the few occasions after the
double mishap when Ethel and her elder were together. Sir Brian's
illness, as it may be imagined, affected a lady very slightly, who was of
an age when these calamities occasion but small disquiet, and who, having
survived her own father, her husband, her son, and witnessed their
lordships' respective demises with perfect composure, could not
reasonably be called upon to feel any particular dismay at the probable
departure from this life of a Lombard Street banker, who happened to be
her daughter's husband. In fact, not Barnes Newcome himself could await
that event more philosophically. So, finding Ethel in this melancholy
mood, Lady Kew thought a drive in the fresh air would be of service to
her, and Sir Brian happening to be asleep, carried the young girl away in
her barouche.

They talked about Lord Kew, of whom the accounts were encouraging, and
who is mending in spite of his silly mother and her medicines, "and as
soon as he is able to move we must go and fetch him, my dear," Lady Kew
graciously said, "before that foolish woman has made a methodist of him.
He is always led by the woman who is nearest him, and I know one who will
make of him just the best little husband in England." Before they had
come to this delicate point the lady and her grandchild had talked Kew's
character over, the girl, you may be sure, having spoken feelingly and
eloquently about his kindness and courage, and many admirable qualities.
She kindled when she heard the report of his behaviour at the
commencement of the fracas with M. de Castillonnes, his great forbearance
and good-nature, and his resolution and magnanimity when the moment of
collision came.

But when Lady Kew arrived at that period of her discourse in which she
stated that Kew would make the best little husband in England, poor
Ethel's eyes filled with tears; we must remember that her high spirit was
worn down by watching and much varied anxiety, and then she confessed
that there had been no reconciliation, as all the family fancied, between
Frank and herself--on the contrary, a parting, which she understood to be
final; and she owned that her conduct towards her cousin had been most
captious and cruel, and that she could not expect they should ever again
come together. Lady Kew, who hated sick-beds and surgeons except for
herself, who hated her daughter-in-law above all, was greatly annoyed at
the news which Ethel gave her; made light of if, however, and was quite
confident that a very few words from her would place matters on their old
footing, and determined on forthwith setting out for Kehl. She would have
carried Ethel with her, but that the poor Baronet with cries and moans
insisted on retaining his nurse, and Ethel's grandmother was left to
undertake this mission by herself, the girl remaining behind acquiescent,
not unwilling, owning openly a great regard and esteem for Kew, and the
wrong which she had done him, feeling secretly a sentiment which she had
best smother. She had received a letter from that other person, and
answered it with her mother's cognisance, but about this little affair
neither Lady Anne nor her daughter happened to say a word to the manager
of the whole family.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

In which Lady Kew leaves his Lordship quite convalescent


Immediately after Lord Kew's wound, and as it was necessary to apprise
the Newcome family of the accident which had occurred, the good-natured
young Kew had himself written a brief note to acquaint his relatives with
his mishap, and had even taken the precaution to antedate a couple of
billets to be despatched on future days; kindly forgeries, which told the
Newcome family and the Countess of Kew, that Lord Kew was progressing
very favourably, and that his hurt was trifling. The fever had set in,
and the young patient was lying in great danger, as most of the laggards
at Baden knew, when his friends there were set at ease by this fallacious
bulletin. On the third day after the accident, Lady Walham arrived with
her younger son, to find Lord Kew in the fever which ensued after the
wound. As the terrible anxiety during the illness had been Lady Walham's,
so was hers the delight of the recovery. The commander-in-chief of the
family, the old lady at Baden, showed her sympathy by sending couriers,
and repeatedly issuing orders to have news of Kew. Sick-beds scared her
away invariably. When illness befell a member of her family she hastily
retreated from before the sufferer, showing her agitation of mind,
however, by excessive ill-humour to all the others within her reach.

A fortnight passed, a ball had been found and extracted, the fever was
over, the wound was progressing favourably, the patient advancing towards
convalescence, and the mother, with her child once more under her wing,
happier than she had been for seven years past, during which her young
prodigal had been running the thoughtless career of which he himself was
weary, and which had occasioned the fond lady such anguish. Those doubts
which perplex many a thinking man, and, when formed and uttered, give
many a fond and faithful woman pain so exquisite, had most fortunately
never crossed Kew's mind. His early impressions were such as his mother
had left them, and he came back to her, as she would have him, as a
little child; owning his faults with a hearty humble repentance, and with
a thousand simple confessions, lamenting the errors of his past days. We
have seen him tired and ashamed of the pleasures which he was pursuing,
of the companions who surrounded him, of the brawls and dissipations
which amused him no more; in those hours of danger and doubt, when he had
lain, with death perhaps before him, making up his account of the vain
life which probably he would be called upon to surrender, no wonder this
simple, kindly, modest, and courageous soul thought seriously of the past
and of the future; and prayed, and resolved, if a future were awarded to
him, it should make amends for the days gone by; and surely as the mother
and son read together the beloved assurance of the divine forgiveness,
and of that joy which angels feel in heaven for a sinner repentant, we
may fancy in the happy mother's breast a feeling somewhat akin to that
angelic felicity, a gratitude and joy of all others the loftiest, the
purest, the keenest. Lady Walham might shrink with terror at the
Frenchman's name, but her son could forgive him, with all his heart, and
kiss his mother's hand, and thank him as the best friend of his life.

During all the days of his illness, Kew had never once mentioned Ethel's
name, and once or twice as his recovery progressed, when with doubt and
tremor his mother alluded to it, he turned from the subject as one that
was disagreeable and painful. Had she thought seriously on certain
things? Lady Walham asked. Kew thought not, "but those who are bred up as
you would have them, mother, are often none the better," the humble young
fellow said. "I believe she is a very good girl. She is very clever, she
is exceedingly handsome, she is very good to her parents and her brothers
and sisters; but--" he did not finish the sentence. Perhaps he thought,
as he told Ethel afterwards, that she would have agreed with Lady Walham
even worse than with her imperious old grandmother.

Lady Walham then fell to deplore Sir Brian's condition, accounts of whose
seizure of course had been despatched to the Kehl party, and to lament
that a worldly man as he was should have such an affliction, so near the
grave and so little prepared for it. Here honest Kew, however, held out.
"Every man for himself, mother," says he. "Sir Brian was bred up very
strictly, perhaps too strictly as a young man. Don't you know that that
good Colonel, his elder brother, who seems to me about the most honest
and good old gentleman I ever met in my life, was driven into rebellion
and all sorts of wild courses by old Mrs. Newcome's tyranny over him? As
for Sir Brian, he goes to church every Sunday: has prayers in the family
every day: I'm sure has led a hundred times better life than I have, poor
old Sir Brian. I often have thought, mother, that though our side was
wrong, you could not be altogether right, because I remember how my
tutor, and Mr. Bonner, and Dr. Laud, when they used to come down to us at
Kewbury, used to make themselves so unhappy about other people." So the
widow withdrew her unhappiness about Sir Brian; she was quite glad to
hope for the best regarding that invalid.

With some fears yet regarding her son,--for many of the books with which
the good lady travelled could not be got to interest him; at some he
would laugh outright,--with fear mixed with the maternal joy that he was
returned to her, and had quitted his old ways; with keen feminine
triumph, perhaps, that she had won him back, and happiness at his daily
mending health, all Lady Walham's hours were passed in thankful and
delighted occupation. George Barnes kept the Newcomes acquainted with the
state of his brother's health. The skilful surgeon from Strasbourg
reported daily better and better of him, and the little family were
living in great peace and contentment, with one subject of dread,
however, hanging over the mother of the two young men, the arrival of
Lady Kew, as she was foreboding, the fierce old mother-in-law who had
worsted Lady Walham in many a previous battle.

It was what they call the summer of St. Martin, and the weather was
luckily very fine; Kew could presently be wheeled into the garden of the
hotel, whence he could see the broad turbid current of the swollen Rhine:
the French bank fringed with alders, the vast yellow fields behind them,
the great avenue of poplars stretching away to the Alsatian city, and its
purple minster yonder. Good Lady Walham was for improving the shining
hour by reading amusing extracts from her favourite volumes, gentle
anecdotes of Chinese and Hottentot converts, and incidents from
missionary travel. George Barnes, a wily young diplomatist, insinuated
Galignani, and hinted that Kew might like a novel; and a profane work
called Oliver Twist having appeared about this time, which George read
out to his family with admirable emphasis, it is a fact that Lady Walham
became so interested in the parish boy's progress, that she took his
history into her bedroom (where it was discovered, under Blatherwick's
Voice from Mesopotamia, by her ladyship's maid), and that Kew laughed so
immensely at Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, as to endanger the reopening of his
wound.

While, one day, they were so harmlessly and pleasantly occupied, a great
whacking of whips, blowing of horns, and whirring of wheels was heard in
the street without. The wheels stopped at their hotel gate; Lady Walham
started up; ran through the garden door, closing it behind her; and
divined justly who had arrived. The landlord was bowing; the courier
pushing about; waiters in attendance; one of them, coming up to
pale-faced Lady Walham; said, "Her Excellency the Frau Graefinn von Kew
is even now absteiging."

"Will you be good enough to walk into our salon, Lady Kew?" said the
daughter-in-law, stepping forward and opening the door of that apartment.
The Countess, leaning on her staff, entered that darkened chamber. She
ran up towards an easy-chair, where she supposed Lord Kew was. "My dear
Frank!" cries the old lady; "my dear boy, what a pretty fright you have
given us all! They don't keep you in this horrid noisy room facing that
----Ho--what is this?" cries the Countess, closing her sentence abruptly.

"It is not Frank. It is only a bolster, Lady Kew, and I don't keep him in
a noisy room towards the street," said Lady Walham.

"Ho! how do you do? This is the way to him, I suppose;" and she went to
another door--it was a cupboard full of the relics of Frank's illness,
from which Lady Walham's mother-in-law shrunk back aghast. "Will you
please to see that I have a comfortable room, Maria; and one for my maid,
next me? I will thank you to see yourself," the Empress of Kew said,
pointing with her stick, before which many a time the younger lady had
trembled.

This time Lady Walham only rang the bell. "I don't speak German; and have
never been on any floor of the house but this. Your servant had better
see to your room, Lady Kew. That next is mine; and I keep the door, which
you are trying, locked on other side."

"And I suppose Frank is locked up there!" cried the old lady, "with a
basin of gruel and a book of Watts's hymns." A servant entered at this
moment, answering Lady Walham's summons. "Peacock, the Countess of Kew
says that she proposes to stay here this evening. Please to ask the
landlord to show her ladyship rooms," said Lady Walham; and by this time
she had thought of a reply to Lady Kew's last kind speech.

"If my son were locked up in my room, madam, his mother is surely the
best nurse for him. Why did you not come to him three weeks sooner, when
there was nobody with him?"

Lady Kew said nothing, but glared and showed her teeth--those pearls set
in gold.

"And my company may not amuse Lord Kew--"

"He-e-e!" grinned the elder, savagely.

"--But at least it is better than some to which you introduced my son,"
continued Lady Kew's daughter-in-law, gathering force and wrath as she
spoke. "Your ladyship may think lightly of me, but you can hardly think
so ill of me as of the Duchesse d'Ivry, I should suppose, to whom you
sent my boy, to form him, you said; about whom, when I remonstrated--for
though I live out of the world I hear of it sometimes--you were pleased
to tell me that I was a prude and a fool. It is you I thank for
separating my child from me--yes, you--for so many years of my life; and
for bringing me to him when he was bleeding and almost a corpse, but that
God preserved him to the widow's prayers;--and you, you were by, and
never came near him."

"I--I did not come to see you--or--or--for this kind of scene, Lady
Walham," muttered the other. Lady Kew was accustomed to triumph, by
attacking in masses, like Napoleon. Those who faced her routed her.

"No; you did not come for me, I know very well," the daughter went on.
"You loved me no better than you loved your son, whose life, as long as
you meddled with it, you made wretched. You came here for my boy. Haven't
you done him evil enough? And now God has mercifully preserved him, you
want to lead him back again into ruin and crime. It shall not be so,
wicked woman! bad mother! cruel, heartless parent!--George!" (Here her
younger son entered the room, and she ran towards him with fluttering
robes and seized his hands.) "Here is your grandmother; here is the
Countess of Kew, come from Baden at last; and she wants--she wants to
take Frank from us, my dear, and to--give--him--back to the--Frenchwoman
again. No, no! Oh, my God! Never! never!" And she flung herself into
George Barnes's arms, fainting with an hysteric burst of tears.

"You had best get a strait-waistcoat for your mother, George Barnes,"
Lady Kew said, scorn and hatred in her face. (If she had been Iago's
daughter, with a strong likeness to her sire, Lord Steyne's sister could
not have looked more diabolical.) "Have you had advice for her? Has
nursing poor Kew turned her head? I came to see him. Why have I been left
alone for half an hour with this madwoman? You ought not to trust her to
give Frank medicine. It is positively----"

"Excuse me," said George, with a bow; "I don't think the complaint has as
yet exhibited itself in my mother's branch of the family. (She always
hated me," thought George; "but if she had by chance left me a legacy,
there it goes.) You would like, ma'am, to see the rooms upstairs? Here is
the landlord to conduct your ladyship. Frank will be quite ready to
receive you when you come down. I am sure I need not beg of your kindness
that nothing may be said to agitate him. It is barely three weeks since
M. de Castillonnes's ball was extracted; and the doctors wish he should
be kept as quiet as possible."

Be sure that the landlord, the courier, and the persons engaged in
showing the Countess of Kew the apartments above spent an agreeable time
with Her Excellency the Frau Graefinn von Kew. She must have had better
luck in her encounter with these than in her previous passages with her
grandson and his mother; for when she issued from her apartment in a new
dress and fresh cap, Lady Kew's face wore an expression of perfect
serenity. Her attendant may have shook her fist behind her, and her man's
eyes and face looked Blitz and Donnerwetter; but their mistress's
features wore that pleased look which they assumed when she had been
satisfactorily punishing somebody. Lord Kew had by this time got back
from the garden to his own room, where he awaited grandmamma. If the
mother and her two sons had in the interval of Lady Kew's toilette tried
to resume the history of Bumble the Beadle, I fear they could not have
found it very comical.

"Bless me, my dear child! How well you look! Many a girl would give the
world to have such a complexion. There is nothing like a mother for a
nurse! Ah, no! Maria, you deserve to be the Mother Superior of a House of
Sisters of Charity, you do. The landlord has given me a delightful
apartment, thank you. He is an extortionate wretch; but I have no doubt I
shall be very comfortable. The Dodsburys stopped here, I see by the
travellers' book-quite right, instead of sleeping at that odious buggy
Strasbourg. We have had a sad, sad time, my dears, at Baden. Between
anxiety about poor Sir Brian, and about you, you naughty boy, I am sure I
wonder how I have got through it all. Doctor Finck would not let me come
away to-day; would I would come."

"I am sure it was uncommonly kind, ma'am," says poor Kew, with a rueful
face.

"That horrible woman against whom I always warned but you--but young men
will not take the advice of old grandmammas--has gone away these ten
days. Monsieur le Duc fetched her; and if he locked her up at Moncontour,
and kept her on bread-and-water; for the rest of her life, I am sure he
would serve her right. When a woman once forgets religious principles,
Kew, she is sure to go wrong. The Conversation-room is shut up. The
Dorkings go on Tuesday. Clara is really a dear little artless creature;
one that you will like, Maria--and as for Ethel, I really think she is an
angel. To see her nursing her poor father is the most beautiful sight;
night after night she has sate up with him. I know where she would like
to be, the dear child. And if Frank falls ill again, Maria, he won't need
a mother or useless old grandmother to nurse him. I have got some pretty
messages to deliver from her; but they are for your private ears, my
lord; not even mammas and brothers may hear them."

"Do not go, mother! Pray stay, George!" cried the sick man (and again
Lord Steyne's sister looked uncommonly like that lamented marquis). "My
cousin is a noble young creature," he went on. "She has admirable good
qualities, which I appreciate with all my heart; and her beauty, you know
how I admire it. I have thought of her a great deal as I was lying on the
bed yonder" (the family look was not so visible in Lady Kew's face),
"and--and--I wrote to her this very morning; she will have the letter by
this time, probably."

"Bien! Frank!" Lady Kew smiled (in her supernatural way) almost as much
as her portrait, by Harlowe, as you may see it at Kewbury to this very
day. She is represented seated before an easel, painting a miniature of
her son, Lord Walham.

"I wrote to her on the subject of the last conversation we had together,"
Frank resumed, in rather a timid voice, "the day before my accident.
Perhaps she did not tell you, ma'am, of what passed between us. We had
had a quarrel; one of many. Some cowardly hand, which we both of us can
guess at, had written to her an account of my past life, and she showed
me the letter. Then I told her, that if she loved me she never would have
showed it me: without any other words of reproof. I bade her farewell. It
was not much, the showing that letter; but it was enough. In twenty
differences we have had together, she had been unjust and captious, cruel
towards me, and too eager, as I thought, for other people's admiration.
Had she loved me, it seemed to me Ethel would have shown less vanity and
better temper. What was I to expect in life afterwards from a girl who
before her marriage used me so? Neither she nor I could be happy. She
could be gentle enough, and kind, and anxious to please any man whom she
loves, God bless her! As for me, I suppose, I'm not worthy of so much
talent and beauty, so we both understood that that was a friendly
farewell; and as I have been lying on my bed yonder, thinking, perhaps, I
never might leave it, or if I did, that I should like to lead a different
sort of life to that which ended in sending me there, my resolve of last
month was only confirmed. God forbid that she and I should lead the lives
of some folks we know; that Ethel should marry without love, perhaps to
fall into it afterwards; and that I, after this awful warning I have had,
should be tempted to back into that dreary life I was leading. It was
wicked, ma'am, I knew it was; many and many a day I used to say so to
myself, and longed to get rid of it. I am a poor weak devil, I know, I am
only too easily led into temptation, and I should only make matters worse
if I married a woman who cares for the world more than for me, and would
not make me happy at home."

"Ethel care for the world!" gasped out Lady Kew; "a most artless, simple,
affectionate creature; my dear Frank, she----"

He interrupted her, as a blush came rushing over his pale face. "Ah!"
said he, "if I had been the painter, and young Clive had been Lord Kew,
which of us do you think she would have chosen? And she was right. He is
a brave, handsome, honest young fellow, and is a thousand times cleverer
and better than I am."

"Not better, dear, thank God," cried his mother, coming round to the
other side of his sofa, and seizing her son's hand.

"No, I don't think he is better, Frank," said the diplomatist, walking
away to the window. And as for grandmamma at the end of this little
speech and scene, her ladyship's likeness to her brother, the late
revered Lord Steyne, was more frightful than ever.

After a minute's pause, she rose up on her crooked stick, and said, "I
really feel I am unworthy to keep company with so much exquisite virtue.
It will be enhanced, my lord, by the thought of the pecuniary sacrifice
which you are making, for I suppose you know that I have been hoarding--
yes, and saving, and pinching,--denying myself the necessities of life,
in order that my grandson might one day have enough to support his rank.
Go and live and starve in your dreary old house, and marry a parson's
daughter, and sing psalms with your precious mother; and I have no doubt
you and she--she who has thwarted me all through life, and whom I hated,
--yes, I hated from the moment she took my son from me, and brought
misery into my family, will be all the happier when she thinks that she
has made a poor, fond, lonely old woman more lonely and miserable. If you
please, George Barnes, be good enough to tell my people that I shall go
back to Baden," and waving her children away from her, the old woman
tottered out of the room on her crutch.

So the wicked fairy drove away disappointed in the chariot with the very
dragons which had brought her away in the morning, and just had time to
get their feed of black bread. I wonder whether they were the horses
Clive and J. J. and Jack Belsize had used when they passed on their road
to Switzerland? Black Care sits behind all sorts of horses, and gives a
trinkgelt to postillions all over the map. A thrill of triumph may be
permitted to Lady Walham after her victory over her mother-in-law. What
Christian woman does not like to conquer another? and if that other were
a mother-in-law, would the victory be less sweet? Husbands and wives both
will be pleased that Lady Walham has had the better of this bout: and
you, young boys and virgins, when your turn comes to be married, you will
understand the hidden meaning of this passage. George Barnes got Oliver
Twist out, and began to read therein. Miss Nancy and Fanny again were
summoned before this little company to frighten and delight them. I dare
say even Fagin and Miss Nancy failed with the widow, so absorbed was she
with the thoughts of the victory which she had just won. For the evening
service, in which her sons rejoiced her fond heart by joining, she
lighted on a psalm which was as a Te Deum after the battle--the battle of
Kehl by Rhine, where Kew's soul, as his mother thought, was the object of
contention between the enemies. I have said, this book is all about the
world and a respectable family dwelling in it. It is not a sermon, except
where it cannot help itself, and the speaker pursuing the destiny of his
narrative finds such a homily before him. O friend, in your life and
mine, don't we light upon such sermons daily?--don't we see at home as
well as amongst our neighbours that battle betwixt Evil and Good? Here on
one side is Self and Ambition and Advancement; and Right and Love on the
other. Which shall we let to triumph for ourselves--which for our
children?

The young men were sitting smoking the vesper cigar. (Frank would do it,
and his mother actually lighted his cigar for him now, enjoining him
straightway after to go to bed.) Kew. smoked and looked at a star--
shining above in the heaven. "Which is that star?" he asked: and the
accomplished young diplomatist answered it was Jupiter.

"What a lot of things you know, George!" cries the senior, delighted;
"you ought to have been the elder, you ought, by Jupiter! But you have
lost your chance this time."

"Yes, thank God!" says George.

"And I am going to be all right--and to turn over a new leaf, old boy--
and paste down the old ones, eh? I wrote to Martins this morning to have
all my horses sold; and I'll never beg--so help me--so help me, Jupiter.
I made a vow--a promise to myself, you see, that I wouldn't if I
recovered. And I wrote to Cousin Ethel this morning.--As I thought over
the matter yonder, I felt quite certain I was right, and that we could
never, never pull together. Now the Countess is gone, I wonder whether I
was right--to give up sixty thousand pounds, and the prettiest girl in
London?"

"Shall I take horses and go after her? My mother's gone to bed, she won't
know," asked George. "Sixty thousand is a lot of money to lose."

Kew laughed. "If you were to go and tell our grandmother that I could not
live the night through, and that you would be Lord Kew in the morning,
and your son Viscount Walham, I think the Countess would make up a match
between you and the sixty thousand pounds, and the prettiest girl in
England: she would, by--by Jupiter. I intend only to swear by the heathen
gods now, Georgy.--No, I am not sorry I wrote to Ethel. What a fine girl
she is!--I don't mean her beauty merely, but such a noble-bred one! And
to think that there she is in the market to be knocked down to--I say, I
was going to call that three-year-old, Ethelinda.--We must christen her
over again for Tattersall's, Georgy."

A knock is heard through an adjoining door, and a maternal voice cries,
"It is time to go to bed." So the brothers part, and, let us hope, sleep
soundly.

The Countess of Kew, meanwhile, has returned to Baden; where, though it
is midnight when she arrives, and the old lady has had two long bootless
journeys, you will be grieved to hear, that she does not sleep a single
wink. In the morning she hobbles over to the Newcome quarters; and Ethel
comes down to her pale and calm. How is her father? He has had a good
night: he is a little better, speaks more clearly, has a little more the
use of his limbs.

"I wish I had had a good night!" groans out the Countess.

"I thought you were going to Lord Kew, at Kehl," remarked her
granddaughter.

"I did go, and returned with wretches who would not bring me more than
five miles an hour! I dismissed that brutal grinning courier; and I have
given warning to that fiend of a maid."

"And Frank is pretty well, grandmamma?"

"Well! He looks as pink as a girl in her first season! I found him, and
his brother George, and their mamma. I think Maria was hearing them their
catechism," cries the old lady.

"N. and M. together! Very pretty," says Ethel, gravely. "George has
always been a good boy, and it is quite time for my Lord Kew to begin."

The elder lady looked at her descendant, but Miss Ethel's glance was
impenetrable. "I suppose you can fancy, my dear, why I came back?" said
Lady Kew.

"Because you quarrelled with Lady Walham, grandmamma. I think I have
heard that there used to be differences between you." Miss Newcome was
armed for defence and attack; in which cases we have said Lady Kew did
not care to assault her. "My grandson told me that he had written to
you," the Countess said.

"Yes: and had you waited but half an hour yesterday, you might have
spared me the humiliation of that journey."

"You--the humiliation--Ethel!"

"Yes, me," Ethel flashed out. "Do you suppose it is none to have me
bandied about from bidder to bidder, and offered for sale to a gentleman
who will not buy me? Why have you and all my family been so eager to get
rid of me? Why should you suppose or desire that Lord Kew should like me?
Hasn't he the Opera; and such friends as Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, to
whom your ladyship introduced him in early life? He told me so: and she
was good enough to inform me of the rest. What attractions have I in
comparison with such women? And to this man from whom I am parted by good
fortune; to this man who writes to remind me that we are separated--your
ladyship must absolutely go and entreat him to give me another trial! It
is too much, grandmamma. Do please to let me stay where I am; and worry
me with no more schemes for my establishment in life. Be contented with
the happiness which you have secured for Clara Pulleyn and Barnes; and
leave me to take care of my poor father. Here I know I am doing right.
Here, at least, there is no such sorrow, and doubt, and shame, for me, as
my friends have tried to make me endure. There is my father's bell. He
likes me to be with him at breakfast and to read his paper to him."

"Stay a little, Ethel," cried the Countess, with a trembling voice. "I am
older than your father, and you owe me a little obedience--that is, if
children do owe any obedience to their parents nowadays. I don't know. I
am an old woman--the world perhaps has changed since my time; and it is
you who ought to command, I dare say, and we to follow. Perhaps I have
been wrong all through life, and in trying to teach my children to do as
I was made to do. God knows I have had very little comfort from them:
whether they did or whether they didn't. You and Frank I had set my heart
on; I loved you out of all my grandchildren--was it very unnatural that I
should wish to see you together? For that boy I have been saving money
these years past. He flies back to the arms of his mother, who has been
pleased to hate me as only such virtuous people can; who took away my own
son from me; and now his son--towards whom the only fault I ever
committed was to spoil him and be too fond of him. Don't leave me too, my
child. Let me have something that I can like at my years. And I like your
pride, Ethel, and your beauty, my dear; and I am not angry with your hard
words; and if I wish to see you in the place in life which becomes you--
do I do wrong? No. Silly girl! There--give me the little hand. How hot it
is! Mine is as cold as a stone--and shakes, doesn't it?--Eh! it was a
pretty hand once! What did Anne--what did your mother say to Frank's
letter.

"I did not show it to her," Ethel answered.

"Let me see it, my dear," whispered Lady Kew, in a coaxing way.

"There it is," said Ethel pointing to the fireplace, where there lay some
torn fragments and ashes of paper. It was the same fireplace at which
Clive's sketches had been burned.




CHAPTER XXXIX

Amongst the Painters


When Clive Newcome comes to be old, no doubt he will remember his Roman
days as amongst the happiest which fate ever awarded him. The simplicity
of the student's life there, the greatness and friendly splendour of the
scenes surrounding him, the delightful nature of the occupation in which
he is engaged, the pleasant company of comrades, inspired by a like
pleasure over a similar calling, the labour, the meditation, the holiday
and the kindly feast afterwards, should make the Art-students the
happiest of youth, did they but know their good fortune. Their work is
for the most part delightfully easy. It does not exercise the brain too
much, but gently occupies it, and with a subject most agreeable to the
scholar. The mere poetic flame, or jet of invention, needs to be lighted
up but very seldom, namely, when the young painter is devising his
subject, or settling the composition thereof. The posing of figures and
drapery; the dexterous copying of the line; the artful processes of
cross-hatching, of stumping, of laying on lights, and what not; the
arrangement of colour, and the pleasing operations of glazing and the
like, are labours for the most part merely manual. These, with the
smoking of a proper number of pipes, carry the student through his day's
work. If you pass his door you will very probably hear him singing at his
easel. I should like to know what young lawyer, mathematician, or
divinity scholar can sing over his volumes, and at the same time advance
with his labour? In every city where Art is practised there are old
gentlemen who never touched a pencil in their lives, but find the
occupation and company of artists so agreeable that they are never out of
the studios; follow one generation of painters after another; sit by with
perfect contentment while Jack is drawing his pifferaro, or Tom designing
his cartoon, and years afterwards when Jack is established in Newman
Street, and Tom a Royal Academician, shall still be found in their rooms,
occupied now by fresh painters and pictures, telling the youngsters,
their successors, what glorious fellows Jack and Tom were. A poet must
retire to privy places and meditate his rhymes in secret; a painter can
practise his trade in the company of friends. Your splendid chef d'ecole,
a Rubens or a Horace Vernet, may sit with a secretary reading to him; a
troop of admiring scholars watching the master's hand; or a company of
court ladies and gentlemen (to whom he addresses a few kind words now and
again) looking on admiringly; whilst the humblest painter, be he ever so
poor, may have a friend watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting
by with her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or talk or silence
cheering his labour.

Amongst all ranks and degrees of painters assembled at Rome, Mr. Clive
found companions and friends. The cleverest man was not the best artist
very often: the ablest artist not the best critic nor the best companion.
Many a man could give no account of the faculty within him, but achieved
success because he could not help it; and did, in an hour and without
effort, that which another could not effect with half a life's labour.
There were young sculptors who had never read a line of Homer, who took
on themselves nevertheless to interpret and continue the heroic Greek
art. There were young painters with the strongest natural taste for low
humour, comic singing, and Cyder-Cellar jollifications, who would imitate
nothing under Michael Angelo, and whose canvases teemed with tremendous
allegories of fates, furies, genii of death and battle. There were
long-haired lads who fancied the sublime lay in the Peruginesque manner,
and depicted saintly personages with crisp draperies, crude colours, and
haloes of gold-leaf. Our friend marked all these practitioners of Art
with their various oddities and tastes, and was welcomed in the ateliers
of all of them, from the grave dons and seniors, the senators of the
French and English Academy, down to the jovial students who railed at the
elders over their cheap cups at the Lepre. What a gallant, starving,
generous, kindly life, many of them led! What fun in their grotesque
airs, what friendship and gentleness in their poverty! How splendidly
Carlo talked of the marquis his cousin, and the duke his intimate friend!
How great Federigo was on the subject of his wrongs, from the Academy at
home, a pack of tradesmen who could not understand high art, and who had
never seen a good picture! With what haughtiness Augusto swaggered about
at Sir John's soirees, though he was known to have borrowed Fernando's
coat, and Luigi's dress-boots! If one or the other was ill, how nobly and
generously his companions flocked to comfort him, took turns to nurse the
sick man through nights of fever, contributed out of their slender means
to help him through his difficulty. Max, who loves fine dresses and the
carnival so, gave up a costume and a carriage so as to help Paul, when he
sold his picture (through the agency of Pietro, with whom he had
quarrelled, and who recommended him to a patron), gave a third of the
money back to Max, and took another third portion to Lazaro, with his
poor wife and children, who had not got a single order all that winter--
and so the story went on. I have heard Clive tell of two noble young
Americans who came to Europe to study their art; of whom the one fell
sick, whilst the other supported his penniless comrade, and out of
sixpence a day absolutely kept but a penny for himself, giving the rest
to his sick companion. "I should like to have known that good Samaritan,
Sir," our Colonel said, twirling his mustachios, when we saw him again,
and his son told him that story.

J. J., in his steady silent way, worked on every day, and for many hours
every day. When Clive entered their studio of a morning, he found J. J.
there, and there he left him. When the Life Academy was over, at night,
and Clive went out to his soirees, J. J. lighted his lamp and continued
his happy labour. He did not care for the brawling supper-parties of his
comrades; liked better to stay at home than to go into the world, and was
seldom abroad of a night except during the illness of Luigi before
mentioned, when J. J. spent constant evenings at the other's bedside.
J. J. was fortunate as well as skilful: people in the world took a liking
to the modest young man, and he had more than one order for pictures. The
Artists' Club, at the Lepre, set him down as close with his money; but a
year after he left Rome, Lazaro and his wife, who still remained there,
told a different tale. Clive Newcome, when he heard of their distress,
gave them something--as much as he could spare; but J. J. gave more, and
Clive was as eager in acknowledging and admiring his friend's generosity
as he was in speaking of his genius. His was a fortunate organisation
indeed. Study was his chief amusement. Self-denial came easily to him.
Pleasure, or what is generally called so, had little charm for him. His
ordinary companions were pure and sweet thoughts; his out-door enjoyment
the contemplation of natural beauty; for recreation, the hundred pleasant
dexterities and manipulations of his craft were ceaselessly interesting
to him: he would draw every knot in an oak panel, or every leaf in an
orange-tree, smiling, and taking a gay delight over the simple feats of
skill: whenever you found him he seemed watchful and serene, his modest
virgin-lamp always lighted and trim. No gusts of passion extinguished it;
no hopeless wandering in the darkness afterwards led him astray.
Wayfarers through the world, we meet now and again with such purity; and
salute it, and hush whilst it passes on.

We have it under Clive Newcome's own signature, that he intended to pass
a couple of years in Italy, devoting himself exclusively to the study of
his profession. Other besides professional reasons were working secretly
in the young man's mind, causing him to think that absence from England
was the best cure for a malady under which he secretly laboured. But
change of air may cure some sick people more speedily than the sufferers
ever hoped; and also it is on record, that young men with the very best
intentions respecting study, do not fulfil them, and are led away from
their scheme by accident, or pleasure, or necessity, or some good cause.
Young Clive worked sedulously two or three months at his vocation at
Rome, secretly devouring, no doubt, the pangs of sentimental
disappointment under which he laboured; and he drew from his models, and
he sketched round about everything that suited his pencil on both sides
of Tiber; and he laboured at the Life Academy of nights--a model himself
to other young students. The symptoms of his sentimental malady began to
abate. He took an interest in the affairs of Jack, and Tom, and Harry
round about him: Art exercised its great healing influence on his wounded
spirit, which to be sure had never given in. The meeting of the painters
at the Cafe Greco, and at their private houses, was very jovial,
pleasant, and lively. Clive smoked his pipe, drank his glass of Marsala,
sang his song, and took part in the general chorus as gaily as the
jolliest of the boys. He was the cock of the whole painting school, the
favourite of all; and to be liked by the people, you may be pretty sure
that we for our parts must like them.

Then, besides the painters, he had, as he has informed us, the other
society of Rome. Every winter there is a gay and pleasant English colony
in that capital, of course more or less remarkable for rank, fashion, and
agreeability with every varying year. In Clive's year some very pleasant
folks set up their winter quarters in the usual foreigners' resort round
about the Piazza di Spagna. I was amused to find, lately, looking over
the travels of the respectable M. de Poellnitz, that, a hundred and
twenty years ago, the same quarter, the same streets and palaces, scarce
changed from those days, were even then polite foreigners' resort. Of one
or two of the gentlemen Clive had made the acquaintance in the
hunting-field; others he had met during his brief appearance in the
London world. Being a youth of great personal agility, fitted thereby to
the graceful performance of polkas, etc.; having good manners, and good
looks, and good credit with Prince Poloni, or some other banker, Mr.
Newcome was thus made very welcome to the Anglo-Roman society; and as
kindly received in genteel houses, where they drank tea and danced the
galop, as in those dusky taverns and retired lodgings where his bearded
comrades, the painters held their meetings.

Thrown together every day, and night after night; flocking to the same
picture-galleries, statue-galleries, Pincian drives, and church
functions, the English colonists at Rome perforce became intimate, and in
many cases friendly. They have an English library where the various meets
for the week are placarded: on such a day the Vatican galleries are open:
the next is the feast of Saint So-and-so: on Wednesday there will be
music and vespers at the Sistine Chapel--on Thursday, the Pope will bless
the animals--sheep, horses, and what-not: and flocks of English
accordingly rush to witness the benediction of droves of donkeys. In a
word, the ancient city of the Caesars, the august fanes of the Popes,
with their splendour and ceremony, are all mapped out and arranged for
English diversion; and we run in a crowd to high mass at St. Peter's, or
to the illumination on Easter Day, as we run when the bell rings to the
Bosjesmen at Cremorne, or the fireworks at Vauxhall.

Running to see fireworks alone, rushing off to examine Bosjesmen by one's
self, is a dreary work: I should think very few men would have the
courage to do it unattended, and personally would not prefer a pipe in
their own rooms. Hence if Clive went to see all these sights, as he did,
it is to be concluded that he went in company; and if he went in company
and sought it, we may suppose that little affair which annoyed him at
Baden no longer tended to hurt his peace of mind very seriously. The
truth is, our countrymen are pleasanter abroad than at home; most
hospitable, kindly, and eager to be pleased and to please. You see a
family half a dozen times in a week in the little Roman circle, whom you
shall not meet twice in a season afterwards in the enormous London round.
When Easter is over and everybody is going away at Rome, you and your
neighbour shake hands, sincerely sorry to part: in London we are obliged
to dilute our kindness so that there is hardly any smack of the original
milk. As one by one the pleasant families dropped off with whom Clive had
spent his happy winter; as Admiral Freeman's carriage drove away, whose
pretty girls he had caught at St. Peter's kissing St. Peter's toe; as
Dick Denby's family ark appeared with all Denby's sweet young children
kissing farewells to him out of the window; as those three charming Miss
Baliols with whom he had that glorious day in the Catacombs; as friend
after friend quitted the great city with kind greetings, warm pressures
of the hand, and hopes of meeting in a yet greater city on the banks of
the Thames, young Clive felt a depression of spirit. Rome was Rome, but
it was pleasanter to see it in company; our painters are smoking still at
the Oafs Greco, but a society all smoke and all painters did not suit
him. If Mr. Clive is not a Michael Angelo or a Beethoven, if his genius
is not gloomy, solitary, gigantic, shining alone, like a lighthouse, a
storm round about him, and breakers dashing at his feet, I cannot help
myself: he is as Heaven made him, brave, honest, gay, and friendly, and
persons of a gloomy turn must not look to him as a hero.

So Clive and his companion worked away with all their hearts from
November until far into April when Easter came, and the glorious gala
with which the Roman Church celebrates that holy season. By this time
Clive's books were full of sketches. Ruins, imperial and mediaeval;
peasants and bagpipemen; Passionists with shaven polls; Capuchins and the
equally hairy frequenters of the Cafe Greco; painters of all nations who
resort there; Cardinals and their queer equipages and attendants; the
Holy Father himself (it was Gregory sixteenth of the name); the dandified
English on the Pincio and the wonderful Roman members of the hunt--were
not all these designed by the young man and admired by his friends in
after-days? J. J.'s sketches were few, but he had painted two beautiful
little pictures, and sold them for so good a price that Prince Polonia's
people were quite civil to him. He had orders for yet more pictures, and
having worked very hard, thought himself authorised to accompany Mr.
Clive upon a pleasure-trip to Naples, which the latter deemed necessary
after his own tremendous labours. He for his part had painted no
pictures, though he had commenced a dozen and turned them to the wall;
but he had sketched, and dined, and smoked, and danced, as we have seen.
So the little britzska was put behind horses again, and our two friends
set out on their tour, having quite a crowd of brother-artists to cheer
them, who had assembled and had a breakfast for the purpose at that
comfortable osteria near the Lateran Gate. How the fellows flung their
hats up, and shouted, "Lebe wohl," and "Adieu," and "God bless you, old
boy," in many languages! Clive was the young swell of the artists of that
year, and adored by the whole of the jolly company. His sketches were
pronounced on all hands to be admirable: it was agreed that if he chose
he might do anything.

So with promises of a speedy return they left behind them the noble city,
which all love who once have seen it, and of which we think afterwards
ever with the kindness and the regard of home. They dashed across the
Campagna and over the beautiful hills of Albano, and sped through the
solemn Pontine Marshes, and stopped to roost at Terracing (which was not
at all like Fra Diavolo's Terracing at Covent Garden, as J. J. was
distressed to remark), and so, galloping onwards through a hundred
ancient cities that crumble on the shores of the beautiful Mediterranean,
behold, on the second day as they ascended a hill about noon. Vesuvius
came in view, its great shape shimmering blue in the distant haze, its
banner of smoke in the cloudless sky. And about five o'clock in the
evening (as everybody will who starts from Terracing early and pays the
postboy well), the travellers came to an ancient city walled and
fortified, with drawbridges over the shining moats.

"Here is CAPUA," says J. J., and Clive burst out laughing: thinking of
his Capua which he had left--how many months--years it seemed ago! From
Capua to Naples is a fine straight road, and our travellers were landed
at the latter place at suppertime; where, if they had quarters at the
Vittoria Hotel, they were as comfortable as any gentlemen painters need
wish to be in this world.

The aspect of the place was so charming and delightful to Clive:--the
beautiful sea stretched before his eyes when waking, Capri a fairy island
in the distance, in the amethyst rocks of which Sirens might be playing--
that fair line of cities skirting the shore glittering white along the
purple water--over the whole brilliant scene Vesuvius rising with
cloudlets playing round its summit, and the country bursting out into
that glorious vegetation with which sumptuous nature decorates every
spring--this city and scene of Naples were so much to Clive's liking that
I have a letter from him dated a couple of days after the young man's
arrival, in which he announces his intention of staying there for ever,
and gives me an invitation to some fine lodgings in a certain palazzo, on
which he has cast his eye. He is so enraptured with the place, that he
says to die and be buried there even would be quite a treat, so charming
is the cemetery where the Neapolitan dead repose.

The Fates did not, however, ordain that Clive Newcome should pass all his
life at Naples. His Roman banker presently forwarded a few letters to his
address; some which had arrived after his departure, others which had
been lying at the Poste Restante, with his name written in perfectly
legible characters, but which the authorities of the post, according to
their custom, would not see when Clive sent for them.

It was one of these letters which Clive clutched the most eagerly. It had
been lying since October, actually, at the Roman post, though Clive had
asked for letters there a hundred times. It was that little letter from
Ethel, in reply to his own, whereof we have made mention in a previous
chapter. There was not much in the little letter. Nothing, of course,
that Virtue or Grandmamma might not read over the young writer's
shoulder. It was affectionate, simple, rather melancholy; described in a
few words Sir Brian's seizure and present condition; spoke of Lord Kew,
who was mending rapidly, as if Clive, of course, was aware of his
accident; of the children, of Clive's father, and ended with a hearty
"God bless you," to Clive, from his sincere Ethel.

"You boast of its being over. You see it is not over," says Clive's
monitor and companion. "Else, why should you have dashed at that letter
before all the others, Clive?" J. J. had been watching, not without
interest, Clive's blank face as he read the young lady's note.

"How do you know who wrote the letter?" asks Clive.

"I can read the signature in your face," says the other; "and I could
almost tell the contents of the note. Why have you such a tell-tale face,
Clive?"

"It is over; but when a man has once, you know, gone through an affair
like that," says Clive, looking very grave, "he--he's anxious to hear of
Alice Grey, and how she's getting on, you see, my good friend." And he
began to shout out as of old--

   "Her heart it is another's, she--never--can--be--mine;"

and to laugh at the end of the song. "Well, well," says he; "it is a very
kind note, a very proper little note; the expression elegant, J. J., the
sentiment is most correct. All the little t's most properly crossed, and
all the little i's have dots over their little heads. It's a sort of a
prize note, don't you see; and one such, as in the old spelling-book
story, the good boy received a plum-cake for writing. Perhaps you weren't
educated on the old spelling-book, J. J.? My good old father taught me to
read out of his--I say, I think it was a shame to keep the old boy
waiting whilst I have been giving an audience to this young lady. Dear
old father!" and he apostrophised the letter. "I beg your pardon, sir;
Miss Newcome requested five minutes' conversation, and I was obliged,
from politeness, you know, to receive. There's nothing between us;
nothing but what's most correct, upon my honour and conscience." And he
kissed his father's letter, and calling out again, "Dear old father!"
proceeded to read as follows:--

"'Your letters, my dearest Clive, have been the greatest comfort to me. I
seem to hear you as I read them. I can't but think that this, the modern
and natural style, is a great progress upon the old-fashioned manner of
my day, when we used to begin to our fathers, 'Honoured Father,' or even
'Honoured Sir' some precisians used to write still from Mr. Lord's
Academy, at Tooting, where I went before Grey Friars--though I suspect
parents were no more honoured in those days than nowadays. I know one who
had rather be trusted than honoured; and you may call me what you please,
so as you do that.

"'It is not only to me your letters give pleasure. Last week I took yours
from Baden Baden, No. 3, September 15, into Calcutta, and could not help
showing it at Government House, where I dined. Your sketch of the old
Russian Princess and her little boy, gambling, was capital. Colonel
Buckmaster, Lord Bagwig's private secretary, knew her, and says it is to
a T. And I read out to some of my young fellows what you said about play,
and how you had given it over. I very much fear some of the young rogues
are at dice and brandy-pawnee before tiffin. What you say of young
Ridley, I take cum grano. His sketches I thought very agreeable; but to
compare them to a certain gentleman's----Never mind, I shall not try to
make him think too well of himself. I kissed dear Ethel's hand in your
letter. I write her a long letter by this mail.

"'If Paul de Florac in any way resembles his mother, between you and him
there ought to be a very warm regard. I knew her when I was a boy, long
before you were born or thought of; and in wandering forty years through
the world since, I have seen no woman in my eyes so good or so beautiful.
Your cousin Ethel reminded me of her; as handsome, but not so lovely.
Yes, it was that pale lady you saw at Paris, with eyes full of care, and
hair streaked with grey. So it will be the turn of you young folks, come
eight more lustres, and your heads will be bald like mine, or grey like
Madame de Florac's, and bending over the ground where we are lying in
quiet. I understand from you that young Paul is not in very flourishing
circumstances. If he still is in need, mind and be his banker, and I will
be yours. Any child of hers must never want when I have a spare guinea. I
do not mind telling you, sir, that I cared for her more than millions of
guineas once; and half broke my heart about her when I went to India, as
a young chap. So, if any such misfortunes happen to you, consider, my
boy, you are not the only one.

"'Binnie writes me word that he has been ailing. I hope you are a good
correspondent with him. What made me turn to him just after speaking of
unlucky love affairs? Could I be thinking about little Rosie Mackenzie?
She is a sweet little lass, and James will leave her a pretty piece of
money. Verbum sap. I should like you to marry; but God forbid you should
marry for a million of gold mohurs.

"'And gold mohurs bring me to another subject. Do you know I narrowly
missed losing half a lakh of rupees which I had at an agent's here? And
who do you think warned me about him? Our friend Rummun Loll, who has
lately been in England, and with whom I made the voyage from Southampton.
He is a man of wonderful tact and observation. I used to think meanly of
the honesty of natives and treat them haughtily, as I recollect doing
this very gentleman at your Uncle Newcome's in Bryanstone Square. He
heaped coals of fire on my head by saving my money for me; and I have
placed it with interest in his house. If I would but listen to him, my
capital might be trebled in a year, he says, and the interest immensely
increased. He enjoys the greatest esteem among the moneyed men here;
keeps a splendid establishment and house here in Barrackpore; is princely
in his benefactions. He talks to me about the establishment of a bank, of
which the profits are so enormous and the scheme so (seemingly) clear,
that I don't know whether I mayn't be tempted to take a few shares. Nous
verrons. Several of my friends are longing to have a finger in it; but be
sure this, I shall do nothing rashly and without the very best advice.

"'I have not been frightened yet by your draughts upon me. Draw as many
of these as you please. You know I don't half like the other kind of
drawing, except as a delassement: but if you chose to be a weaver, like
my grandfather, I should not say you nay. Don't stint yourself of money
or of honest pleasure. Of what good is money, unless we can make those we
love happy with it? There would be no need for me to save, if you were to
save too. So, and as you know as well as I what our means are, in every
honest way use them. I should like you not to pass the whole of next year
in Italy, but to come home and pay a visit to honest James Binnie. I
wonder how the old barrack in Fitzroy Square looks without me? Try and go
round by Paris on your way home, and pay your visit, and carry your
father's fond remembrances to Madame la Comtesse de Florac. I don't say
remember me to my brother, as I write Brian by this mail. Adieu, mon
fils! je t'embrasse!--and am always my Clive's affectionate father,
                                                        T. N.'"

"Isn't he a noble old trump?" That point had been settled by the young
men any time these three years. And now Mr. J. J. remarked that when
Clive had read his father's letter once, then he read Ethel's over again,
and put it in his breast-pocket, and was very disturbed in mind that day,
pishing and pshawing at the statue-gallery which they went to see at the
Museo.

"After all," says Clive, "what rubbish these second-rate statues are!
what a great hulking abortion is this brute of a Farnese Hercules!
There's only one bit in the whole gallery that is worth a
twopenny-piece."

It was the beautiful fragment called Psyche. J. J. smiled as his comrade
spoke in admiration of this statue--in the slim shape, in the delicate
formation of the neck, in the haughty virginal expression, the Psyche is
not unlike the Diana of the Louvre--and the Diana of the Louvre we have
said was like a certain young lady.

"After all," continues Clive, looking up at the great knotted legs of
that clumsy caricatured porter which Glykon the Athenian sculptured in
bad times of art surely,--"she could not write otherwise than she did--
don't you see? Her letter is quite kind and affectionate. You see she
says she shall always hear of me with pleasure: hopes I'll come back
soon, and bring some good pictures with me, since pictures I will do. She
thinks small beer of painters, J. J.--well, we don't think small beer of
ourselves, my noble friend. I--I suppose it must be over by this time,
and I may write to her as the Countess of Kew." The custode of the
apartment had seen admiration and wonder expressed by hundreds of
visitors to his marble Giant: but he had never known Hercules occasion
emotion before, as in the case of the young stranger; who, after staring
a while at the statue, dashed his hand across his forehead with a groan,
and walked away from before the graven image of the huge Strongman, who
had himself been made such a fool by women.

"My father wants me to go and see James and Madame de Florac," says
Clive, as they stride down the street to the Toledo.

J. J. puts his arm through his companion's, which is deep the pocket of
his velvet paletot. "You must not go home till you hear it is over,
Clive," whispers J. J.

"Of course not, old boy," says the other, blowing tobacco out of his
shaking head.

Not very long after their arrival, we may be sure they went to Pompeii,
of which place, as this is not an Italian tour, but a history of Clive
Newcome, Esquire, and his most respectable family, we shall offer to give
no description. The young man had read Sir Bulwer Lytton's delightful
story, which has become the history of Pompeii, before they came thither,
and Pliny's description, apud the Guide-Book. Admiring the wonderful
ingenuity with which the English writer had illustrated the place by his
text, as if the houses were so many pictures to which he had appended a
story, Clive, the wag, who was always indulging his vein for caricature,
was proposing that that they should take the same place, names, people,
and make a burlesque story: "What would be a better figure," says he,
"than Pliny's mother, whom the historian describes as exceedingly
corpulent, and walking away from the catastrophe with slaves holding
cushions behind her, to shield her plump person from the cinders! Yes,
old Mrs Pliny shall be my heroine!" says Clive. A picture of her on a
dark grey paper and touched up with red at the extremities, exists in
Clive's album to the present day.

As they were laughing, rattling, wondering, mimicking, the cicerone
attending them with his nasal twaddle, anon pausing and silent, yielding
to the melancholy pity and wonder which the aspect of that strange and
smiling place inspires,--behold they come upon another party of English,
two young men accompanying a lady.

"What, Clive!" cries one.

"My dear, dear Lord Kew!" shouts the other; and as the young man rushes
up and grasps the two hands of the other, they begin to blush----

Lord Kew and his family resided in a neighbouring hotel on the Chiafa at
Naples; and that very evening on returning from the Pompeian excursion,
the two painters were invited to take tea by those friendly persons. J.
J. excused himself, and sate at home drawing all night. Clive went, and
passed a pleasant evening; in which all sorts of future tours and
pleasure-parties were projected by the young men. They were to visit
Paestum, Capri, Sicily; why not Malta and the East? asked Lord Kew.

Lady Walham was alarmed. Had not Kew been in the East already? Clive was
surprised and agitated too. Could Kew think of going to the East, and
making long journeys when he had--he had other engagements that would
necessitate his return home? No, he must not go to the East, Lord Kew's
mother avowed; Kew had promised to stay with her during the summer at
Castellammare, and Mr. Newcome must come and paint their portraits there
--all their portraits. She would like to have an entire picture-gallery
of Kews, if her son would remain at home during the sittings.

At an early hour Lady Walham retired to rest, exacting Clive's promise to
come to Castellammare; and George Barnes disappeared to array himself in
an evening costume, and to pay his round of visits as became a young
diplomatist. This part of diplomatic duty does not commence until after
the opera at Naples; and society begins when the rest of the world has
gone to bed.

Kew and Clive sate till one o'clock in the morning, when the latter
returned to his hotel. Not one of those fine parties at Paestum, Sicily,
etc. was carried out. Clive did not go to the East at all, and it was J.
J, who painted Lord Kew's portrait that summer at Castellammare. The next
day Clive went for his passport to the embassy; and a steamer departing
direct for Marseilles on that very afternoon, behold Mr. Newcome was on
board of her; Lord Kew and his brother and J. J. waving their hats to him
as the vessel left the shore.

Away went the ship cleaving swiftly through the azure waters; but not
swiftly enough for Clive. J. J. went back with a sigh to his sketchbook
and easels. I suppose the other young disciple of Art had heard something
which caused him to forsake his sublime mistress for one who was much
more capricious and earthly.




CHAPTER XL

Returns from Rome to Pall Mall


One morning in the month of July, when there was actually sunshine in
Lamb Court, and the two gentlemen who occupied the third-floor chambers
there in partnership, were engaged, as their custom was, over their
pipes, and their manuscripts, and their Times newspaper, behold a fresh
sunshine burst into their room in the person of a young Clive, with a
bronzed face, and a yellow beard and mustachios, and those bright
cheerful eyes, the sight of which was always so welcome to both of us.
"What, Clive! What, the young one! What, Benjamin!" shout Pendennis and
Warrington. Clive had obtained a very high place indeed in the latter's
affections, so much so, that if I could have found it in my heart to be
jealous of such a generous brave fellow, I might have grudged him his
share of Warrington's regard. He blushed up with pleasure to see us
again. Pidgeon, our boy, introduced him with a jubilant countenance; and
Flanagan, the laundress, came smirking out of the bedroom, eager to get a
nod of recognition from him, and bestow a smile of welcome upon
everybody's favourite, Clive.

In two minutes an arm-chair full of magazines, slips of copy, and books
for review, was emptied over the neighbouring coal-scuttle, and Clive was
in the seat, a cigar in his mouth, as comfortable as if he had never been
away. When did he come? Last night. He was back in Charlotte Street, at
his old lodgings: he had been to breakfast in Fitzroy Square that
morning; James Binnie chirped for joy at seeing him. His father had
written to him desiring him to come back and see James Binnie; pretty
Miss Rosey was very well, thank you: and Mrs. Mack? Wasn't Mrs. Mackenzie
delighted to behold him? "Come, sir, on your honour and conscience,
didn't the widow give you a kiss on your return?" Clive sends an uncut
number of the Pall Mall Gazette flying across the room at the head of the
inquirer; but blushes as sweetly, that I have very little doubt some such
pretty meeting had taken place.

What a pity it is he had not been here a short while since for a marriage
in high life, to give away his dear Barnes, and sign the book, along with
the other dignitaries! We described that ceremony to him, and announced
the promotion of his friend, Florac, now our friend also, Director of the
Great Anglo-Gallic Railway, the Prince de Moncontour. Then Clive told us
of his deeds during the winter; of the good fun he had had at Rome, and
the jolly fellows he had met there. Was he going to astonish the world by
some grand pictures? He was not. The more he worked, the more
discontented he was with his performances somehow: but J. J. was coming
out very strong, J. J. was going to be a stunner. We turned with pride
and satisfaction to that very number of the Pall Mall Gazette which the
youth had flung at us, and showed him a fine article by F. Bayham, Esq.,
in which the picture sent home by J. J. was enthusiastically lauded by
the great critic.

So he was back amongst us, and it seemed but yesterday he had quitted us.
To Londoners everything seems to have happened but yesterday; nobody has
time to miss his neighbour who goes away. People go to the Cape, or on a
campaign, or on a tour round the world, or to India, and return with a
wife and two or three children, and we fancy it was only the other day
they left us, so engaged is every man in his individual speculations,
studies, struggles; so selfish does our life make us:--selfish but not
ill-natured. We are glad to see an old friend, though we do not weep when
he leaves us. We humbly acknowledge, if fate calls us away likewise, that
we are no more missed than any other atom.

After talking for a while, Mr. Clive must needs go into the City, whither
I accompanied him. His interview with Messrs. Jolly and Baines, at the
house in Fog Court, must have been very satisfactory; Clive came out of
the parlour with a radiant countenance. "Do you want any money, old boy?"
says he; "the dear old governor has placed a jolly sum to my account, and
Mr. Baines has told me how delighted Mrs. Baines and the girls will be to
see me at dinner. He says my father has made a lucky escape out of one
house in India, and a famous investment in another. Nothing could be more
civil; how uncommonly kind and friendly everybody is in London!
Everybody!" Then bestowing ourselves in a hansom cab, which had probably
just deposited some other capitalist in the City, we made for the West
End of the town, where Mr. Clive had some important business to transact
with his tailors. He discharged his outstanding little account with easy
liberality, blushing as he pulled out of his pocket a new chequebook,
page 1 of which he bestowed on the delighted artist. From Mr. B.'s shop
to Mr. Truefitt's. is but a step. Our young friend was induced to enter
the hairdresser's, and leave behind him a great portion of the flowing
locks and the yellow beard, which he had brought with him from Rome. With
his mustachios he could not be induced to part; painters and cavalry
officers having a right to those decorations. And why should not this
young fellow wear smart clothes, and a smart moustache, and look
handsome, and take his pleasure, and bask in his sun when it shone? Time
enough for flannel and a fire when the winter comes; and for grey hair
and cork-soled boots in the natural decline of years.

Then we went to pay a visit at a hotel in Jermyn Street to our friend
Florac who was now magnificently lodged there. A powdered giant lolling in
the hall, his buttons emblazoned with prodigious coronets, took our cards
up to the Prince. As the door of an apartment on the first floor opened,
we heard a cry as of joy; and that nobleman in a magnificent Persian
dressing-gown, rushing from the room, plunged down the stairs, and began
kissing Clive, to the respectful astonishment of the Titan in livery.

"Come that I present you, my friends," our good little Frenchman
exclaimed "to Madame la--to my wife!" We entered the drawing-room; a
demure little little lady, of near sixty years of age, was seated there,
and we were presented in form to Madame Princesse de Moncontour, nee
Higg, of Manchester. She made us a stiff little curtsey, but looked not
ill-natured; indeed, few women could look at Clive Newcome's gallant
figure and brave smiling countenance and keep a frown on their own very
long.

"I have 'eard of you from somebodys else besides the Prince," said the
lady, with rather a blush "Your uncle has spoke to me hoften about you,
Mr. Clive, and about your good father."

"C'est son Directeur," whispers Florac to me. I wondered which of the
firm of Newcome had taken that office upon him.

"Now you are come to England," the lady continued (whose Lancashire
pronunciation being once indicated, we shall henceforth, out of respect
to the Princess's rank generally pretermit),--"now you are come to
England we hope to see you often. Not here in this noisy hotel, which I
can't bear, but in the country. Our house is only three miles from
Newcome--not such a grand place as your uncle's; but I hope we shall see
you there a great deal, and your friend Mr Pendennis, if he is passing
that way." The invitation to Mr. Pendennis, I am bound to say, was given
in terms by no means so warm as those in which the Princess's hospitality
to Clive were professed.

"Shall we meet you at your Huncle 'Obson's?" the lady continued to Clive;
"his wife is a most charming, well-informed woman, has been most kind and
civil and we dine there to-day. Barnes and his wife is gone to spend the
honeymoon at Newcome. Lady Clara is a sweet dear thing, and her pa and ma
most affable, I am sure. What a pity Sir Brian couldn't attend the
marriage! There was everybody there in London, a'most. Sir Harvey Diggs
says he is mending very slowly. In life we are in death, Mr. Newcome!
Isn't it sad to think of him, in the midst of all his splendour and
prosperity, and he so infirm and unable to enjoy them! But let us hope
for the best, and that his health will soon come round!"

With these and similar remarks, in which poor Florac took but a very
small share (for he seemed dumb and melancholy in the company of the
Princess, his elderly spouse), the visit sped on. Mr. Pendennis, to whom
very little was said, having leisure to make his silent observations upon
the person to whom he had been just presented.

As there lay on the table two neat little packages, addressed "The
Princess de Moncontour"--an envelope to the same address, with "The
Prescription, No. 9396," further inscribed on the paper, and a sheet of
notepaper, bearing cabalistic characters, and the signature of that most
fashionable physician, Sir Harvey Diggs, I was led to believe that the
lady of Moncontour was, or fancied herself, in a delicate state of
health. By the side of the physic for the body was medicine for the soul
--a number of pretty little books in middle-age bindings, in antique type
many of theist, adorned with pictures of the German school, representing
demure ecclesiastics, with their heads on one side, children in long
starched nightgowns, virgins bearing lilies, and so forth, from which it
was to be concluded that the owner of the volumes was not so hostile to
Rome as she had been at an earlier period of her religious life; and that
she had migrated (in spirit) from Clapham to Knightsbridge--so many
wealthy mercantile families have likewise done in the body. A long strip
of embroidery, of the Gothic pattern, furthermore betrayed her present
inclinations; and the person observing these things, whilst nobody was
taking any notice of him, was amused when the accuracy of his conjectures
was confirmed by the reappearance of the gigantic footman, calling out
"'Oneyman," in a loud voice, and preceding that divine into the room.

"C'est le Directeur. Venez fumer dans ma chambre, Pen," growled Florac as
Honeyman came sliding over the carpet, his elegant smile changing to a
blush when he beheld Clive, his nephew, seated by the Princess's side.
This, then, was the uncle who had spoken about Clive and his father to
Madame de Florac. Charles seemed in the best condition. He held out two
bran-new lavender-coloured kid gloves to shake hands with his dear Clive;
Florac and Mr. Pendennis vanished out of the room as he appeared, so that
no precise account can be given of this affecting interview.

When I quitted the hotel, a brown brougham, with a pair of beautiful
horses, the harness and panels emblazoned with the neatest little ducal
coronets you ever saw, and a cypher under each crown as easy to read as
the arrow-headed inscriptions on one of Mr. Layard's Assyrian chariots,
was in waiting, and I presumed that Madame la Princesse was about to take
an airing.

Clive had passed the avuncular banking-house in the City, without caring
to face his relatives there. Mr. Newcome was now in sole command, Mr.
Barnes being absent at Newcome, the Baronet little likely ever to enter
bank-parlour again. But his bounden duty was to wait on the ladies; and
of course, only from duty's sake, he went the very first day and called
in Park Lane.

"The family was habsent ever since the marriage simminery last week," the
footman, who had accompanied the party to Baden, informed Clive when he
opened the door, and recognised that gentleman. "Sir Brian pretty well,
thank you, sir. The family was at Brighting. That is Miss Newcome is in
London staying with her grandmamma in Queen Street, Mayfear, sir." The
varnished doors closed upon Jeames within; the brazen knockers grinned
their familiar grin at Clive, and he went down the blank steps
discomfited. Must it be owned that he went to a Club, and looked in the
Directory for the number of Lady Kew's house in Queen Street? Her
ladyship had a furnished house for the season. No such noble name to be
found among the inhabitants of Queen Street.

Mr. Hobson was from home; that is, Thomas had orders not to admit
strangers on certain days, or before certain hours; so that Aunt Hobson
saw Clive without being seen by the young man. I cannot say how much he
regretted that mischance. His visits of propriety were thus all paid; and
he went off to dine dutifully with James Binnie, after which meal he came
to a certain rendezvous given to him by some bachelors friends for the
evening.

James Binnie's eyes lightened up with pleasure on beholding his young
Clive; the youth, obedient to his father's injunction, had hastened to
Fitzroy Square immediately after taking possession of his old lodgings--
his, during the time of his absence. The old properties and carved
cabinets, the picture of his father looking melancholy out of the canvas,
greeted Clive strangely on the afternoon of his arrival. No wonder he was
glad to get away from a solitude peopled with a number of dismal
recollections, to the near hospitality of Fitzroy Square and his guardian
and friend there.

James had not improved in health during Clive's ten months' absence. He
had never been able to walk well, or take his accustomed exercise, after
his fall. He was no more used to riding than the late Mr. Gibbon, whose
person James's somewhat resembled, and of whose philosophy our Scottish
friend was an admiring scholar. The Colonel gone, James would have
arguments with Mr. Honeyman over their claret, bring down the famous XVth
and XVIth chapters of the Decline and Fall upon him, and quite get the
better of the clergyman. James, like many other sceptics, was very
obstinate, and for his part believed that almost all parsons had as much
belief as the Roman augurs in their ceremonies. Certainly, poor Honeyman,
in their controversies, gave up one article after another, flying from
James's assault; but the battle over, Charles Honeyman would pick up
these accoutrements which he had flung away in his retreat, wipe them
dry, and put them on again.

Lamed by his fall, and obliged to remain much within doors, where certain
society did not always amuse him, James Binnie sought excitement in the
pleasures of the table, partaking of them the more freely now that his
health could afford them the less. Clive, the sly rogue, observed a great
improvement in the commissariat since his good father's time, ate his
dinner with thankfulness, and made no remarks. Nor did he confide to us
for a while his opinion that Mrs. Mack bored the good gentleman most
severely; that he pined away under her kindnesses; sneaked off to bis
study-chair and his nap; was only too glad when some of the widow's
friends came, or she went out; seeming to breathe more freely when she
was gone, and drink his wine more cheerily when rid of the intolerable
weight of her presence.

I protest the great ills of life are nothing--the loss of your fortune is
a mere flea-bite; the loss of your wife--how many men have supported it
and married comfortably afterwards? It is not what you lose, but what you
have daily to bear that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel, after a
long easy life of bachelorhood, than to have to sit day after day with a
dull, handsome woman opposite; to have to answer her speeches about the
weather, housekeeping and what not; to smile appropriately when she is
disposed to be lively (that laughing at the jokes is the hardest part),
and to model your conversation so as to suit her intelligence, knowing
that a word used out of its downright signification will not be
understood by your  fair breakfast-maker. Women go through this simpering
and smiling life, and bear it quite easily. Theirs is a life of
hypocrisy. What good woman does not laugh at her husband's or father's
jokes and stories time after time, and would not laugh at breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, if he told them? Flattery is their nature--to coax,
flatter and sweetly befool some one is every woman's business. She is
none if she declines this office. But men are not provided with such
powers of humbug or endurance--they perish and pine away miserably when
bored--or they shrink off to the club or public-house for comfort. I want
to say as delicately as I can, and never liking to use rough terms
regarding a handsome woman, that Mrs. Mackenzie, herself being in the
highest spirits and the best humour, extinguished her half-brother, James
Binnie, Esq.; that she was as a malaria to him, poisoning his atmosphere,
numbing his limbs, destroying his sleep--that day after day as he sate
down at breakfast, and she levelled commonplaces at her dearest James,
her dearest James became more wretched under her. And no one could see
what his complaint was. He called in the old physicians at the Club. He
dosed himself with poppy, and mandragora and blue pill--lower and lower
went poor James's mercury. If he wanted to move to Brighton or
Cheltenham, well and good. Whatever were her engagements, or whatever
pleasures darling Rosey might have in store, dear thing!--at her age, my
dear Mrs. Newcome, would not one do all to make a young creature happy?--
under no circumstances could I think of leaving my poor brother.

Mrs. Mackenzie thought herself a most highly principled woman, Mrs.
Newcome had also a great opinion of her. These two ladies had formed a
considerable friendship in the past months, the captain's widow having an
unaffected reverence for the banker's lady and thinking her one of the
best informed and most superior women in the world. When she had a high
opinion of a person Mrs. Mack always wisely told it. Mrs. Newcome in her
turn thought Mrs. Mackenzie a very clever, agreeable, ladylike woman,--
not accomplished, but one could not have everything. "No, no, my dear,"
says simple Hobson, "never would do to have every woman as clever as you
are, Maria. Women would have it all their own way then."

Maria, as her custom was, thanked God for being so virtuous and clever,
and graciously admitted Mrs. and Miss Mackenzie into the circle of
adorers of that supreme virtue and talent. Mr. Newcome took little Rosey
and her mother to some parties. When any took place in Bryanstone Square,
they were generally allowed to come to tea.

When on the second day of his arrival the dutiful Clive went to dine with
Mr. James, the ladies, in spite of their raptures at his return and
delight at seeing him, were going in the evening to his aunt. Their talk
was about the Princess all dinner-time. The Prince and Princess were to
dine in Bryanstone Square. The Princess had ordered such and such things
at the jeweller's--the Princess would take rank over an English Earl's
daughter--over Lady Anne Newcome, for instance. "Oh, dear! I wish the
Prince and Princess were smothered in the Tower," growled James Binnie;
"since you have got acquainted with 'em I have never heard of anything
else."

Clive, like a wise man, kept his counsel about the Prince and Princess,
with whom we have seen that he had had the honour of an interview that
very day. But after dinner Rosey came round and whispered to her mamma,
and after Rosey's whisper mamma flung her arms round Rosey's neck and
kissed her, and called her a thoughtful darling. "What do you think this
creature says, Clive?" says Mrs. Mack, still holding her darling's little
hand. "I wonder I had not thought of it myself."

"What is it, Mrs. Mackenzie?" asks Clive, laughing.

"She says why should not you come to your aunt's with us? We are sure
Mrs. Newcome would be most happy to see you"

Rosey, with a little hand put to mamma's mouth, said, "Why did you tell?
--you naughty mamma! Isn't she a naughty mamma, Uncle James?" More kisses
follow after this sally, of which Uncle James receives one with perfect
complacency: mamma crying out as Rosey retires to dress, "That darling
child is always thinking of others--always!"

Clive says, "he will sit and smoke a cheroot with Mr. Binnie, if they
please." James's countenance falls. "We have left off that sort of thing
here, my dear Clive, a long time," cries Mrs. Mackenzie, departing from
the dining-room.

"But we have improved the claret, Clive, my boy!" whispers Uncle James.
"Let us have another bottle, and we will drink to the dear Colonel's good
health and speedy return--God bless him! I say, Clive, Tom seems to have
had a most fortunate escape out of Winter's house--thanks to our friend
Rummun Loll, and to have got into a capital good thing with this
Bundelcund bank. They speak famously of it at Hanover Square, and I see
the Hurkara quotes the shares at a premium already."

Clive did not know anything about the Bundelcund bank, except a few words
found in a letter from his father, which he had in the City this morning,
"and an uncommonly liberal remittance the governor has sent me home,
sir." Upon which they fill another bumper to the Colonel's health.

Mamma and Rosey come and show their pretty pink dresses before going to
Mrs. Newcome's, and Clive lights a cigar in the hall--and isn't there a
jubilation at the Haunt when the young fellow's face appears above the
smoke-clouds there?




CHAPTER XLI

An Old Story


Many of Clive's Roman friends were by this time come to London, and the
young man renewed his acquaintance with them, and had speedily a
considerable circle of his own. He thought fit to allow himself a good
horse or two, and appeared in the Park among other young dandies. He and
Monsieur de Moncontour were sworn allies. Lord Fareham, who had purchased
J. J.'s picture, was Clive's very good friend: Major Pendennis himself
pronounced him to be a young fellow of agreeable manners, and very
favourably vu (as the Major happened to know) in some very good quarters.

Ere many days Clive had been to Brighton to see Lady Anne and Sir Brian,
and good Aunt Honeyman, in whose house the Baronet was lodged: and I
suppose he found out, by some means or other, where Lady Kew lived in
Mayfair.

But her ladyship was not at home, nor was she at home on the second day,
nor did there come any note from Ethel to her cousin. She did not ride in
the Park as of old. Clive, bien vu as he was, did not belong to that
great world as yet, in which he would be pretty sure to meet her every
night at one of those parties where everybody goes. He read her name in
the paper morning after morning, as having been present at Lady This's
entertainment and Lady That's ministerial reunion. At first he was too
shy to tell what the state of the case was, and took nobody into his
confidence regarding his little tendre.

There he was riding through Queen Street, Mayfair, attired in splendid
raiment: never missing the Park; actually going to places of worship in
the neighbourhood; and frequenting the opera--a waste of time which one
would never have expected in a youth of his nurture. At length a certain
observer of human nature remarking his state, rightly conjectured that he
must be in love, and taxed him with the soft impeachment--on which the
young man, no doubt anxious to open his heart to some one, poured out all
that story which has before been narrated; and told how he thought his
passion cured, and how it was cured; but when he heard from Kew at Naples
that the engagement was over between him and Miss Newcome, Clive found
his own flame kindle again with new ardour. He was wild to see her. He
dashed off from Naples instantly on receiving the news that she was free.
He had been ten days in London without getting a glimpse of her. "That
Mrs. Mackenzie bothers me so I hardly know where to turn," said poor
Clive, "and poor little Rosey is made to write me a note about something
twice a day. She's a good dear little thing--little Rosey--and I really
had thought once of--of--oh, never mind that! Oh, Pen! I'm up another
tree now! and a poor miserable young beggar I am!" In fact, Mr. Pendennis
was installed as confidant, vice J. J.--absent on leave.

This is a part, which, especially for a few days, the present biographer
has always liked well enough. For a while, at least, I think almost every
man or woman is interesting when in love. If you know of two or three
such affairs going on in any soiree to which you may be invited--is not
the party straightway amusing? Yonder goes Augustus Tomkins, working his
way through the rooms to that far corner where demure Miss Hopkins is
seated, to whom the stupid grinning Bumpkins thinks he is making himself
agreeable. Yonder sits Miss Fanny distraite, and yet trying to smile as
the captain is talking his folly the parson his glib compliments. And
see, her face lights up all of a sudden: her eyes beam with delight at
the captain's stories, and at that delightful young clergyman likewise.
It is because Augustus has appeared; their eyes only meet for one
semi-second, but that is enough for Miss Fanny. Go on, captain, with your
twaddle!--Proceed, my reverend friend, with your smirking commonplaces!
In the last two minutes the world has changed for Miss Fanny. That moment
has come for which she has been fidgeting and longing and scheming all
day! How different an interest, I say, has a meeting of people for a
philosopher who knows of a few such little secrets, to that which your
vulgar looker-on feels who comes but to eat the ices, and stare at the
ladies' dresses and beauty! There are two frames of mind under which
London society is bearable to a man--to be an actor in one of those
sentimental performances above hinted at; or to be a spectator and watch
it. But as for the mere dessus de cartes--would not an arm-chair and the
dullest of books be better than that dull game?

So I not only became Clive's confidant in this affair, but took a
pleasure in extracting the young fellow's secrets from him, or rather in
encouraging him to pour them forth. Thus was the great part of the
previous tale revealed to me: thus Jack Belsize's misadventures, of the
first part of which we had only heard in London (and whither he returned
presently to be reconciled to his father, after his elder brother's
death). Thus my Lord Kew's secret history came into my possession; let us
hope for the public's future delectation, and the chronicler's private
advantage. And many a night until daylight did appear has poor Clive
stamped his chamber or my own, pouring his story out to me, his griefs
and raptures; recalling, in his wild young way, recollections of Ethel's
sayings and doings; uttering descriptions of her beauty, and raging
against the cruelty which she exhibited towards him.

As soon as the new confidant heard the name of the young lover's charmer,
to do Mr. Pendennis justice, he endeavoured to fling as much cold water
upon Clive's flame as a small private engine could be brought to pour on
such a conflagration. "Miss Newcome! my dear Clive," says the confidant,
"do you know what you are aspiring to? For the last three months Miss
Newcome has been the greatest lioness in London: the reigning beauty
winning the horse: the first favourite out of the whole Belgravian harem.
No young woman of this year has come near her: those of past seasons she
has distanced and utterly put to shame. Miss Blackcap, Lady Blanch
Blackcap's daughter, was (as perhaps you are not aware) considered by her
mamma the great beauty of last season; and it was considered rather
shabby of the young Marquis of Farintosh to leave town without offering
to change Miss Blackcap's name. Heaven bless you! this year Farintosh
will not look at Miss Blackcap! He finds people at home when (ha! I see
you wince, my suffering innocent!)--when he calls in Queen Street; yes,
and Lady Kew, who is one of the cleverest women in England, will listen
for hours to Lord Farintosh's conversation; than whom the Rotten Row of
Hyde Park cannot show a greater booby. Miss Blackcap may retire, like
Jephthah's daughter, for all Farintosh will relieve her. Then, my dear
fellow, there were, as possibly you do not know, Lady Hermengilde and
Lady Yseult, Lady Rackstraw's lovely twins, whose appearance created such
a sensation at Lady Hautbois' first--was it her first or was it her
second?--yes, it was her second--breakfast. Whom weren't they going to
marry? Crackthorpe as mad, they said, about both.--Bustington, Sir John
Fobsby, the young Baronet with the immense Northern property--the Bishop
of Windsor was actually said to be smitten with one of them, but did not
like to offer, as her present M--y, like Qu--n El-z-b-th of gracious
memory, is said to object to bishops, as bishops, marrying. Where is
Bustington? Where is Crackthorpe? Where is Fobsby, the young Baronet of
the North? My dear fellow, when those two girls come into a room now,
they make no more sensation than you or I. Miss Newcome has carried their
admirers away from them: Fobsby has actually, it is said, proposed for
her: and the real reason of that affair between Lord Bustington and
Captain Crackthorpe of the Royal Horse Guards Green, was a speech of
Bustington's, hinting that Miss Newcome had not behaved well in throwing
Lord Kew over. Don't you know what old Lady Kew will do with this girl,
Clive? She will marry Miss Newcome to the best man. If a richer and
better parti than Lord Farintosh presents himself--then it will be
Farintosh's turn to find that Lady Kew is not at home. Is there any young
man in the Peerage unmarried and richer than Farintosh? I forget. Why
does not some one publish a list of the young male nobility and
baronetage, their names, weights, and probable fortunes? I don't mean for
the matrons of Mayfair--they have the list by heart and study it in
secret--but for young men in the world; so that they may know what their
chances are, and who naturally has the pull over them. Let me see--there
is young Lord Gaunt, who will have a great fortune, and is desirable
because you know his father is locked up--but he is only ten years old--
no--they can scarcely bring him forward as Farintosh's rival.

"You look astonished, my poor boy? You think it is wicked in me to talk
in this brutal way about bargain and sale; and say that your heart's
darling is, at this minute, being paced up and down the Mayfair market to
be taken away by the best bidder. Can you count purses with Sultan
Farintosh? Can you compete even with Sir John Fobsby of the North? What I
say is wicked and worldly, is it? So it is; but it is true, as true as
Tattersall's--as true as Circassia or Virginia. Don't you know that the
Circassian girls are proud of their bringing up, and take rank according
to the prices which they fetch? And you go and buy yourself some new
clothes, and a fifty-pound horse, and put a penny rose in your
button-hole, and ride past her window, and think to win this prize? Oh,
you idiot! A penny rosebud! Put money in your purse. A fifty-pound hack
when a butcher rides as good a one!--Put money in your purse. A brave
young heart, all courage and love and honour! Put money in thy purse--
t'other coin don't pass in the market--at least, where old Lady Kew has
the stall."

By these remonstrances, playful though serious, Clive's adviser sought to
teach him wisdom about his love affair; and the advice was received as
advice upon those occasions usually is.

After calling thrice and writing to Miss Newcome, there came a little
note from that young lady, saying, "Dear Clive,--We were so sorry we were
out when you called. We shall be at home to-morrow at lunch, when Lady
Kew hopes you will come, and see yours ever, E. N."

Clive went--poor Clive! He had the satisfaction of shaking Ethel's hand
and a finger of Lady Kew; of eating a mutton-chop in Ethel's presence; of
conversing about the state of art at Rome with Lady Kew, and describing
the last works of Gibson and Macdonald. The visit lasted but for half an
hour. Not for one minute was Clive allowed to see Ethel alone. At three
o'clock Lady Kew's carriage was announced, and our young gentleman rose
to take his leave, and had the pleasure of seeing the most noble Peer,
Marquis of Farintosh and Earl of Rossmont, descend from his lordship's
brougham and enter at Lady Kew's door, followed by a domestic bearing a
small stack of flowers from Covent Garden.

It befell that the good-natured Lady Fareham had a ball in these days;
and meeting Clive in the Park, her lord invited him to the entertainment.
Mr. Pendennis had also the honour of a card. Accordingly Clive took me up
at Bays's, and we proceeded to the ball together.

The lady of the house, smiling upon all her guests, welcomed with
particular kindness her young friend from Rome. "Are you related to the
Miss Newcome, Lady Anne Newcome's daughter? Her cousin? She will be here
to-night." Very likely Lady Fareham did not see Clive wince and blush at
this announcement, her ladyship having to occupy herself with a thousand
other people. Clive found a dozen of his Roman friends in the room,
ladies young and middle-aged, plain and handsome, all glad to see his
kind face. The house was splendid; the ladies magnificently dressed; the
ball beautiful, though it appeared a little dull until that event took
place whereof we treated two pages back (in the allegory of Mr. Tomkins
and Miss Hopkins), and Lady Kew and her granddaughter made their
appearance.

That old woman, who began to look more and more like the wicked fairy of
the stories, who is not invited to the Princess's Christening Feast, had
this advantage over her likeness, that she was invited everywhere; though
how she, at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a
fairy, no one could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the
most noble Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his
lordship. Ethel seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the
Marquis had sent to her. The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I
need scarcely tell the reader, is the heir of the house of Podbury), the
Baronet of the North, the gallant Crackthorpe, the first men in town, in
a word, gathered round the young beauty, forming her court; and little
Dick Hitchin, who goes everywhere, you may be sure was near her with a
compliment and a smile. Ere this arrival, the twins had been giving
themselves great airs in the room--the poor twins! when Ethel appeared
they sank into shuddering insignificance, and had to put up with the
conversation and attentions of second-rate men, belonging to second-rate
clubs in heavy dragoon regiments. One of them actually walked with a
dancing barrister; but he was related to a duke, and it was expected the
Lord Chancellor would give him something very good.

Before he saw Ethel, Clive vowed he was aware of her. Indeed, had not
Lady Fareham told him Miss Newcome was coming? Ethel, on the contrary,
not expecting him, or not having the prescience of love, exhibited signs
of surprise when she beheld him, her eyebrows arching, her eyes darting
looks of pleasure. When grandmamma happened to be in another room, she
beckoned Clive to her, dismissing Crackthorpe and Fobsby, Farintosh and
Bustington, the amorous youth who around her bowed, and summoning Mr.
Clive to an audience with the air of a young princess.

And so she was a princess; and this the region of her special dominion.
The wittiest and handsomest, she deserved to reign in such a place, by
right of merit and by general election. Clive felt her superiority, and
his own shortcomings: he came up to her as to a superior person. Perhaps
she was not sorry to let him see how she ordered away grandees and
splendid Bustingtons, informing them, with a superb manner, that she
wished to speak to her cousin--that handsome young man with the light
moustache yonder.

"Do you know many people? This is your first appearance in society? Shall
I introduce you to some nice girls to dance with?" What very pretty
buttons!"

"Is that what you wanted to say?" asked Clive, rather bewildered.

"What does one say at a ball? One talks conversation suited to the place.
If I were to say to Captain Crackthorpe, 'What pretty buttons!' he would
be delighted. But you--you have a soul above buttons, I suppose."

"Being, as you say, a stranger in this sort of society, you see I am not
accustomed to--to the exceeding brilliancy of its conversation," said
Clive.

"What! you want to go away, and we haven't seen each other for near a
year!" cries Ethel, in quite a natural voice. "Sir John Fobsby, I'm very
sorry--but do let me off this dance. I have just met my cousin, whom I
have not seen for a whole year, and I want to talk to him."

"It was not my fault that you did not see me sooner. I wrote to you that
I only got your letter a month ago. You never answered the second I wrote
you from Rome. Your letter lay there at the post ever so long, and was
forwarded to me at Naples."

"Where?" asked Ethel.

"I saw Lord Kew there." Ethel was smiling with all her might, and kissing
her hand to the twins, who passed at that moment with their mamma. "Oh,
indeed, you saw--how do you do?--Lord Kew."

"And, having seen him, I came over to England," said Clive.

Ethel looked at him, gravely. "What am I to understand by that, Clive?--
You came over because it was very hot at Naples, and because you wanted
to see your friends here, n'est-ce pas? How glad mamma was to see you!
You know she loves you as if you were her own son."

"What, as much as that angel, Barnes!" cries Clive, bitterly;
"impossible."

Ethel looked once more. Her present mood and desire was to treat Clive as
a chit, as a young fellow without consequence--a thirteenth younger
brother. But in his looks and behaviour there was that which seemed to
say not too many liberties were to be taken with him.

"Why weren't you here a month sooner, and you might have seen the
marriage? It was a very pretty thing. Everybody was there. Clara, and so
did Barnes really, looked quite handsome."

"It must have been beautiful," continued Clive; "quite a touching sight,
I am sure. Poor Charles Belsize could not be present because his brother
was dead; and----"

"And what else, pray, Mr. Newcome!" cries Miss, in great wrath, her pink
nostrils beginning to quiver. "I did not think, really, that when we met
after so many months, I was to be insulted; yes, insulted, by the mention
of that name."

"I most humbly ask pardon," said Clive, with a grave bow. "Heaven forbid
that I should wound your sensibility, Ethel! It is, as you say, my first
appearance in society. I talk about things or persons that I should not
mention. I should talk about buttons, should I? which you were good
enough to tell me was the proper subject of conversation. Mayn't I even
speak of connexions of the family? Mr. Belsize, through this marriage,
has the honour of being connected with you; and even I, in a remote
degree, may boast of a sort of an ever--so--distant cousinship with him.
What an honour for me!"

"Pray, what is the meaning of all this?" cries Miss Ethel, surprised, and
perhaps alarmed. Indeed, Clive scarcely knew. He had been chafing all the
while he talked with her; smothering anger as he saw the young men round
about her; revolting against himself for the very humility of his
obedience, and angry at the eagerness and delight with which he had come
at her call.

"The meaning is, Ethel"--he broke out, seizing the opportunity--"that
when a man comes a thousand miles to see you, and shake your hand, you
should give it him a little more cordially than you choose to do to me;
that when a kinsman knocks at your door, time after time, you should try
and admit him; and that when you meet him you should treat him like an
old friend not as you treated me when my Lady Kew vouchsafed to give me
admittance; not as you treat these fools that are fribbling round about
you," cries Mr. Clive, in a great rage, folding his arms, and glaring
round on a number of the most innocent young swells; and he continued
looking as if he would like to knock a dozen of their heads together. "Am
I keeping Miss Newcome's admirers from her?"

"That is not for me to say," she said, quite gently. He was; but to see
him angry did not displease Miss Newcome.

"That young man who came for you just now," Clive went on--"that Sir
John----"

"Are you angry with me because I sent him away?" said Ethel, putting out
a hand. "Hark! there is the music. Take me in and waltz with me. Don't
you know it is not my door at which you knocked?" she said, looking up
into his face as simply and kindly as of old. She whirled round the
dancing-room with him in triumph, the other beauties dwindling before
her: she looked more and more beautiful with each rapid move of the
waltz, her colour heightening and her eyes seeming to brighten. Not till
the music stopped did she sink down on a seat, panting, and smiling
radiant--as many many hundred years ago I remember to have seen Taglioni
after a conquering pas seul.  She nodded a "thank you" to Clive. It
seemed that there was a perfect reconciliation. Lady Kew came in just at
the end of the dance, scowling when she beheld Ethel's partner; but in
reply to her remonstrances, Ethel shrugged her fair shoulders, with a
look which seemed to say je le veux, gave an arm to her grandmother, an
walked off, saucily protecting her.

Clive's friend had been looking on observingly and curiously as the scene
between them had taken place, and at the dance with which the
reconciliation had been celebrated. I must tell you that this arch young
creature had formed the object of my observation for some months past,
and that I watched her as I have watched a beautiful panther at the
Zoological Gardens, so bright of eye, so sleek of coat, so slim in form,
so sweet and agile in her spring.

A more brilliant young coquette than Miss Newcome, in her second season,
these eyes never looked upon, that is the truth. In her first year, being
engaged to Lord Kew, she was perhaps a little more reserved and quiet.
Besides, her mother went out with her that first season, to whom Miss
Newcome except for a little occasional flightiness, was invariably
obedient and ready to come to call. But when Lady Kew appeared as her
duenna, the girl's delight seemed to be to plague the old lady, and she
would dance with the very youngest sons merey to put grandmamma in a
passion. In this way poor young Cubley (who has two hundred a year of
allowance, besides eighty, and an annual rise of five in the Treasury)
actually thought that Ethel was in love with him, and consulted with the
young men in his room in Downing Street, whether two hundred and eighty a
year, with five pound more next year, would be enough for them to keep
house on? Young Tandy of the Temple, Lord Skibbereen's younger son, who
sate in the House for some time on the Irish Catholic side, was also
deeply smitten, and many a night in our walks home from the parties at
the other end of the town, would entertain me with his admiration and
passion for her.

"If you have such a passion for her, why not propose?" it was asked of
Mr. Tandy.

"Propose! propose to a Russian Archduchess," cries young Tandy. "She's
beautiful, she's delightful, she's witty. I have never seen anything like
her eyes; they send me wild--wild," says Tandy--(slapping his waistcoat
under Temple Bar)--"but a more audacious little flirt never existed since
the days of Cleopatra."

With this opinion likewise in my mind, I had been looking on during
Clive's proceedings with Miss Ethel--not, I say, without admiration of
the young lady who was leading him such a dance. The waltz over, I
congratulated him on his own performance. His Continental practice had
greatly improved him. "And as for your partner, it is delightful to see
her," I went on. "I always like to be by when Miss Newcome dances. I had
sooner see her than anybody since Taglioni. Look at her now, with her
neck up, and her little foot out, just as she is preparing to start!
Happy Lord Bustington!"

"You are angry with her because she cut you," growls Clive. "You know you
said she cut you, or forgot you; and your vanity's wounded, that is why
you are so satirical."

"How can Miss Newcome remember all the men who are presented to her?"
says the other. "Last year she talked to me because she wanted to know
about you. This year she doesn't talk: because I suppose she doesn't want
to know about you any more."

"Hang it. Do--on't, Pen," cries Clive, as a schoolboy cries out to
another not to hit him.

"She does not pretend to observe: and is in full conversation with the
amiable Bustington. Delicious interchange of noble thoughts! But she is
observing us talking, and knows that we are talking about her. If ever
you marry her, Clive, which is absurd, I shall lose you for a friend. You
will infallibly tell her what I think of her: and she will order you to
give me up." Clive had gone off in a brown study, as his interlocutor
continued. "Yes, she is a flirt. She can't help her nature. She tries to
vanquish every one who comes near her. She is a little out of breath from
waltzing, and so she pretends to be listening to poor Bustington, who is
out of breath too, but puffs out his best in order to make himself
agreeable, with what a pretty air she appears to listen! Her eyes
actually seem to brighten."

"What?" says Clive, with a start.

I could not comprehend the meaning of the start: nor did I care much to
know: supposing that the young man was waking up from some lover's
reverie: and the evening sped away, Clive not quitting the ball until
Miss Newcome and the Countess of Kew had departed. No further
communication appeared to take place between the cousins that evening. I
think it was Captain Crackthorpe who gave the young lady an arm into her
carriage; Sir John Fobsby having the happiness to conduct the old
Countess, and carrying the pink bag for the shawls, wrappers, etc., on
which her ladyship's coronet and initials are emblazoned. Clive may have
made a movement as if to step forward, but a single finger from Miss
Newcome warned him back.

Clive and his two friends in Lamb Court had made an engagement for the
next Saturday to dine at Greenwich; but on the morning of that day there
came a note from him to say that he thought of going down to see his
aunt, Miss Honeyman, and begged to recall his promise to us. Saturday is
a holiday with gentlemen of our profession. We had invited F. Bayham,
Esquire, and promised ourselves a merry evening, and were unwilling to
baulk ourselves of the pleasure on account of the absence of our young
Roman. So we three went to London Bridge Station at an early hour,
proposing to breathe the fresh air of Greenwich Park before dinner. And,
at London Bridge, by the most singular coincidence, Lady Kew's carriage
drove up to the Brighton entrance, and Miss Ethel and her maid stepped
out of the brougham.

When Miss Newcome and her maid entered the Brighton station, did Mr.
Clive, by another singular coincidence, happen also to be there? What
more natural and dutiful than that he should go and see his aunt, Miss
Honeyman? What more proper than that Miss Ethel should pass the Saturday
and Sunday with her sick father; and take a couple of wholesome nights'
rest after those five weary past evenings, for each of which we may
reckon a couple of soirees and a ball? And that relations should travel
together, the young lady being protected by her femme-de-chambre; that
surely, as every one must allow, was perfectly right and proper.

That a biographer should profess to know everything which passes, even in
a confidential talk in a first-class carriage between two lovers, seems
perfectly absurd; not that grave historians do not pretend to the same
wonderful degree of knowledge--reporting meetings of the most occult of
conspirators; private interviews between monarchs and their ministers,
even the secret thoughts and motives of those personages, which possibly
the persons themselves did not know;--all for which the present writer
will pledge his known character for veracity is, that on a certain day
certain parties had a conversation, of which the upshot was so-and-so. He
guesses, of course, at a great deal of what took place; knowing the
characters, and being informed at some time of their meeting. You do not
suppose that I bribed the femme-de-chambre, or that those two City gents,
who sate in the same carriage with our young friends, and could not hear
a word they said, reported their talk to me? If Clive and Ethel had had a
coupe to themselves, I would yet boldly tell what took place, but the
coupe was taken by other three young City gents who smoked the whole way.

"Well, then," the bonnet begins close up to the hat, "tell me, sir, is it
true that you were so very much epris of the Miss Freemans at Rome; and
that afterwards you were so wonderfully attentive to the third Miss
Baliol? Did you draw her portrait? You know you drew her portrait. You
painters always pretend to admire girls with auburn hair, because Titian
and Raphael painted it. Has the Fornarina red hair? Why, we are at
Croydon, I declare!"

"The Fornarina"--the hat replies to the bonnet, "if that picture at the
Borghese Palace be an original, or a likeness of her--is not a
handsome woman, with vulgar eyes and mouth, and altogether a most
mahogany-coloured person. She is so plain, in fact, I think that very
likely it is the real woman; for it is with their own fancies that men
fall in love,--or rather every woman is handsome to the lover. You know
how old Helen must have been."

"I don't know any such thing, or anything about her. Who was Helen?" asks
the bonnet; and indeed she did not know.

"It's a long story, and such an old scandal now, that there is no use in
repeating it," says Clive.

"You only talk about Helen because you wish to turn away the conversation
from Miss Freeman," cries the young lady--"from Miss Baliol, I mean."

"We will talk about whichever you please. Which shall we begin to pull to
pieces?" says Clive. You see, to be in this carriage--to be actually with
her--to be looking into those wonderful lucid eyes--to see her sweet
mouth dimpling, and hear her sweet voice ringing with its delicious
laughter--to have that hour and a half his own, in spite of all the
world-dragons, grandmothers, convenances, the future--made the young
fellow so happy, filled his whole frame and spirit with a delight so
keen, that no wonder he was gay, and brisk, and lively.

"And so you knew of my goings-on?" he asked. O me! they were at Reigate
by this time; there was Gatton Park flying before them on the wings of
the wind.

"I know of a number of things," says the bonnet, nodding with ambrosial
curls.

"And you would not answer the second letter I wrote to you?

"We were in great perplexity. One cannot be always answering young
gentlemen's letters. I had considerable doubt about answering a note I
got from Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square," says the lady's chapeau. "No,
Clive, we must not write to one another," she continued more gravely, "or
only very, very seldom. Nay, my meeting you here to-day is by the merest
chance, I am sure; for when I mentioned at Lady Fareham's the other
evening that I was going to see papa at Brighton to-day, I never for one
moment thought of seeing you in the train. But as you are here, it can't
be helped; and I may as well tell you that there are obstacles."

"What, other obstacles?" Clive gasped out.

"Nonsense--you silly boy! No other obstacles but those which always have
existed, and must. When we parted--that is, when you left us at Baden,
you knew it was for the best. You had your profession to follow, and
could not go on idling about--about a family of sick people and children.
Every man has his profession, and you yours, as you would have it. We are
so nearly allied that we may--we may like each other like brother and
sister almost. I don't know what Barnes would say if he heard me!
Wherever you and your father are, how can I ever think of you but--but
you know how? I always shall, always. There are certain feelings we have
which I hope never can change; though, if you please, about them I intend
never to speak any more. Neither you nor I can alter our conditions, but
must make the best of them. You shall be a fine clever painter; and I,--
who knows what will happen to me? I know what is going to happen to-day;
I am going to see papa and mamma, and be as happy as I can till Monday
morning."

"I know what I wish would happen now," said Clive,--they were going
screaming through a tunnel.

"What?" said the bonnet in the darkness: and the engine was roaring so
loudly, that he was obliged to put his head quite close to say--

"I wish the tunnel would fall in and close upon us, or that we might
travel on for ever and ever."

Here there was a great jar of the carriage, and the lady's-maid, and I
think Miss Ethel, gave a shriek. The lamp above was so dim that the
carriage was almost totally dark. No wonder the lady's-maid was
frightened! but the daylight came streaming in, and all poor Clive's
wishes of rolling and rolling on for ever were put an end to by the
implacable sun in a minute.

Ah, why was it the quick train? Suppose it had been the parliamentary
train?--even that too would have come to an end. They came and said,
"Tickets, please," and Clive held out the three of their party--his, and
Ethel's, and her maid's. I think for such a ride as that he was right to
give up Greenwich. Mr. Kuhn was in waiting with a carriage for Miss
Ethel. She shook hands with Clive, returning his pressure.

"I may come and see you?" he said.

"You may come and see mamma--yes."

"And where are you staying?"

"Bless my soul--they were staying at Miss Honeyman's!" Clive burst into a
laugh. Why, he was going there too! Of course Aunt Honeyman had no room
for him, her house being quite full with the other Newcomes.

It was a most curious coincidence their meeting; but altogether Lady Anne
thought it was best to say nothing about the circumstance to grandmamma.
I myself am puzzled to say which would have been the better course to
pursue under the circumstances; there were so many courses open. As they
had gone so far, should they go on farther together? Suppose they were
going to the same house at Brighton, oughtn't they to have gone in the
same carriage, with Kuhn and the maid of course? Suppose they met by
chance at the station, ought they to have travelled in separate
carriages? I ask any gentleman and father of a family, when he was
immensely smitten with his present wife, Mrs. Brown, if he had met her
travelling with her maid, in the mail, when there was a vacant place,
what would he himself have done?




CHAPTER XLII

Injured Innocence


From Clive Newcome, Esq., to Lieut.-Col. Newcome, C.B.

"Brighton, June 12, 18--.

"My Dearest Father,--As the weather was growing very hot at Naples, and
you wished I should come to England to see Mr. Binnie, I came
accordingly, and have been here three weeks, and write to you from Aunt
Honeyman's parlour at Brighton, where you ate your last dinner before
embarking for India. I found your splendid remittance calling in Fog
Court, and have invested a part of the sum in a good horse to ride, upon
which I take my diversion with other young dandies in the Park. Florac is
in England, but he has no need of your kindness. Only think! he is Prince
de Moncontour now, the second title of the Duc d'Ivry's family; and M. le
Comte de Florac is Duc d'Ivry in consequence of the demise of t'other old
gentleman. I believe the late duke's wife shortened his life. Oh, what a
woman! She caused a duel between Lord Kew and a Frenchman, which has in
its turn occasioned all sorts of evil and division in families, as you
shall hear.

"In the first place, in consequence of the duel and of incompatibility of
temper, the match between Kew and E. N. has been broken off. I met Lord
Kew at Naples with his mother and brother, nice quiet people as you would
like them. Kew's wound and subsequent illness have altered him a good
deal. He has become much more serious than he used to be; not ludicrously
so at all, but he says he thinks his past life has been useless and even
criminal, and he wishes to change it. He has sold his horses, and sown
his wild oats. He has turned quite a sober quiet gentleman.

"At our meeting he told me of what had happened between him and Ethel, of
whom he spoke most kindly and generously, but avowing his opinion that
they never could have been happy in married life. And now I think my dear
old father will see that there may be another reason besides my desire to
see Mr. Binnie, which has brought me tumbling back to England again. If
need be to speak, I never shall have, I hope, any secrets from you. I
have not said much about one which has given me the deuce's disquiet for
ten months past, because there was no good in talking about it, or vexing
you needlessly with reports of my griefs and woes.

"Well, when we were at Baden in September last, and E. and I wrote those
letters in common to you, I dare say you can fancy what my feelings might
have been towards such a beautiful young creature, who has a hundred
faults, for which I love her just as much as for the good that is in her.
I became dreadfully smitten indeed, and knowing that she was engaged to
Lord Kew, I did as you told me you did once when the enemy was too strong
for you--I ran away. I had a bad time of it for two or three months. At
Rome, however, I began to take matters more easily, my naturally fine
appetite returned, and at the end of the season I found myself uncommonly
happy in the society of the Miss Baliols and the Miss Freemans; but when
Kew told me at Naples of what had happened, there was straightway a fresh
eruption in my heart, and I was fool enough to come almost without sleep
to London in order to catch a glimpse of the bright eyes of E. N.

"She is now in this very house upstairs with one aunt, whilst the other
lets lodgings to her. I have seen her but very seldom indeed since I came
to London, where Sir Brian and Lady Anne do not pass the season, and
Ethel goes about to a dozen parties every week with old Lady Kew, who
neither loves you nor me. Hearing E. say she was coming down to her
parents at Brighton, I made so bold as to waylay her at the train (though
I didn't tell her that I passed three hours in the waiting-room); and we
made the journey together, and she was very kind and beautiful; and
though I suppose I might just as well ask the Royal Princess to have me,
I can't help hoping and longing and hankering after her. And Aunt
Honeyman must have found out that I am fond of her, for the old lady has
received me with a scolding. Uncle Charles seems to be in very good
condition again. I saw him in full clerical feather--at Madame de
Moncontour's, a good-natured body who drops her h's, though Florac is not
aware of their absence. Pendennis and Warrington, I know, would send you
their regards. Pen is conceited, but much kinder in reality than he has
the air of being. Fred Bayham is doing well, and prospering in his
mysterious way.

"Mr. Binnie is not looking at all well: and Mrs. Mack--well, as I know
you never attack a lady behind her lovely back, I won't say a word of
Mrs. Mack--but she has taken possession of Uncle James, and seems to me
to weigh upon him somehow. Rosey is as pretty and good-natured as ever,
and has learned two new songs; but you see, with my sentiments in another
quarter, I feel as it were guilty and awkward in company of Rosey and her
mamma. They have become the very greatest friends with Bryanstone Square,
and Mrs. Mack is always citing Aunt Hobson as the most superior of women,
in which opinion, I daresay, Aunt Hobson concurs.

"Good-bye, my dearest father; my sheet is full; I wish I could put my arm
in yours and pace up and down the pier with you, and tell you more and
more. But you know enough now, and that I am your affectionate son
always,                                             C. N."

In fact, when Mr. Clive appeared at Steyne Gardens stepping out of the
fly, and handing Miss Ethel thence, Miss Honeyman of course was very glad
to see her nephew, and saluted him with a little embrace to show her
sense of pleasure at his visit. But the next day, being Sunday, when
Clive, with a most engaging smile on his countenance, walked over to
breakfast from his hotel, Miss Honeyman would scarcely speak to him
during the meal, looked out at him very haughtily from under her Sunday
cap, and received his stories about Italy with "Oh! ah! indeed!" in a
very unkind manner. And when breakfast was over, and she had done washing
her age chins, she fluttered up to Clive with such an agitation of
plumage, redness of craw, and anger of manner, as a maternal hen shows if
she has reason to think you menace her chickens. She fluttered up to
Clive, I say, and cried out, "Not in this house, Clive,--not in this
house, I beg you to understand that!"

Clive, looking amazed, said, "Certainly not, ma'am; I never did do it in
the house, as I know you don't like it. I was going into the Square." The
young man meaning that he was about to smoke, and conjecturing that his
aunt's anger applied to that practice.

"You know very well what I mean, sir! Don't try to turn me off in that
highty-tighty way. My dinner to-day is at half-past one. You can dine or
not as you like," and the old lady flounced out of the room.

Poor Clive stood rolling his cigar in sad perplexity of spirit, until
Mrs. Honeyman's servant Hannah entered, who, for her part, grinned and
looked particularly sly. "In the name of goodness, Hannah, what is the
row about?" cries Mr. Clive. "What is my aunt scolding at? What are you
grinning at, you old Cheshire cat?"

"Git long, Master Clive," says Hannah, patting the cloth.

"Get along! why get along, and where am I to get along to?"

"Did 'ee do ut really now, Master Clive?" cries Mrs. Honeyman's
attendant, grinning with the utmost good-humour. "Well, she be as pretty
a young lady as ever I saw; and as I told my missis, 'Miss Martha,' says
I, 'there's a pair on 'em.' Though missis was mortal angry to be sure.
She never could bear it."

"Bear what? you old goose!" cries Clive, who by these playful names had
been wont to designate Hannah these twenty years past.

"A young gentleman and a young lady a kissing of each other in the
railway coach," says Hannah, jerking up with her finger to the ceiling,
as much as to say, "There she is! Lar, she be a pretty young creature,
that she be! and so I told Miss Martha." Thus differently had the news
which had come to them on the previous night affected the old lady and
her maid.

The news was, that Miss Newcome's maid (a giddy thing from the county,
who had not even learned as yet to hold her tongue) had announced with
giggling delight to Lady Anne's maid, who was taking tea with Mrs. Hicks,
that Mr. Clive had given Miss Ethel a kiss in the tunnel, and she
supposed it was a match. This intelligence Hannah Hicks took to her
mistress, of whose angry behaviour to Clive the next morning you may now
understand the cause.

Clive did not know whether to laugh or to be in a rage. He swore that he
was as innocent of all intention of kissing Miss Ethel as of embracing
Queen Elizabeth. He was shocked to think of his cousin, walking above,
fancy-free in maiden meditation, whilst this conversation regarding her
was carried on below. How could he face her, or her mother, or even her
maid, now he had cognisance of this naughty calumny? "Of course Hannah
had contradicted it?" "Of course I have a done no such indeed," replied
Master Clive's old friend; "of course I have set 'em down a bit; for when
little Trimmer said it, and she supposed it was all settled between you,
seeing how it had been a going on in foreign parts last year, Mrs.
Pincott says, 'Hold your silly tongue, Trimmer,' she says; 'Miss Ethel
marry a painter, indeed, Trimmer!' says she, 'while she has refused to be
a Countess,' she says; 'and can be a Marchioness any day, and will be a
Marchioness. Marry a painter, indeed!' Mrs. Pincott says; 'Trimmer, I'm
surprised at your impidence.' So, my dear, I got angry at that," Clive's
champion continued, "and says I, if my young master ain't good enough for
any young lady in this world, says I, I'd like you to show her to me: and
if his dear father, the Colonel, says I, ain't as good as your old
gentleman upstairs, says I, who has gruel and dines upon doctor's stuff,
the Mrs. Pincott, says I, my name isn't what it is, says I. Those were my
very words, Master Clive, my dear; and then Mrs. Pincott says, Mrs.
Hicks, she says, you don't understand society, she says; you don't
understand society, he! he!" and the country lady, with considerable
humour, gave an imitation of the town lady's manner.

At this juncture Miss Honeyman re-entered the parlour, arrayed in her
Sunday bonnet, her stiff and spotless collar, her Cashmere shawl, and
Agra brooch, and carrying her Bible and Prayer-Book each stitched in its
neat cover of brown silk. "Don't stay chattering here, you idle woman,"
she cried to her attendant with extreme asperity. "And you, sir, if you
wish to smoke your cigar, you had best walk down to the cliff where the
Cockneys are!" she added, glowering at Clive.

"Now I understand it all," Clive said, trying to deprecate her anger. "My
dear good aunt, it's a most absurd mistake; upon my honour, Miss Ethel is
as innocent as you are."

"Innocent or not, this house is not intended for assignations, Clive! As
long as Sir Brian Newcome lodges here, you will be pleased to keep away
from it, sir; and though I don't approve of Sunday travelling, I think
the very best thing you can do is to put yourself in the train and go
back to London."

And now, young people, who read my moral pages, you will see how highly
imprudent it is to sit with your cousins in railway carriages; and how,
though you may not mean the slightest harm in the world, a great deal may
be attributed to you; and how, when you think you are managing your
little absurd love-affairs ever so quietly, Jeames and Betsy in the
servants'-hall are very likely talking about them, and you are putting
yourself in the power of those menials. If the perusal of these lines has
rendered one single young couple uncomfortable, surely my amiable end is
answered, and I have written not altogether in vain.

Clive was going away, innocent though he was, yet quivering under his
aunt's reproof, and so put out of countenance that he had not even
thought of lighting the great cigar which he stuck into his foolish
mouth; when a shout of "Clive! Clive!" from half a dozen little voices
roused him, and presently as many little Newcomes came toddling down the
stairs, and this one clung round his knees, and that at the skirts of his
coat, and another took his hand and said, he must come and walk with them
on the beach.

So away went Clive to walk with his cousins, and then to see his old
friend Miss Cann, with whom and the elder children he walked to church,
and issuing thence greeted Lady Anne and Ethel (who had also attended the
service) in the most natural way in the world.

While engaged in talking with these, Miss Honeyman came out of the sacred
edifice, crisp and stately in the famous Agra brooch and Cashmere shawls.
The good-natured Lady Anne had a smile and a kind word for her as for
everybody. Clive went up to his maternal aunt to offer his arm. "You must
give him up to us for dinner, Miss Honeyman, if you please to be so very
kind. He was so good-natured in escorting Ethel down," Lady Anne said.

"Hm! my lady," says Miss Honeyman, perking her head up in her collar.
Clive did not know whether to laugh or not, but a fine blush illuminated
his countenance. As for Ethel, she was and looked perfectly unconscious.
So, rustling in her stiff black silk, Martha Honeyman walked with her
nephew silent by the shore of the much-sounding sea. The idea of
courtship, of osculatory processes, of marrying and giving in marriage,
made this elderly virgin chafe and fume, she never having, at any period
of her life, indulged in any such ideas or practices, and being angry
against them, as childless wives will sometimes be angry and testy
against matrons with their prattle about their nurseries. Now, Miss Cann
was a different sort of spinster, and loved a bit of sentiment with all
her heart from which I am led to conclude--but, pray, is this the history
of Miss Cann or of the Newcomes?

All these Newcomes then entered into Miss Honeyman's house, where a
number of little knives and forks were laid for them. Ethel was cold and
thoughtful; Lady Anne was perfectly good-natured as her wont was. Sir
Brian came in on the arm of his valet presently, wearing that look of
extra neatness which invalids have, who have just been shaved and combed,
and made ready by their attendants to receive company. He was voluble:
though there was a perceptible change in his voice: he talked chiefly of
matters which had occurred forty years ago, and especially of Clive's own
father, when he was a boy, in a manner which interested the young man and
Ethel. "He threw me down in a chaise--sad chap--always reading Orme's
History of India--wanted marry Frenchwoman. He wondered Mrs. Newcome
didn't leave Tom anything--'pon my word, quite s'prise." The events of
to-day, the House of Commons, the City, had little interest for him. All
the children went up and shook him by the hand, with awe in their looks,
and he patted their yellow heads vacantly and kindly. He asked Clive
(several times) where he had been? and said he himself had had a slight
'tack--vay slight--was getting well ev'y day--strong as a horse--go back
to Parliament d'rectly. And then he became a little peevish with Parker,
his man, about his broth. The man retired, and came back presently, with
profound bows and gravity, to tell Sir Brian dinner was ready, and he
went away quite briskly at this news, giving a couple of fingers to Clive
before he disappeared into the upper apartments. Good-natured Lady Anne
was as easy about this as about the other events of this world. In later
days, with what a strange feeling we remember that last sight we have of
the old friend; that nod of farewell, and shake of the hand, that last
look of the face and figure as the door closes on him, or the coach
drives away! So the roast mutton was ready, and all the children dined
very heartily.

The infantile meal had not been long concluded, when servants announced
"the Marquis of Farintosh;" and that nobleman made his appearance to pay
his respects to Miss Newcome and Lady Anne. He brought the very last news
of the very last party in London, where "Really, upon my honour, now, it
was quite a stupid party, because Miss Newcome wasn't there. It was now,
really."

Miss Newcome remarked, "If he said so upon his honour, of course she was
satisfied."

"As you weren't there," the young nobleman continued, "the Miss
Rackstraws came out quite strong; really they did now, upon my honour. It
was quite a quiet thing. Lady Merriborough hadn't even got a new gown on.
Lady Anne, you shirk London society this year, and we miss you: we
expected you to give us two or three things this season; we did now,
really. I said to Tufthunt, only yesterday, Why has not Lady Anne Newcome
given anything? You know Tufthunt? They say he's a clever fellow, and
that--but he's a low little beast, and I hate him."

Lady Anne said, "Sir Brian's bad state of health prevented her from going
out this season, or receiving at home."

"It don't prevent your mother from going out, though," continued my lord.
"Upon my honour, I think unless she got two or three things every night,
I think she'd die. Lady Kew's like one of those horses, you know, that
unless they go they drop."

"Thank you for my mother," said Lady Anne.

"She is, upon my honour. Last night I know she was at ever so many
places. She dined at the Bloxams', for I was there. Then she said she was
going to sit with old Mrs. Crackthorpe, who has broke her collar-bone
(that Crackthorpe in the Life Guards, her grandson, is a brute, and I
hope she won't leave him a shillin'); and then she came on to Lady
Hawkstone's, where I heard her say she had been at the--at the
Flowerdales', too. People begin to go to those Flowerdales'. Hanged--if I
know where they won't go next. Cotton-spinner, wasn't he?"

"So were we, my lord," says Miss Newcome.

"Oh, yes, I forgot! But you're of an old family--very old family."

"We can't help it," said Miss Ethel, archly. Indeed, she thought she was.

"Do you believe in the barber-surgeon?" asked Clive. And my lord looked
at him with a noble curiosity, as much as to say, "Who the deuce was the
barber-surgeon? and who the devil are you?"

"Why should we disown our family?" Miss Ethel said, simply. "In those
early days I suppose people did--did all sorts of things, and it was not
considered at all out of the way to be surgeon to William the Conqueror."

"Edward the Confessor," interposed Clive. "And it must be true, because I
have seen a picture of the barber-surgeon, a friend of mine, M'Collop,
did the picture, and I dare say it is for sale still"

Lady Anne said "she should be delighted to see it." Lord Farintosh
remembered that the M'Collop had the moor next to his in Argyleshire, but
did not choose to commit himself with the stranger, and preferred looking
at his own handsome face and admiring it in the glass until the last
speaker had concluded his remarks.

As Clive did not offer any further conversation, but went back to a
table, where he began to draw the barber-surgeon, Lord Farintosh resumed
the delightful talk. "What infernal bad glasses these are in these
Brighton lodging-houses! They make a man look quite green, really they
do--and there's nothing green in me, is there, Lady Anne?"

"But you look very unwell, Lord Farintosh; indeed you do," Miss Newcome
said, gravely. "I think late hours, and smoking, and going to that horrid
Platt's, where I dare say you go----"

"Go? Don't I? But don't call it horrid; really, now, don't call it
horrid!" cried the noble Marquis.

"Well--something has made you look far from well. You know how very well
Lord Farintosh used to look, mamma--and to see him now, in only his
second season--oh, it is melancholy!"

"God bless my soul, Miss Newcome! what do you mean? I think I look pretty
well," and the noble youth passed his hand through his hair. "It is a
hard life, I know; that tearin' about night after night, and sittin' up
till ever so much o'clock; and then all these races, you know, comin' one
after another--it's enough to knock up any fellow. I'll tell you what
I'll do, Miss Newcome. I'll go down to Codlington, to my mother; I will,
upon my honour, and lie quiet all July, and then I'll go to Scotland--and
you shall see whether I don't look better next season."

"Do, Lord Farintosh!" said Ethel, greatly amused, as much, perhaps, at
the young Marquis as at her cousin Clive, who sat whilst the other was
speaking, fuming with rage, at his table.

"What are you doing, Clive?" she asks.

"I was trying to draw; Lord knows who--Lord Newcome, who was killed at
the battle of Bosworth," said the artist, and the girl ran to look at the
picture.

"Why, you have made him like Punch!" cries the young lady.

"It's a shame caricaturing one's own flesh and blood, isn't it?" asked
Clive, gravely.

"What a droll, funny picture!" exclaims Lady Anne. "Isn't it capital,
Lord Farintosh?"

"I dare say--I confess I don't understand that sort of thing," says his
lordship. "Don't, upon my honour. There's Odo Carton, always making those
caricatures--I don't understand 'em. You'll come up to town to-morrow,
won't you? And you're goin' to Lady Hm's, and to Hm and Hm's, ain't you?"
(The names of these aristocratic places of resort were quite inaudible.)
"You mustn't let Miss Blackcap have it all her own way, you know, that
you mustn't."

"She won't have it all her own way," says Miss Ethel. "Lord Farintosh,
will you do me a favour? Lady Innishowan is your aunt?"

"Of course she is my aunt."

"Will you be so very good as to get a card for her party on Tuesday, for
my cousin, Mr. Clive Newcome? Clive, please be introduced to the Marquis
of Farintosh."

The young Marquis perfectly well recollected those mustachios and their
wearer on a former night, though he had not thought fit to make any sign
of recognition. "Anything you wish, Miss Newcome," he said; "delighted,
I'm sure;" and turning to Clive--In the army, I suppose?"

"I am an artist," says Clive, turning very red.

"Oh, really, I didn't know!" cries the nobleman; and my lord bursting out
laughing presently as he was engaged in conversation with Miss Ethel on
the balcony, Clive thought, very likely with justice, "He is making fun
of my mustachios. Confound him! I should like to pitch him over into the
street." But this was only a kind wish on Mr. Newcome's part; not
followed out by any immediate fulfilment.

As the Marquis of Farintosh seemed inclined to prolong his visit, and his
company was exceedingly disagreeable to Clive, the latter took his
departure for an afternoon walk, consoled to think that he should have
Ethel to himself at the evening's dinner, when Lady Anne would be
occupied about Sir Brian, and would be sure to be putting the children to
bed, and, in a word, would give him a quarter of an hour of delightful
tete-a-tete with the beautiful Ethel.

Clive's disgust was considerable when he came to dinner at length, and
found Lord Farintosh, likewise invited, and sprawling in the
drawing-room. His hopes of a tete-a-tete were over. Ethel and Lady Anne
and my lord talked, as all people will, about their mutual acquaintance:
what parties were coming off, who was going to marry whom, and so forth.
And as the persons about whom they conversed were in their own station of
life, and belonged to the fashionable world, of which Clive had but a
slight knowledge, he chose to fancy that his cousin was giving herself
airs, and to feel sulky and uneasy during their dialogue.

Miss Newcome had faults of her own, and was worldly enough as perhaps the
reader has begun to perceive; but in this instance no harm, sure, was to
be attributed to her. If two gossips in Aunt Honeyman's parlour had
talked over the affairs of Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown, Clive would not have
been angry; but a young man of spirit not unfrequently mistakes his
vanity for independence: and it is certain that nothing is more offensive
to us of the middle class than to hear the names of great folks
constantly introduced into conversation.

So Clive was silent and ate no dinner, to the alarm of Martha, who had
put him to bed many a time, and always had a maternal eye over him. When
he actually refused currant and raspberry tart, and custard, the chef
d'oeuvre of Miss Honeyman, for which she had seen him absolutely cry in
his childhood, the good Martha was alarmed.

"Law, Master Clive!" she said, "do 'ee eat some. Missis made it, you know
she did;" and she insisted on bringing back the tart to him.

Lady Anne and Ethel laughed at this eagerness on the worthy old woman's
part. "Do 'ee eat some, Clive," says Ethel, imitating honest Mrs. Hicks,
who had left the room.

"It's doosid good," remarked Lord Farintosh.

"Then do 'ee eat some more," said Miss Newcome: on which the young
nobleman, holding out his plate, observed with much affability, that the
cook of the lodgings was really a stunner for tarts.

"The cook! dear me, it's not the cook!" cries Miss Ethel. "Don't you
remember the princess in the Arabian Nights, who was such a stunner for
tarts, Lord Farintosh?"

Lord Farintosh couldn't say that he did.

"Well, I thought not; but there was a princess in Arabia or China, or
somewhere, who made such delicious tarts and custards that nobody's could
compare with them; and there is an old lady in Brighton who has the same
wonderful talent. She is the mistress of this house."

"And she is my aunt, at your lordship's service," said Mr. Clive, with
great dignity.

"Upon my honour! did you make 'em, Lady Anne?" asked my lord.

"The Queen of Hearts made tarts!" cried out Miss Newcome, rather eagerly,
and blushing somewhat.

"My good old aunt, Miss Honeyman, made this one," Clive would go on to
say.

"Mr. Honeyman's sister, the preacher, you know, where we go on Sunday,"
Miss Ethel interposed.

"The Honeyman pedigree is not a matter of very great importance," Lady
Anne remarked gently. "Kuhn, will you have the goodness to take away
these things? When did you hear of Colonel Newcome, Clive?"

An air of deep bewilderment and perplexity had spread over Lord
Farintosh's fine countenance whilst this talk about pastry had been going
on. The Arabian Princess, the Queen of Hearts making tarts, Miss
Honeyman? Who the deuce were all these? Such may have been his lordship's
doubts and queries. Whatever his cogitations were he did not give
utterance to them, but remained in silence for some time, as did the rest
of the little party. Clive tried to think he had asserted his
independence by showing that he was not ashamed of his old aunt; but the
doubt may be whether there was any necessity for presenting her in this
company, and whether Mr. Clive had not much better have left the tart
question alone.

Ethel evidently thought so: for she talked and rattled in the most lively
manner with Lord Farintosh for the rest of the evening, and scarcely
chose to say a word to her cousin. Lady Anne was absent with Sir Brian
and her children for the most part of the time: and thus Clive had the
pleasure of listening to Miss Newcome uttering all sorts of odd little
paradoxes, firing the while sly shots at Mr. Clive, and, indeed, making
fun of his friends, exhibiting herself in not the most agreeable light.
Her talk only served the more to bewilder Lord Farintosh, who did not
understand a tithe of her allusions: for Heaven, which had endowed the
young Marquis with personal charms, a large estate, an ancient title and
the pride belonging to it, had not supplied his lordship with a great
quantity of brains, or a very feeling heart.

Lady Anne came back from the upper regions presently, with rather a grave
face, and saying that Sir Brian was not so well this evening, upon which
the young men rose to depart. My lord said he had "a most delightful
dinner and a most delightful tart, 'pon his honour," and was the only one
of the little company who laughed at his own remark. Miss Ethel's eyes
flashed scorn at Mr. Clive when that unfortunate subject was introduced
again.

My lord was going back to London to-morrow. Was Miss Newcome going back?
Wouldn't he like to go back in the train with her!--another unlucky
observation. Lady Anne said, "it would depend on the state of Sir Brian's
health the next morning whether Ethel would return; and both of you
gentlemen are too young to be her escort," added the kind lady. Then she
shook hands with Clive, as thinking she had said something too for him.

Farintosh in the meantime was taking leave of Miss Newcome. "Pray, pray,"
said his lordship, "don't throw me over at Lady Innishowan's. You know I
hate balls and never go to 'em, except when you go. I hate dancing, I do,
'pon my honour."

"Thank you," said Miss Newcome, with a curtsey.

"Except with one person--only one person, upon my honour. I'll remember
and get the invitation for your friend. And if you would but try that
mare, I give you my honour I bred her at Codlington. She's a beauty to
look at, and as quiet as a lamb."

"I don't want a horse like a lamb," replied the young lady.

"Well--she'll go like blazes now: and over timber she's splendid now. She
is, upon my honour."

"When I come to London perhaps you may trot her out," said Miss Ethel,
giving him her hand and a fine smile.

Clive came up biting his lips. "I suppose you don't condescend to ride
Bhurtpore any more now?" he said.

"Poor old Bhurtpore! The children ride him now," said Miss Ethel--giving
Clive at the same time a dangerous look of her eyes, as though to see if
her shot had hit. Then she added, "No--he has not been brought up to town
this year: he is at Newcome, and I like him very much." Perhaps she
thought the shot had struck too deep.

But if Clive was hurt he did not show his wound. "You have had him these
four years--yes, it's four years since my father broke him for you. And
you still continue to like him? What a miracle of constancy! You use him
sometimes in the country--when you have no better horse--what a
compliment to Bhurtpore!"

"Nonsense!" Miss Ethel here made Clive a sign in her most imperious
manner to stay a moment when Lord Farintosh had departed.

But he did not choose to obey this order. "Good night," he said. "Before
I go I must shake hands with my aunt downstairs." And he was gone,
following close upon Lord Farintosh, who I dare say thought, "Why the
deuce can't he shake hands with his aunt up here?" and when Clive entered
Miss Honeyman's back-parlour, making a bow to the young nobleman, my lord
went away more perplexed than ever: and the next day told friends at
White's what uncommonly queer people those Newcomes were. "I give you my
honour there was a fellow at Lady Anne's whom they call Clive, who is a
painter by trade--his uncle is a preacher--his father is a horse-dealer,
and his aunt lets lodgings and cooks the dinner."




CHAPTER XLIII

Returns to some Old Friends


The haggard youth burst into my chambers, in the Temple, on the very next
morning, and confided to me the story which has been just here narrated.
When he had concluded it, with many ejaculations regarding the heroine of
the tale, "I saw her, sir," he added, "walking with the children and Miss
Cann as I drove round in the fly to the station--and didn't even bow to
her."

"Why did you go round by the cliff?" asked Clive's friend.

"That is not the way from the Steyne Arms to the railroad."

"Hang it," says Clive, turning very red, "I wanted to pass just under her
windows, and if I saw her, not to see her: and that's what I did."

"Why did she walk on the cliff?" mused Clive's friend, "at that early
hour? Not to meet Lord Farintosh, I should think, he never gets up before
twelve. It must have been to see you. Didn't you tell her you were going
away in the morning?"

"I tell you what she does with me," continues Mr. Clive. "Sometimes she
seems to like me, and then she leaves me. Sometimes she is quite kind--
kind she always is--I mean, you know, Pen--you know what I mean; and then
up comes the old Countess, or a young Marquis, or some fellow with a
handle to his name, and she whistles me off till the next convenient
opportunity."

"Women are like that, my ingenuous youth," says Clive's counsellor.

"I won't stand it. I won't be made a fool of!" he continues. "She seems
to expect everybody to bow to her, and moves through the world with her
imperious airs. Oh, how confoundedly handsome she is with them! I tell
you what. I feel inclined to tumble down and feel one of her pretty
little feet on my neck and say, There! Trample my life out. Make a slave
of me. Let me get a silver collar and mark 'Ethel' on it, and go through
the world with my badge."

"And a blue ribbon for a footman to hold you by; and a muzzle to wear in
the dog-days. Bow! wow!" says Mr. Pendennis.

(At this noise Mr. Warrington puts his head in from the neighbouring
bedchamber, and shows a beard just lathered for shaving. "We are talking
sentiment! Go back till you are wanted!" says Mr. Pendennis. Exit he of
the soap-suds.)

"Don't make fun of a fellow," Clive continues, laughing ruefully. "You
see I must talk about it to somebody. I shall die if I don't. Sometimes,
sir, I rise up in my might and I defy her lightning. The sarcastic dodge
is the best: I have borrowed that from you Pen, old boy. That puzzles
her: that would beat her if I could but go on with it. But there comes a
tone of her sweet voice, a look out of those killing grey eyes, and all
my frame is in a thrill and a tremble. When she was engaged to Lord Kew I
did battle with the confounded passion--and I ran away from it like an
honest man, and the gods rewarded me with ease of mind after a while. But
now the thing rages worse than ever. Last night, I give you my honour, I
heard every one of the confounded hurs toll, except the last, when I was
dreaming of my father, and the chambermaid woke me with a hot water jug."

"Did she scald you? What a cruel chambermaid! I see you have shaven the
mustachios off."

"Farintosh asked me whether I was going in the army," said Clive, "and
she laughed. I thought I had best dock them. Oh, I would like to cut my
head off as well as my hair!"

"Have you ever asked her to marry you?" asked Clive's friend.

"I have seen her but five times since my return from abroad," the lad
went on; "there has been always somebody by. Who am I? a painter with
five hundred a year for an allowance. Isn't she used to walk up on velvet
and dine upon silver; and hasn't she got marquises and barons, and all
sorts of swells, in her train? I daren't ask her----"

Here his friend hummed Montrose's lines--"He either fears his fate too
much, or his desert is small, who dares not put it to the touch, and win
or lose it all."

"I own I dare not ask her. If she were to refuse me, I know I should
never ask again. This isn't the moment, when all Swelldom is at her feet,
for me to come forward and say, 'Maiden, I have watched thee daily, and I
think thou lovest me well.' I read that ballad to her at Baden, sir. I
drew a picture of the Lord of Burleigh wooing the maiden, and asked what
she would have done?"

"Oh, you did? I thought, when we were at Baden, we were so modest that we
did not even whisper our condition?"

"A fellow can't help letting it be seen and hinting it," says Clive, with
another blush. "They can read it in our looks fast enough; and what is
going on in our minds, hang them! I recollect she said, in her grave,
cool way, that after all the Lord and Lady of Burleigh did not seem to
have made a very good marriage, and that the lady would have been much
happier in marrying one of her own degree."

"That was a very prudent saying for a young lady of eighteen," remarks
Clive's friend.

"Yes; but it was not an unkind one. Say Ethel thought--thought what was
the case; and being engaged herself, and knowing how friends of mine had
provided a very pretty little partner for me--she is a dear, good little
girl, little Rosey; and twice as good, Pen, when her mother is away--
knowing this and that, I say, suppose Ethel wanted to give me a hint to
keep quiet, was she not right in the counsel she gave me? She is not fit
to be a poor man's wife. Fancy Ethel Newcome going into the kitchen and
making pies like Aunt Honeyman!"

"The Circassian beauties don't sell under so many thousand purses,"
remarked Mr. Pendennis. "If there's a beauty in a well-regulated Georgian
family, they fatten her; they feed her with the best Racahout des Arabes.
They give her silk robes, and perfumed baths; have her taught to play on
the dulcimer and dance and sing; and when she is quite perfect, send her
down to Constantinople for the Sultan's inspection. The rest of the
family think never of grumbling, but eat coarse meat, bathe in the river,
wear old clothes, and praise Allah for their sister's elevation. Bah! Do
you suppose the Turkish system doesn't obtain all over the world? My poor
Clive, this article in the Mayfair Market is beyond your worship's price.
Some things in this world are made for our betters, young man. Let Dives
say grace for his dinner, and the dogs and Lazarus be thankful for the
crumbs. Here comes Warrington, shaven and smart as if he was going out
a-courting."

Thus it will be seen, that in his communication with certain friends who
approached nearer to his own time of life, Clive was much more eloquent
and rhapsodical than in the letter which he wrote to his father,
regarding his passion for Miss Ethel. He celebrated her with pencil and
pen. He was for ever drawing the outline of her head, the solemn eyebrow,
the nose (that wondrous little nose), descending from the straight
forehead, the short upper lip, and chin sweeping in a full curve to the
neck, etc. etc. A frequenter of his studio might see a whole gallery of
Ethels there represented: when Mrs. Mackenzie visited that place, and
remarked one face and figure repeated on a hundred canvases and papers,
grey, white, and brown, I believe she was told that the original was a
famous Roman model, from whom Clive had studied a great deal during his
residence in Italy; on which Mrs. Mack gave it as her opinion that Clive
was a sad wicked young fellow. The widow thought rather the better of him
for being a sad wicked young fellow; and as for Miss Rosey, she, was of
course of mamma's way of thinking. Rosey went through the world
constantly smiling at whatever occurred. She was good-humoured through
the dreariest long evenings at the most stupid parties; sate
good-humouredly for hours at Shoolbred's whilst mamma was making
purchases; heard good-humouredly those old old stories of her mother's
day after day; bore an hour's joking or an hour's scolding with equal
good-humour; and whatever had been the occurrences of her simple day,
whether there was sunshine or cloudy weather, or flashes of lightning and
bursts of rain, I fancy Miss Mackenzie slept after them quite
undisturbedly, and was sure to greet the morrow's dawn with a smile.

Had Clive become more knowing in his travels, had Love or Experience
opened his eyes, that they looked so differently now upon objects which
before used well enough to please them? It is a fact that, until he went
abroad, he thought widow Mackenzie a dashing, lively, agreeable woman: he
used to receive her stories about Cheltenham, the colonies, the balls at
Government House, the observations which the bishop made, and the
peculiar attention of the Chief Justice to Mrs. Major M'Shane, with the
Major's uneasy behaviour--all these to hear at one time did Clive not
ungraciously incline. "Our friend, Mrs. Mack," the good old Colonel used
to say, "is a clever woman of the world, and has seen a great deal of
company." That story of Sir Thomas Sadman dropping a pocket-handkerchief
in his court at Colombo, which the Queen's Advocate O'Goggarty picked up,
and on which Laura MacS. was embroidered, whilst the Major was absolutely
in the witness-box giving evidence against a native servant who had
stolen one of his cocked-hats--that story always made good Thomas Newcome
laugh, and Clive used to enjoy it too, and the widow's mischievous fun in
narrating it; and now, behold, one day when Mrs. Mackenzie recounted the
anecdote in her best manner to Messrs. Pendennis and Warrington, and
Frederick Bayham, who had been invited to meet Mr. Clive in Fitzroy
Square--when Mr. Binnie chuckled, when Rosey, as in duty bound, looked
discomposed and said, "Law, mamma!"--not one sign of good-humour, not one
ghost of a smile, made its apparition on Clive's dreary face. He painted
imaginary portraits with a strawberry stalk; he looked into his
water-glass as though he would plunge and drown there; and Bayham had to
remind him that the claret jug was anxious to have another embrace from
its constant friend, F. B. When Mrs. Mack went away distributing smiles,
Clive groaned out, "Good heavens! how that story does bore me!" and
lapsed into his former moodiness, not giving so much as a glance to
Rosey, whose sweet face looked at him kindly for a moment, as she
followed in the wake of her mamma.

"The mother's the woman for my money," I heard F. B. whisper to
Warrington. "Splendid figure-head, sir--magnificent build, sir, from bows
to stern--I like 'em of that sort. Thank you, Mr. Binnie, I will take a
back-hander, as Clive don't seem to drink. The youth, sir, has grown
melancholy with his travels; I'm inclined to think some noble Roman has
stolen the young man's heart. Why did you not send us over a picture of
the charmer, Clive? Young Ridley, Mr. Binnie, you will be happy to hear,
is bidding fair to take a distinguished place in the world of arts. His
picture has been greatly admired; and my good friend Mrs. Ridley tells me
that Lord Todmorden has sent him over an order to paint him a couple of
pictures at a hundred guineas apiece."

"I should think so. J. J.'s pictures will be worth five times a hundred
guineas ere five years are over," says Clive.

"In that case it wouldn't be a bad speculation for our friend Sherrick,"
remarked F. B., "to purchase a few of the young man's works. I would,
only I haven't the capital to spare. Mine has been vested in an Odessa
venture, sir, in a large amount of wild oats, which up to the present
moment make me no return. But it will always be a consolation to me to
think that I have been the means--the humble means--of furthering that
deserving young man's prospects in life."

"You, F. B.! and how?" we asked.

"By certain humble contributions of mine to the press," answered Bayham,
majestically. "Mr. Warrington, the claret happens to stand with you; and
exercise does it good, sir. Yes, the articles, trifling as they may
appear, have attracted notice," continued F. B., sipping his wine with
great gusto. "They are noticed, Pendennis, give me leave to say, by
parties who don't value so much the literary or even the political part
of the Pall Mall Gazette, though both, I am told by those who read them,
are conducted with considerable--consummate ability. John Ridley sent a
hundred pounds over to his father, the other day, who funded it in his
son's name. And Ridley told the story to Lord Todmorden, when the
venerable nobleman congratulated him on having such a child. I wish F. B.
had one of the same sort, sir." In which sweet prayer we all of us joined
with a laugh.

One of us had told Mrs. Mackenzie (let the criminal blush to own that
quizzing his fellow-creatures used at one time to form part of his
youthful amusement) that F. B. was the son of a gentleman of most ancient
family and vast landed possessions, and as Bayham was particularly
attentive to the widow, and grandiloquent in his remarks, she was greatly
pleased by his politeness, and pronounced him a most distinque man--
reminding her, indeed, of General Hopkirk, who commanded in Canada. And
she bade Rosey sing for Mr. Bayham, who was in a rapture at the young
lady's performances, and said no wonder such an accomplished daughter
came from such a mother, though how such a mother could have a daughter
of such an age he, F. B., was at a loss to understand. Oh, sir! Mrs.
Mackenzie was charmed and overcome at this novel compliment. Meanwhile
the little artless Rosey warbled on her pretty ditties.

"It is a wonder," growled out Mr. Warrington, "that that sweet girl can
belong to such a woman. I don't understand much about women, but that one
appears to me to be--hum!"

"What, George?" asked Warrington's friend.

"Well, an ogling, leering, scheming, artful old campaigner," grumbled the
misogynist. "As for the little girl, I should like to have her to sing to
me all night long. Depend upon it she would make a much better wife for
Clive than that fashionable cousin of his he is hankering after. I heard
him bellowing about her the other day in chambers, as I was dressing.
What the deuce does the boy want with a wife at all?" And Rosey's song
being by this time finished, Warrington went up with a blushing face and
absolutely paid a compliment to Miss Mackenzie--an almost unheard-of
effort on George's part.

"I wonder whether it is every young fellow's lot," quoth George, as we
trudged home together, "to pawn his heart away to some girl that's not
worth the winning? Psha! it's all mad rubbish this sentiment. The women
ought not to be allowed to interfere with us: married if a man must be, a
suitable wife should be portioned out to him, and there an end of it. Why
doesn't the young man marry this girl, and get back to his business and
paint his pictures? Because his father wishes it--and the old Nabob
yonder, who seems a kindly-disposed, easy-going, old heathen philosopher.
Here's a pretty little girl: money I suppose in sufficiency--everything
satisfactory, except, I grant you, the campaigner. The lad might daub his
canvases, christen a child a year, and be as happy as any young donkey
that browses on this common of ours--but he must go and heehaw after a
zebra forsooth! a lusus naturae is she! I never spoke to a woman of
fashion, thank my stars--I don't know the nature of the beast; and since
I went to our race-balls, as a boy, scarcely ever saw one; as I don't
frequent operas and parties in London like you young flunkeys of the
aristocracy. I heard you talking about this one; I couldn't help it, as
my door was open and the young one was shouting like a madman. What! does
he choose to hang on on sufferance and hope to be taken, provided Miss
can get no better? Do you mean to say that is the genteel custom, and
that women in your confounded society do such things every day? Rather
than have such a creature I would take a savage woman, who should nurse
my dusky brood; and rather than have a daughter brought up to the trade I
would bring her down from the woods and sell her in Virginia." With which
burst of indignation our friend's anger ended for that night.

Though Mr. Clive had the felicity to meet his cousin Ethel at a party or
two in the ensuing weeks of the season, every time he perused the
features of Lady Kew's brass knocker in Queen Street, no result came of
the visit. At one of their meetings in the world Ethel fairly told him
that her grandmother would not receive him. "You know, Clive, I can't
help myself: nor would it be proper to make you signs out of the window.
But you must call for all that: grandmamma may become more good-humoured:
or if you don't come she may suspect I told you not to come: and to
battle with her day after day is no pleasure, sir, I assure you. Here is
Lord Farintosh coming to take me to dance. You must not speak to me all
the evening, mind that, sir," and away goes the young lady in a waltz
with the Marquis.

On the same evening--as he was biting his nails, or cursing his fate, or
wishing to invite Lord Farintosh into the neighbouring garden of Berkeley
Square, whence the policeman might carry to the station-house the corpse
of the survivor,--Lady Kew would bow to him with perfect graciousness; on
other nights her ladyship would pass and no more recognise him than the
servant who opened the door.

If she was not to see him at her grandmother's house, and was not
particularly unhappy at his exclusion, why did Miss Newcome encourage Mr.
Clive so that he should try and see her? If Clive could not get into the
little house in Queen Street, why was Lord Farintosh's enormous cab-horse
looking daily into the first-floor windows of that street? Why were
little quiet dinners made for him, before the opera, before going to the
play, upon a half-dozen occasions, when some of the old old Kew port was
brought out of the cellar, where cobwebs had gathered round it ere
Farintosh was born? The dining-room was so tiny that not more than five
people could sit at the little round table: that is, not more than Lady
Kew and her granddaughter, Miss Crochet, the late vicar's daughter, at
Kewbury, one of the Miss Toadins, and Captain Walleye, or Tommy Henchman,
Farintosh's kinsman, and admirer, who were of no consequence, or old Fred
Tiddler, whose wife was an invalid, and who was always ready at a
moment's notice? Crackthorpe once went to one of these dinners, but that
young soldier being a frank and high-spirited youth, abused the
entertainment and declined more of them. "I tell you what I was wanted
for," the Captain told his mess and Clive at the Regent's Park barracks
afterwards, "I was expected to go as Farintosh's Groom of the Stole,
don't you know, to stand, or if I could sit, in the back seat of the box,
whilst his Royal Highness made talk with the Beauty; to go out and fetch
the carriage, and walk downstairs with that d----- crooked old dowager,
that looks as if she usually rode on a broomstick, by Jove, or else with
that bony old painted sheep-faced companion, who's raddled like an old
bell-wether. I think, Newcome, you seem rather hit by the Belle Cousine--
so was I last season; so were ever so many of the fellows. By Jove, sir!
there's nothing I know more comfortable or inspiritin' than a younger
son's position, when a marquis cuts in with fifteen thousand a year! We
fancy we've been making running, and suddenly we find ourselves nowhere.
Miss Mary, or Miss Lucy, or Miss Ethel, saving your presence, will no
more look at us, than my dog will look at a bit of bread, when I offer
her this cutlet. Will you--old woman! no, you old slut, that you won't!"
(to Mag, an Isle of Skye terrier, who, in fact, prefers the cutlet,
having snuffed disdainfully at the bread)--"that you won't, no more than
any of your sex. Why, do you suppose, if Jack's eldest brother had been
dead--Barebones Belsize they used to call him (I don't believe he was a
bad fellow, though he was fond of psalm-singing)--do you suppose that
Lady Clara would have looked at that cock-tail Barney Newcome? Beg your
pardon, if he's your cousin--but a more odious little snob I never saw."

"I give you up Barnes," said Clive, laughing; "anybody may shy at him and
I shan't interfere."

"I understand, but at nobody else of the family. Well, what I mean is,
that that old woman is enough to spoil any young girl she takes in hand.
She dries 'em up, and poisons 'em, sir; and I was never more glad than
when I heard that Kew had got out of her old clutches. Frank is a fellow
that will always be led by some woman or another; and I'm only glad it
should be a good one. They say his mother's serious, and that; but why
shouldn't she bet?" continues honest Crackthorpe, puffing his cigar with
great energy. "They say the old dowager doesn't believe in God nor devil:
but that she's in such a funk to be left in the dark that she howls, and
raises the doose's own delight if her candle goes out. Toppleton slept
next room to her at Groningham, and heard her; didn't you, Top?"

"Heard her howling like an old cat on the tiles," says Toppleton,--
"thought she was at first. My man told me that she used to fling all
sorts of things--boot-jacks and things, give you my honour--at her maid,
and that the woman was all over black and blue."

"Capital head that is Newcome has done of Jack Belsize!" says
Crackthorpe, from out of his cigar.

"And Kew's too--famous likeness! I say, Newcome, if you have 'em printed
the whole brigade'll subscribe. Make your fortune, see if you won't,"
cries Toppleton.

"He's such a heavy swell, he don't want to make his fortune," ejaculates
Butts.

"Butts, old boy, he'll paint you for nothing, and send you to the
Exhibition, where some widow will fall in love with you, and you shall be
put as frontispiece for the 'Book of Beauty,' by Jove," cries another
military satirist--to whom Butts:

"You hold your tongue, you old Saracen's Head; they're going to have you
done on the bear's-grease pots. I say, I suppose Jack's all right now.
When did he write to you last, Cracky?"

"He wrote from Palermo--a most jolly letter from him and Kew. He hasn't
touched a card for nine months; is going to give up play. So is Frank,
too, grown quite a good boy. So will you, too, Butts, you old miscreant,
repent of your sins, pay your debts, and do something handsome for that
poor deluded milliner in Albany Street. Jack says Kew's mother has
written over to Lord Highgate a beautiful letter--and the old boy's
relenting, and they'll come together again--Jack's eldest son now, you
know. Bore for Lady Susan only having girls."

"Not a bore for Jack, though," cries another. And what a good fellow Jack
was; and what a trump Kew is; how famously he stuck by him: went to see
him in prison and paid him out! and what good fellows we all are, in
general, became the subject of the conversation, the latter part of which
took place in the smoking-room of the Regent's Park Barracks, then
occupied by that regiment of Life Guards of which Lord Kew and Mr.
Belsize had been members. Both were still fondly remembered by their
companions; and it was because Belsize had spoken very warmly of Clive's
friendliness to him that Jack's friend the gallant Crackthorpe had been
interested in our hero, and found an opportunity of making his
acquaintance.

With these frank and pleasant young men Clive soon formed a considerable
intimacy: and if any of his older and peaceful friends chanced to take
their afternoon airing in the Park, and survey the horsemen there, we
might have the pleasure of beholding Mr. Newcome in Rotten Row, riding
side by side with other dandies who had mustachios blonde or jet, who
wore flowers in their buttons (themselves being flowers of spring), who
rode magnificent thoroughbred horses, scarcely touching their stirrups
with the tips of their varnished boots, and who kissed the most beautiful
primrose-coloured kid gloves to lovely ladies passing them in the Ride.
Clive drew portraits of half the officers of the Life Guards Green; and
was appointed painter in ordinary to that distinguished corps. His
likeness of the Colonel would make you die with laughing: his picture of
the Surgeon was voted a masterpiece. He drew the men in the saddle, in
the stable, in their flannel dresses, sweeping their flashing swords
about, receiving lancers, repelling infantry,--nay, cutting--a sheep in
two, as some of the warriors are known to be able to do at one stroke.
Detachments of Life Guardsmen made their appearance in Charlotte Street,
which was not very distant from their barracks; the most splendid cabs
were seen prancing before his door; and curly-whiskered youths, of
aristocratic appearance, smoking cigars out of his painting-room window.
How many times did Clive's next-door neighbour, little Mr Finch, the
miniature-painter, run to peep through his parlour blinds, hoping that a
sitter was coming, and "a carriage-party" driving up! What wrath Mr.
Scowler, A.R.A., was in, because a young hop-o'-my-thumb dandy, who wore
gold chains and his collars turned down, should spoil the trade and draw
portraits for nothing! Why did none of the young men come to Scowler?
Scowler was obliged to own that Mr. Newcome had considerable talent, and
a good knack at catching a likeness. He could not paint a bit, to be
sure, but his heads in black-and-white were really tolerable; his
sketches of horses very vigorous and lifelike. Mr. Gandish said if Clive
would come for three or four years into his academy he could make
something of him. Mr. Smee shook his head, and said he was afraid, that
kind of loose, desultory study, that keeping of aristocratic company, was
anything but favourable to a young artist--Smee, who would walk five
miles to attend an evening party of ever so little a great man!




CHAPTER XLIV

In which Mr. Charles Honeyman appears in an Amiable Light


Mr. Frederick Bayham waited at Fitzroy Square while Clive was yet talking
with his friends there, and favoured that gentleman with his company home
to the usual smoky refreshment. Clive always rejoiced in F. B.'s society,
whether he was in a sportive mood, or, as now, in a solemn and didactic
vein. F. B. had been more than ordinarily majestic all the evening. "I
dare say you find me a good deal altered, Clive," he remarked; "I am a
good deal altered. Since that good Samaritan, your kind father, had
compassion on a poor fellow fallen among thieves (though I don't say,
mind you, he was much better than his company), F. B. has mended some of
his ways. I am trying a course of industry, sir. Powers, perhaps
naturally great, have been neglected over the wine-cup and the die. I am
beginning to feel my way; and my chiefs yonder, who have just walked home
with their cigars in their mouths, and without as much as saying, F. B.,
my boy, shall we go to the Haunt and have a cool lobster and a glass of
table-beer,--which they certainly do not consider themselves to be,--I
say, sir, the Politician and the Literary Critic" (there was a most
sarcastic emphasis laid on these phrases, characterising Messrs.
Warrington and Pendennis) "may find that there is a humble contributor to
the Pall Mall Gazette, whose name, may be, the amateur shall one day
reckon even higher than their own. Mr. Warrington I do not say so much--
he is an able man, sir, an able man;--but there is that about your
exceedin self-satisfied friend, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, which--well, well--
let time show. You did not--get the--hem--paper at Rome and Naples, I
suppose?"

"Forbidden by the Inquisition," says Clive, delighted; "and at Naples the
king furious against it."

"I don't wonder they don't like it at Rome, sir. There's serious matter
in it which may set the prelates of a certain Church rather in a tremor.
You haven't read--the--ahem--the Pulpit Pencillings in the P. M. G.?
Slight sketches, mental and corporeal, of our chief divines now in
London--and signed Latimer?"

"I don't do much in that way," said Clive.

"So much the worse for you, my young friend. Not that I mean to judge any
other fellow harshly--I mean any other fellow sinner harshly--or that I
mean that those Pulpit Pencillings would be likely to do you any great
good. But, such as they are, they have been productive of benefit.--Thank
you, Mary, and my dear, the tap is uncommonly good, and I drink to your
future husband's good health.--A glass of good sound beer refreshes after
all that claret. Well, sir, to return to the Pencillings, pardon my
vanity in saying, that though Mr. Pendennis laughs at them, they have
been of essential service to the paper. They give it a character, they
rally round it the respectable classes. They create correspondence. I
have received many interesting letters, chiefly from females, about the
Pencillings. Some complain that their favourite preachers are slighted;
others applaud because the clergymen they sit under are supported by
F. B. I am Laud Latimer, sir,--though I have heard the letters attributed
to the Rev. Mr. Bunker, and to a Member of Parliament eminent in the
religious world."

"So you are the famous Laud Latimer?" cries Clive, who had, in fact, seen
letters signed by those right reverend names in our paper.

"Famous is hardly the word. One who scoffs at everything--I need not say
I allude to Mr. Arthur Pendennis--would have had the letters signed--the
Beadle, of the Parish. He calls me the Venerable Beadle sometimes--it
being, I grieve to say, his way to deride grave subjects. You wouldn't
suppose now, my young Clive, that the same hand which pens the Art
criticisms, occasionally, when His Highness Pendennis is lazy, takes a
minor theatre, or turns the sportive epigram, or the ephemeral paragraph,
should adopt a grave theme on a Sunday, and chronicle the sermons of
British divines? For eighteen consecutive Sunday evenings, Clive, in Mrs.
Ridley's front parlour, which I now occupy, vice Miss Cann promoted, I
have written the Pencillings--scarcely allowing a drop of refreshment,
except under extreme exhaustion, to pass my lips. Pendennis laughs at the
Pencillings. He wants to stop them; and says they bore the public.--I
don't want to think a man is jealous, who was himself the cause of my
engagement at the P. M. G.,--perhaps my powers were not developed then."

"Pen thinks he writes better now than when he began," remarked Clive; "I
have heard him say so."

"His opinion of his own writings is high, whatever their date. Mine, sir,
are only just coming into notice. They begin to know F. B., sir, in the
sacred edifices of his metropolitan city. I saw the Bishop of London
looking at me last Sunday week, and am sure his chaplain whispered him,
'It's Mr. Bayham, my lord, nephew of your lordship's right reverend
brother, the Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy.' And last Sunday being at
church--at Saint Mungo the Martyr's, Rev. Sawders--by Wednesday I got in
a female hand--Mrs. Sawders's, no doubt--the biography of the Incumbent
of St. Mungo; an account of his early virtues; a copy of his poems; and a
hint that he was the gentleman destined for the vacant Deanery.

"Ridley is not the only man I have helped in this world," F. B.
continued. "Perhaps I should blush to own it--I do blush: but I feel the
ties of early acquaintance, and I own that I have puffed your uncle,
Charles Honeyman, most tremendously. It was partly for the sake of the
Ridleys and the tick he owes 'em: partly for old times' sake. Sir, are
you aware that things are greatly changed with Charles Honeyman, and that
the poor F. B. has very likely made his fortune?"

"I am delighted to hear it," cried Clive; "and how, F. B., have you
wrought this miracle?"

"By common sense and enterprise, lad--by a knowledge of the world and a
benevolent disposition. You'll see Lady Whittlesea's Chapel bears a very
different aspect now. That miscreant Sherrick owns that he owes me a
turn, and has sent me a few dozen of wine--without any stamped paper on
my part in return--as an acknowledgment of my service. It chanced, sir,
soon after your departure for Italy, that going to his private residence
respecting a little bill to which a heedless friend had put his hand,
Sherrick invited me to partake of tea in the bosom of his family. I was
thirsty--having walked in from Jack Straw's Castle at Hampstead, where
poor Kitely and I had been taking a chop--and accepted the proffered
entertainment. The ladies of the family gave us music after the domestic
muffin--and then, sir, a great idea occurred to me. You know how
magnificently Miss Sherrick and the mother sing? Thy sang Mozart, sir.
Why, I asked of Sherrick, should those ladies who sing Mozart to a piano,
not sing Handel to an organ?

"'Dash it, you don't mean a hurdy-gurdy?'"

"'Sherrick,' says I, 'you are no better than a heathen ignoramus. I mean
why shouldn't they sing Handes Church Music, and Church Music in general
in Lady Whittlesea's Chapel? Behind the screen up in the organ-loft
what's to prevent 'em? By Jingo! Your singing-boys have gone to the Cave
of Harmody; you and your choir have split--why should not these ladies
lead it?' He caught at the idea. You never heard the chants more finely
given--and they would be better still if the congregation would but hold
their confounded tongues. It was an excellent though a harmless dodge,
sir: and drew immensely, to speak profanely. They dress the part, sir, to
admiration--a sort of nunlike costume they come in: Mrs. Sherrick has the
soul of an artist still--by Jove, sir, when they have once smelt the
lamps, the love of the trade never leaves 'em. The ladies actually
practised by moonlight in the Chapel, and came over to Honeyman's to an
oyster afterwards. The thing took, sir. People began to take box-seats, I
mean, again:--and Charles Honeyman, easy in his mind through your noble
father's generosity, perhaps inspirited by returning good fortune, has
been preaching more eloquently than ever. He took some lessons of Husler,
of the Haymarket, sir. His sermons are old, I believe; but so to speak,
he has got them up with new scenery, dresses, and effects, sir. They have
flowers, sir, about the buildin'--pious ladies are supposed to provide
'em, but, entre nous, Sherrick contracts for them with Nathan, or some
one in Covent Garden. And--don't tell this now, upon your honour!"

"Tell what, F. B.?" asks Clive.

"I got up a persecution against your uncle for Popish practices summoned
a meetin' at the Running Footman, in Bolingbroke Street. Billings the
butterman; Sharwood, the turner and blacking-maker; and the Honourable
Phelin O'Curragh, Lord Scullabogue's son, made speeches. Two or three
respectable families (your aunt, Mrs. What-d'-you-call-'em Newcome,
amongst the number) quitted the Chapel in disgust--I wrote an article of
controversial biography in the P. M. G.; set the business going in the
daily press; and the thing was done, sir. That property is a paying one
to the Incumbent, and to Sherrick over him. Charles's affairs are getting
all right, sir. He never had the pluck to owe much, and if it be a sin to
have wiped his slate clean, satisfied his creditors, and made Charles
easy--upon my conscience, I must confess that F. B. has done it. I hope I
may never do anything worse in this life, Clive. It ain't bad to see him
doing the martyr, sir: Sebastian riddled with paper pellets; Bartholomew
on a cold gridiron. Here comes the lobster. Upon my word, Mary, a finer
fish I've seldom seen."

Now surely this account of his uncle's affairs and prosperity was enough
to send Clive to Lady Whittlesea's Chapel, and it was not because Miss
Ethel had said that she and Lady Kew went there that Clive was induced to
go there too? He attended punctually on the next Sunday, and in the
incumbent's pew, whither the pew-woman conducted him, sate Mr. Sherrick
in great gravity, with large gold pins, who handed him, at the anthem, a
large, new, gilt hymn-book.

An odour of millefleurs rustled by them as Charles Honeyman accompanied
by his ecclesiastical valet, passed the pew from the vestry, and took his
place at the desk. Formerly he used to wear a flaunting scarf over his
surplice, which was very wide and full; and Clive remembered when as a
boy he entered the sacred robing-room, how his uncle used to pat and puff
out the scarf and the sleeves of his vestment, and to arrange the natty
curl on his forehead and take his place, a fine example of florid church
decoration. Now the scarf was trimmed down to be as narrow as your
neckcloth, and hung loose and straight over the back; the ephod was cut
straight and as close and short as might be,--I believe there was a
little trimming of lace to the narrow sleeves, and a slight arabesque of
tape, or other substance, round the edge of the surplice. As for the curl
on the forehead, it was no more visible than the Maypole in the Strand,
or the Cross at Charing. Honeyman's hair was parted down the middle,
short in front, and curling delicately round his ears and the back of his
head. He read the service in a swift manner, and with a gentle twang.
When the music began, he stood with head on one side, and two slim
fingers on the book, as composed as a statue in a mediaeval niche. It was
fine to hear Sherrick, who had an uncommonly good voice, join in the
musical parts of the service. The produce of the market-gardener
decorated the church here and there; and the impresario of the
establishment, having picked up a Flemish painted window from old Moss in
Wardour Street, had placed it in his chapel. Labels of faint green and
gold, with long Gothic letters painted thereon, meandered over the
organ-loft and galleries, and strove to give as mediaeval a look to Lady
Whittlesea's as the place was capable of assuming.

In the sermon Charles dropped the twang with the surplice, and the priest
gave way to the preacher. He preached short stirring discourses on the
subjects of the day. It happened that a noble young prince, the hope of a
nation, and heir of a royal house, had just then died by a sudden
accident. Absalom, the son of David, furnished Honeyman with a parallel.
He drew a picture of the two deaths, of the grief of kings, of the fate
that is superior to them. It was, indeed, a stirring discourse, and
caused thrills through the crowd to whom Charles imparted it. "Famous,
ain't it?" says Sherrick, giving Clive a hand when the rite was over.
"How he's come out, hasn't he? Didn't think he had it in him." Sherrick
seemed to have become of late impressed with the splendour of Charles's
talents, and spoke of him--was it not disrespectful?--as a manager would
of a successful tragedian. Let us pardon Sherrick: he had been in the
theatrical way. "That Irishman was no go at all," he whispered to Mr.
Newcome, "got rid of him,--let's see, at Michaelmas."

On account of Clive's tender years, and natural levity, a little
inattention may be allowed to the youth, who certainly looked about him
very eagerly during the service. The house was filled by the ornamental
classes, the bonnets of the newest Parisian fashion. Away in a darkling
corner, under the organ, sate a squad of footmen. Surely that powdered
one in livery wore Lady Kew's colours? So Clive looked under all the
bonnets, and presently spied old Lady Kew's face, as grim and yellow as
her brass knocker, and by it Ethel's beauteous countenance. He dashed out
of church when the congregation rose to depart. "Stop and see Honeyman,
won't you?" asked Sherrick, surprised.

"Yes, yes; come back again," said Clive, and was gone.

He kept his word, and returned presently. The young Marquis and an
elderly lady were in Lady Kew's company. Clive had passed close under
Lady Kew's venerable Roman nose without causing that organ to bow in ever
so slight a degree towards the ground. Ethel had recognised him with a
smile and a nod. My lord was whispering one of his noble pleasantries in
her ear. She laughed at the speech or the speaker. The steps of a fine
belozenged carriage were let down with a bang. The Yellow One had jumped
up behind it, by the side of his brother Giant Canary. Lady Kew's
equipage had disappeared, and Mrs. Canterton's was stopping the way.

Clive returned to the chapel by the little door near to the Vestiarium.
All the congregation had poured out by this time. Only two ladies were
standing near the pulpit; and Sherrick, with his hands rattling his money
in his pockets, was pacing up and down the aisle.

"Capital house, Mr. Newcome, wasn't it? I counted no less than fourteen
nobs. The Princess of Moncontour and her husband, I suppose, that chap
with the beard, who yawns so during the sermon. I'm blessed, if I didn't
think he'd have yawned his head off. Countess of Kew, and her daughter;
Countess of Canterton, and the Honourable Miss Fetlock--no, Lady Fetlock.
A Countess's daughter is a lady, I'm dashed if she ain't. Lady Glenlivat
and her sons; the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh, and Lord Enry Roy;
that makes seven--no, nine--with the Prince and Princess.--Julia, my
dear, you came out like a good un to-day. Never heard you in finer voice.
Remember Mr. Clive Newcome?"

Mr. Clive made bows to the ladies, who acknowledged him by graceful
curtsies. Miss Sherrick was always looking to the vestry-door.

"How's the old Colonel? The best feller--excuse my calling him a feller--
but he is, and a good one too. I went to see Mr. Binnie, my other tenant.
He looks a little yellow about the gills, Mr. Binnie. Very proud woman
that is who lives with him--uncommon haughty. When will you come down and
take your mutton in the Regent's Park, Mr. Clive? There's some tolerable
good wine down there. Our reverend gent drops in and takes a glass, don't
he, missis?"

"We shall be most 'appy to see Mr. Newcome, I'm sure," says the handsome
and good-natured Mrs. Sherrick. "Won't we, Julia?"

"Oh, certainly," says Julia, who seems rather absent. And behold, at this
moment the reverend gent enters from the vestry. Both the ladies run
towards him, holding forth their hands.

"Oh, Mr. Honeyman! What a sermon! Me and Julia cried so up in the
organ-loft; we thought you would have heard us. Didn't we, Julia?"

"Oh, yes," says Julia, whose hand the pastor is now pressing.

"When you described the young man, I thought of my poor boy, didn't I,
Julia?" cries the mother, with tears streaming down her face.

"We had a loss more than ten years ago," whispers Sherrick to Clive
gravely. "And she's always thinking of it. Women are so."

Clive was touched and pleased by this exhibition of kind feeling.

"You know his mother was an Absalom," the good wife continues, pointing
to her husband. "Most respectable diamond merchants in----"

"Hold your tongue, Betsy, and leave my poor old mother alone; do now,"
says Mr. Sherrick darkly. Clive is in his uncle's fond embrace by this
time, who rebukes him for not having called in Walpole Street.

"Now, when will you two gents come up to my shop to 'ave a family
dinner?" asks Sherrick.

"Ah, Mr. Newcome, do come," says Julia in her deep rich voice, looking up
to him with her great black eyes. And if Clive had been a vain fellow
like some folks, who knows but he might have thought he had made an
impression on the handsome Julia?

"Thursday, now make it Thursday, if Mr. H. is disengaged. Come along,
girls, for the flies bites the ponies when they're a-standing still and
makes 'em mad this weather. Anything you like for dinner? Cut of salmon
and cucumber? No, pickled salmon's best this weather."

"Whatever you give me, you know I'm thankful!" says Honeyman, in a sweet
sad voice, to the two ladies, who were standing looking at him, the
mother's hand clasped in the daughter's.

"Should you like that Mendelssohn for the Sunday after next? Julia sings
it splendid!"

"No, I don't, ma."

"You do, dear! She's a good, good dear, Mr. H., that's what she is."

"You must not call--a--him, in that way. Don't say Mr. H., ma," says
Julia.

"Call me what you please!" says Charles, with the most heart-rending
simplicity; and Mrs. Sherrick straightway kisses her daughter. Sherrick
meanwhile has been pointing out the improvement of the chapel to Clive
(which now has indeed a look of the Gothic Hall at Rosherville), and has
confided to him the sum for which he screwed the painted window out of
old Moss. "When he come to see it up in this place, sir, the old man was
mad, I give you my word! His son ain't no good: says he knows you. He's
such a screw, that chap, that he'll overreach himself, mark my words. At
least, he'll never die rich. Did you ever hear of me screwing? No, I
spend my money like a man. How those girls are a-goin' on about their
music with Honeyman! I don't let 'em sing in the evening, or him do duty
more than once a day; and you can calc'late how the music draws, because
in the evenin' there ain't half the number of people here. Rev. Mr.
Journyman does the duty now--quiet Hogford man--ill, I suppose, this
morning. H. sits in his pew, where we was; and coughs; that's to say, I
told him to cough. The women like a consumptive parson, sir. Come, gals!"

Clive went to his uncle's lodgings, and was received by Mr. and Mrs.
Ridley with great glee and kindness. Both of those good people had made
it a point to pay their duty to Mr. Clive immediately on his return to
England, and thank him over and over again for his kindness to John
James. Never, never would they forget his goodness, and the Colonel's,
they were sure. A cake, a heap of biscuits, a pyramid of jams, six
frizzling mutton-chops, and four kinds of hot wine, came bustling up to
Mr. Honeyman's room twenty minutes after Clive had entered it,--as a
token of the Ridleys' affection for him.

Clive remarked, with a smile, the Pall Mall Gazette upon a side-table,
and in the chimney-glass almost as many cards as in the time of
Honeyman's early prosperity. That he and his uncle should be very
intimate together, was impossible, from the nature of the two men; Clive
being frank, clear-sighted, and imperious; Charles, timid, vain, and
double-faced, conscious that he was a humbug, and that most people found
him out, so that he would quiver and turn away, and be more afraid of
young Clive and his direct straightforward way, than of many older men.
Then there was the sense of the money transactions between him and the
Colonel, which made Charles Honeyman doubly uneasy. In fine, they did not
like each other; but, as he is a connection of the most respectable
Newcome family, surely he is entitled to a page or two in these their
memoirs.

Thursday came, and with it Mr. Sherrick's entertainment, to which also
Mr. Binnie and his party had been invited to meet Colonel Newcome's son.
Uncle James and Rosey brought Clive in their carriage; Mrs. Mackenzie
sent a headache as an apology. She chose to treat Uncle James's landlord
with a great deal of hauteur, and to be angry with her brother for
visiting such a person. "In fact, you see how fond I must be of dear
little Rosey, Clive, that I put up with all mamma's tantrums for her
sake," remarks Mr. Binnie.

"Oh, uncle!" says little Rosey, and the old gentleman stopped her
remonstrances with a kiss.

"Yes," says he, "your mother does have tantrums, miss; and though you
never complain, there's no reason why I shouldn't. You will not tell on
me" (it was "Oh, uncle!" again); "and Clive won't, I am sure.--This
little thing, sir," James went on, holding Rosey's pretty little hand and
looking fondly in her pretty little face, "is her old uncle's only
comfort in life. I wish I had had her out to India to me, and never come
back to this great dreary town of yours. But I was tempted home by Tom
Newcome; and I'm too old to go back, sir. Where the stick falls let it
lie. Rosey would have been whisked out of my house, in India, in a month
after I had her there. Some young fellow would have taken her away from
me; and now she has promised never to leave her old Uncle James, hasn't
she?"

"No, never, uncle," said Rosey.

"We don't want to fall in love, do we, child? We don't want to be
breaking our hearts like some young folks, and dancing attendance at
balls night after night, and capering about in the Park to see if we can
get a glimpse of the beloved object, eh, Rosey?"

Rosey blushed. It was evident that she and Uncle James both knew of
Clive's love affair. In fact, the front seat and back seat of the
carriage both blushed. And as for the secret, why Mrs. Mackenzie and Mrs.
Hobson had talked it a hundred times over.

"This little Rosey, sir, has promised to take care of me on this side of
Styx," continued Uncle James; "and if she could but be left alone and to
do it without mamma--there, I won't say a word more against her--we
should get on none the worse."

"Uncle James, I must make a picture of you, for Rosey," said Clive,
good-humouredly. And Rosey said, "Oh, thank you, Clive," and held out
that pretty little hand, and looked so sweet and kind and happy, that
Clive could not but be charmed at the sight of so much innocence and
candour.

"Quasty peecoly Rosiny," says James, in a fine Scotch Italian, "e la piu
bella, la piu cara, ragazza ma la mawdry e il diav----"

"Don't, uncle!" cried Rosey, again; and Clive laughed at Uncle James's
wonderful outbreak in a foreign tongue.

"Eh! I thought ye didn't know a word of the sweet language, Rosey! It's
just the Lenguy Toscawny in Bocky Romawny that I thought to try in
compliment to this young monkey who has seen the world." And by this time
Saint John's Wood was reached, and Mr. Sherrick's handsome villa, at the
door of which the three beheld the Rev. Charles Honeyman stepping out of
a neat brougham.

The drawing-room contained several pictures of Mrs. Sherrick when she was
in the theatrical line; Smee's portrait of her, which was never half
handsome enugh--for my Betsy, Sherrick said indignantly; the print of her
in Artaxerxes, with her signature as Elizabeth Folthorpe (not in truth a
fine specimen of calligraphy) the testimonial presented to her on the
conclusion of the triumphal season of 18--, at Drury Lane, by her ever
grateful friend Adolphus Smacker, Lessee, who, of course, went to law
with her next year; and other Thespian emblems. But Clive remarked, with
not a little amusement, that the drawing-room tables were now covered
with a number of those books which he had seen at Madame de Moncontour's,
and many French and German ecclesiastical gimcracks, such as are familiar
to numberless readers of mine. These were the Lives of St. Botibol of
Islington and St. Willibald of Bareacres, with pictures of those
confessors. Then there was the Legend of Margery Dawe, Virgin and Martyr,
with a sweet double frontispiece, representing (1) the sainted woman
selling her feather-bed for the benefit of the poor; and (2) reclining
upon straw, the leanest of invalids. There was Old Daddy Longlegs, and
how he was brought to say his Prayers; a Tale for Children, by a Lady,
with a preface dated St. Chad's Eve, and signed "C. H." The Rev. Charles
Honeyman's Sermons, delivered at Lady Whittlesea's Chapel. Poems of Early
Days, by Charles Honeyman, A.M. The Life of good Dame Whittlesea, by do.
do. Yes, Charles had come out in the literary line; and there in a basket
was a strip of Berlin work, of the very same Gothic pattern which Madame
de Moncontour was weaving; and which you afterwards saw round the pulpit
of Charles's chapel. Rosey was welcomed most kindly by the kind ladies;
and as the gentlemen sat over their wine after dinner in the summer
evening, Clive beheld Rosey and Julia pacing up and down the lawn, Miss
Julia's arm around her little friend's waist: he thought they would make
a pretty little picture.

"My girl ain't a bad one to look at, is she?" said the pleased father. "A
fellow might look far enough, and see not prettier than them two."

Charles sighed out that there was a German print, the "Two Leonoras,"
which put him in mind of their various styles of beauty.

"I wish I could paint them," said Clive.

"And why not, sir?" asks his host. "Let me give you your first commission
now, Mr Clive; I wouldn't mind paying a good bit for a picture of my
Julia. I forget how much old Smee got for Betsy's, the old humbug!"

Clive said it was not the will, but the power that was deficient. He
succeeded with men, but the ladies were too much for him as yet.

"Those you've done up at Albany Street Barracks are famous: I've seen
'em," said Mr. Sherrick; and remarking that his guest looked rather
surprised at the idea of his being in such company, Sherrick said, "What,
you think they are too great swells for me? Law bless you, I often go
there. I've business with several of 'em; had with Captain Belsize, with
the Earl of Kew, who's every inch the gentleman--one of nature's
aristocracy, and paid up like a man. The Earl and me has had many
dealings together:"

Honeyman smiled faintly, and nobody complying with Mr. Sherrick's
boisterous entreaties to drink more, the gentlemen quitted the
dinner-table, which had been served in a style of prodigious splendour,
and went to the drawing-room for a little music.

This was all of the gravest and best kind; so grave indeed, that James
Binnie might be heard in a corner giving an accompaniment of little
snores to the singers and the piano. But Rosey was delighted with the
performance, and Sherrick remarked to Clive, "That's a good gal, that is;
I like that gal; she ain't jealous of Julia cutting her out in the music,
but listens as pleased as any one. She's a sweet little pipe of her own,
too. Miss Mackenzie, if ever you like to go to the opera, send a word
either to my West End or my City office. I've boxes every week, and
you're welcome to anything I can give you."

So all agreed that the evening had been a very pleasant one; and they of
Fitzroy Square returned home talking in a most comfortable friendly way--
that is, two of them, for Uncle James fell asleep again, taking
possession of the back seat; and Clive and Rosey prattled together. He
had offered to try and take all the young ladies' likenesses. "You know
what a failure the last was, Rosey?"--he had very nearly said "dear
Rosey."

"Yes, but Miss Sherrick is so handsome, that you will succeed better with
her than with my round face, Mr. Newcome."

"Mr. What?" cries Clive.

"Well, Clive, then," says Rosey, in a little voice.

He sought for a little hand which was not very far away. "You know we are
like brother and sister, dear Rosey?" he said this time.

"Yes," said she, and gave a little pressure of the hand. And then Uncle
James woke up; and it seemed as if the whole drive didn't occupy a
minute, and they shook hands very very kindly at the door of Fitzroy
Square.

Clive made a famous likeness of Miss Sherrick, with which Mr. Sherrick
was delighted, and so was Mr. Honeyman, who happened to call upon his
nephew once or twice when the ladies happened to be sitting. Then Clive
proposed to the Rev. Charles Honeyman to take his head off; and made an
excellent likeness in chalk of his uncle--that one, in fact, from which
the print was taken which you may see any day at Hogarth's, in the
Haymarket, along with a whole regiment of British divines. Charles became
so friendly, that he was constantly coming to Charlotte Street, once or
twice a week.

Mr. and Mrs. Sherrick came to look at the drawing, were charmed with it;
and when Rosey was sitting, they came to see her portrait, which again
was not quite so successful. One Monday, the Sherricks and Honeyman too
happened to call to see the picture of Rosey, who trotted over with her
uncle to Clive's studio, and they all had a great laugh at a paragraph in
the Pall Mall Gazette, evidently from F. B.'s hand, to the following
effect:--

"Conversion In High Life.--A foreign nobleman of princely rank, who has
married an English lady, and has resided among us for some time, is
likely, we hear and trust, to join the English Church. The Prince de
M-nc-nt-r has been a constant attendant at Lady Whittlesea's Chapel, of
which the Rev. C. Honeyman is the eloquent incumbent; and it is said this
sound and talented divine has been the means of awakening the prince to a
sense of the erroneous doctrines in which he has been bred. His ancestors
were Protestant, and fought by the side of Henry IV. at Ivry. In Louis
XIV.'s time, they adopted the religion of that persecuting monarch. We
sincerely trust that the present heir of the house of Ivry will see fit
to return to the creed which his forefathers so unfortunately abjured."

The ladies received this news with perfect gravity; and Charles uttered a
meek wish that it might prove true. As they went away, they offered more
hospitalities to Clive and Mr. Binnie and his niece. They liked the
music: would they not come and hear it again?

When they had departed with Mr. Honeyman, Clive could not help saying to
Uncle James, "Why are those people always coming here; praising me; and
asking me to dinner? Do you know, I can't help thinking that they rather
want me as a pretender for Miss Sherrick?"

Binnie burst into a loud guffaw, and cried out, "O vanitas vanitawtum!"
Rosa laughed too.

"I don't think it any joke at all," said Clive.

"Why, you stupid lad, don't you see it is Charles Honeyman the girl's in
love with?" cried Uncle James. "Rosey saw it in the very first instant we
entered their drawing-room three weeks ago."

"Indeed, and how?" asked Clive.

"By--by the way she looked at him," said little Rosey.




CHAPTER XLV

A Stag of Ten


The London season was very nearly come to an end, and Lord Farintosh had
danced I don't know how many times with Miss Newcome, had drunk several
bottles of the old Kew port, had been seen at numerous breakfasts,
operas, races, and public places by the young lady's side, and had not as
yet made any such proposal as Lady Kew expected for her granddaughter.
Clive going to see his military friends in the Regent's Park once, and
finish Captain Butts's portrait in barracks, heard two or three young men
talking, and one say to another, "I bet you three to two Farintosh don't
marry her, and I bet you even that he don't ask her." Then as he entered
Mr. Butts's room, where these gentlemen were conversing, there was a
silence and an awkwardness. The young fellows were making an "event" out
of Ethel's marriage, and sporting their money freely on it.

To have an old countess hunting a young marquis so resolutely that all
the world should be able to look on and speculate whether her game would
be run down by that staunch toothless old pursuer--that is an amusing
sport, isn't it? and affords plenty of fun and satisfaction to those who
follow the hunt. But for a heroine of a story, be she ever so clever,
handsome, and sarcastic, I don't think for my part, at this present stage
of the tale, Miss Ethel Newcome occupies a very dignified position. To
break her heart in silence for Tomkins who is in love with another; to
suffer no end of poverty, starvation, capture by ruffians, ill-treatment
by a bullying husband, loss of beauty by the small-pox, death even at the
end of the volume; all these mishaps a young heroine must endure (and has
endured in romances over and over again), without losing the least
dignity, or suffering any diminution of the sentimental reader's esteem.
But a girl of great beauty, high temper, and strong natural intellect,
who submits to be dragged hither and thither in an old grandmother's
leash, and in pursuit of a husband who will run away from the couple,
such a person, I say, is in a very awkward position as a heroine; and I
declare if I had another ready to my hand (and unless there were
extenuating circumstances) Ethel should be deposed at this very sentence.

But a novelist must go on with his heroine, as a man with his wife, for
better or worse, and to the end. For how many years have the Spaniards
borne with their gracious queen, not because she was faultless, but
because she was there? So Chambers and grandees cried, God save her.
Alabarderos turned out: drums beat, cannons fired, and people saluted
Isabella Segunda, who was no better than the humblest washerwoman of her
subjects. Are we much better than our neighbours? Do we never yield to
our peculiar temptation, our pride, or our avarice or our vanity, or what
not? Ethel is very wrong certainly. But recollect, she is very young. She
is in other people's hands. She has been bred up and governed by a very
worldly family, and taught their traditions. We would hardly, for
instance, the staunchest Protestant in England would hardly be angry with
poor Isabella Segunda for being a Catholic. So if Ethel worships at a
certain image which a great number of good folks in England bow to, let
us not be too angry with her idolatry, and bear with our queen a little
before we make our pronunciamiento.

No, Miss Newcome, yours is not a dignified position in life, however you
may argue that hundreds of people in the world are doing like you. O me!
what a confession it is, in the very outset of life and blushing
brightness of youth's morning, to own that the aim with which a young
girl sets out, and the object of her existence, is to marry a rich man;
that she was endowed with beauty so that she might buy wealth, and a
title with it; that as sure as she has a soul to be saved, her business
here on earth is to try and get a rich husband. That is the career for
which many a woman is bred and trained. A young man begins the world with
some aspirations at least; he will try to be good and follow the truth;
he will strive to win honours for himself, and never do a base action; he
will pass nights over his books, and forgo ease and pleasure so that he
may achieve a name. Many a poor wretch who is worn-out now and old, and
bankrupt of fame and money too, has commenced life at any rate with noble
views and generous schemes, from which weakness, idleness, passion, or
overpowering hostile fortune have turned him away. But a girl of the
world, bon Dieu! the doctrine with which she begins is that she is to
have a wealthy husband: the article of faith in her catechism is, "I
believe in elder sons, and a house in town, and a house in the country!"
They are mercenary as they step fresh and blooming into the world out of
the nursery. They have been schooled there to keep their bright eyes to
look only on the prince and the duke, Croesus and Dives. By long cramping
and careful process, their little natural hearts have been squeezed up,
like the feet of their fashionable little sisters in China. As you see a
pauper's child, with an awful premature knowledge of the pawnshop, able
to haggle at market with her wretched halfpence, and battle bargains at
hucksters' stalls, you shall find a young beauty, who was a child in the
schoolroom a year since, as wise and knowing as the old practitioners on
that exchange; as economical of her smiles, as dexterous in keeping back
or producing her beautiful wares; as skilful in setting one bidder
against another; as keen as the smartest merchant in Vanity Fair.

If the young gentlemen of the Life Guards Green who were talking about
Miss Newcome and her suitors, were silent when Clive appeared amongst
them, it was because they were aware not only of his relationship to the
young lady, but his unhappy condition regarding her. Certain men there
are who never tell their love, but let concealment, like a worm in the
bud, feed on their damask cheeks; others again must be not always
thinking, but talking, about the darling object. So it was not very long
before Captain Crackthorpe was taken into Clive's confidence, and through
Crackthorpe very likely the whole mess became acquainted with his
passion. These young fellows, who had been early introduced into the
world, gave Clive small hopes of success, putting to him, in their
downright phraseology, the point of which he was already aware, that Miss
Newcome was intended for his superiors, and that he had best not make his
mind uneasy by sighing for those beautiful grapes which were beyond his
reach.

But the good-natured Crackthorpe, who had a pity for the young painter's
condition, helped him so far (and gained Clive's warmest thanks for his
good offices), by asking admission for Clive to entertain evening parties
of the beau-monde, where he had the gratification of meeting his charmer.
Ethel was surprised and pleased, and Lady Kew surprised and angry, at
meeting Clive Newcome at these fashionable houses; the girl herself was
touched very likely at his pertinacity in following her. As there was no
actual feud between them, she could not refuse now and again to dance
with her cousin; and thus he picked up such small crumbs of consolation
as a youth in his state can get; lived upon six words vouchsafed to him
in a quadrille, or brought home a glance of the eyes which she had
presented to him in a waltz, or the remembrance of a squeeze of the hand
on parting or meeting. How eager he was to get a card to this party or
that! how attentive to the givers of such entertainments! Some friends of
his accused him of being a tuft-hunter and flatterer of the aristocracy,
on account of his politeness to certain people; the truth was, he wanted
to go wherever Miss Ethel was; and the ball was blank to him which she
did not attend.

This business occupied not only one season, but two. By the time of the
second season, Mr. Newcome had made so many acquaintances that he needed
few more introductions into society. He was very well known as a
good-natured handsome young man, and a very good waltzer, the only son of
an Indian officer of large wealth, who chose to devote himself to
painting, and who was supposed to entertain an unhappy fondness for his
cousin the beautiful Miss Newcome. Kind folks who heard of this little
tendre, and were sufficiently interested in Mr. Clive, asked him to their
houses in consequence. I dare say those people who were good to him may
have been themselves at one time unlucky in their own love-affairs.

When the first season ended without a declaration from my lord, Lady Kew
carried off her young lady to Scotland, where it also so happened that
Lord Farintosh was going to shoot, and people made what surmises they
chose upon this coincidence. Surmises, why not? You who know the world,
know very well that if you see Mrs. So-and-so's name in the list of
people at an entertainment, on looking down the list you will presently
be sure to come on Mr. What-d'-you-call-'em's. If Lord and Lady of
Suchandsuch Castle, received a distinguished circle (including Lady
Dash), for Christmas or Easter, without reading farther the names of the
guests, you may venture on any wager that Captain Asterisk is one of the
company. These coincidences happen every day; and some people are so
anxious to meet other people, and so irresistible is the magnetic
sympathy, I suppose, that they will travel hundreds of miles in the worst
of weather to see their friends, and break your door open almost,
provided the friend is inside it.

I am obliged to own the fact, that for many months Lady Kew hunted after
Lord Farintosh. This rheumatic old woman went to Scotland, where, as he
was pursuing the deer, she stalked his lordship: from Scotland she went
to Paris, where he was taking lessons in dancing at the Chaumiere; from
Paris to an English country-house, for Christmas, where he was expected,
but didn't come--not being, his professor said, quite complete in the
polka, and so on. If Ethel were privy to these manoeuvres, or anything
more than an unwittingly consenting party, I say we would depose her from
her place of heroine at once. But she was acting under her grandmother's
orders, a most imperious, irresistible, managing old woman, who exacted
everybody's obedience, and managed everybody's business in her family.
Lady Anne Newcome being in attendance on her sick husband, Ethel was
consigned to the Countess of Kew, her grandmother, who hinted that she
should leave Ethel her property when dead, and whilst alive expected the
girl should go about with her. She had and wrote as many letters as a
Secretary of State almost. She was accustomed to set off without taking
anybody's advice, or announcing her departure until within an hour or two
of the event. In her train moved Ethel, against her own will, which would
have led her to stay at home with her father, but at the special wish and
order of her parents. Was such a sum as that of which Lady Kew had the
disposal (Hobson Brothers knew the amount of it quite well) to be left
out of the family? Forbid it, all ye powers! Barnes--who would have liked
the money himself, and said truly that he would live with his grandmother
anywhere she liked if he could get it,--Barnes joined most energetically
with Sir Brian and Lady Anne in ordering Ethel's obedience to Lady Kew.
You know how difficult it is for one young woman not to acquiesce when
the family council strongly orders. In fine, I hope there was a good
excuse for the queen of this history, and that it was her wicked
domineering old prime minister who led her wrong. Otherwise I say, we
would have another dynasty. Oh, to think of a generous nature, and the
world, and nothing but the world, to occupy it!--of a brave intellect,
and the milliner's bandboxes, and the scandal of the coteries, and the
fiddle-faddle etiquette of the Court for its sole exercise! of the rush
and hurry from entertainment to entertainment; of the constant smiles and
cares of representation; of the prayerless rest at night, and the awaking
to a godless morrow! This was the course of life to which Fate, and not
her own fault altogether, had for awhile handed over Ethel Newcome. Let
those pity her who can feel their own weakness and misgoing; let those
punish her who are without fault themselves.

Clive did not offer to follow her to Scotland. he knew quite well that
the encouragement he had had was only of the smallest; that as a relation
she received him frankly and kindly enough; but checked him when he would
have adopted another character. But it chanced that they met in Paris,
whither he went in the Easter of the ensuing year, having worked to some
good purpose through the winter, and despatched as on a former occasion
his three or four pictures, to take their chance at the Exhibition.

Of these it is our pleasing duty to be able to corroborate to some
extent, Mr. F. Bayham's favourable report. Fancy sketches and historical
pieces our young man had eschewed; having convinced himself either that
be had not an epic genius, or that to draw portraits of his friends, was
a much easier task than that which he had set himself formerly. Whilst
all the world was crowding round a pair of J. J,.'s little pictures, a
couple of chalk heads were admitted into the Exhibition (his great
picture of Captain Crackthorpe on horseback, in full uniform, I must
admit was ignominiously rejected), and the friends of the parties had the
pleasure of recognising in the miniature room, No. 1246, "Picture of an
Officer,"--viz., Augustus Butts, Esq., of the Life Guards Green; and
"Portrait of the Rev. Charles Honeyman," No. 1272. Miss Sherrick the
hangers refused; Mr. Binnie, Clive had spoiled, as usual, in the
painting; the heads, however, before-named, were voted to be faithful
likenesses, and executed in a very agreeable and spirited manner. F.
Bayham's criticism on these performances, it need not be said, was
tremendous. "Since the days of Michael Angelo you would have thought
there never had been such drawings." In fact, F. B., as some other critics
do, clapped his friends so boisterously on the back, and trumpeted their
merits with such prodigious energy, as to make his friends themselves
sometimes uneasy.

Mr. Clive, whose good father was writing home more and more wonderful
accounts of the Bundelcund Bank, in which he had engaged, and who was
always pressing his son to draw for more money, treated himself to
comfortable rooms at Paris, in the very same hotel where the young
Marquis of Farintosh occupied lodgings much more splendid, and where he
lived, no doubt, so as to be near the professor, who was still teaching
his lordship the polka. Indeed, it must be said that Lord Farintosh made
great progress under this artist, and that he danced very much better in
his third season than in the first and second years after he had come
upon the town. From the same instructor the Marquis learned the latest
novelties in French conversation, the choicest oaths and phrases (for
which he was famous), so that although his French grammar was naturally
defective, he was enabled to order a dinner at Philippe's, and to bully a
waiter, or curse a hackney-coachman with extreme volubility. A young
nobleman of his rank was received with the distinction which was his due,
by the French sovereign of that period; and at the Tuileries, and the
houses of the French nobility, which he visited, Monsieur le Marquis de
Farintosh excited considerable remark, by the use of some of the phrases
which his young professor had taught to him. People even went so far as
to say that the Marquis was an awkward and dull young man, of the very
worst manners.

Whereas the young Clive Newcome--and it comforted the poor fellow's heart
somewhat, and be sure pleased Ethel, who was looking on at his triumphs--
was voted the most charming young Englishman who had been seen for a long
time in our salons. Madame de Florac, who loved him as a son of her own,
actually went once or twice into the world in order to see his debut.
Madame de Moncontour inhabited a part of the Hotel de Florac, and
received society there. The French people did not understand what bad
English she talked, though they comprehended Lord Farintosh's French
blunders. "Monsieur Newcome is an artist! What a noble career!" cries a
great French lady, the wife of a Marshal to the astonished Miss Newcome.
"This young man is the cousin, of the charming mees? You must be proud to
possess such a nephew, madame!" says another French lady to the Countess
of Kew (who, you may be sure, is delighted to have such a relative). And
the French lady invites Clive to her receptions expressly in order to
make herself agreeable to the old Comtesse. Before the cousins have been
three minutes together in Madame de Florac's salon, she sees that Clive
is in love with Ethel Newcome. She takes the boy's hand and says, "J'ai
votre secret, mon ami;" and her eyes regard him for a moment as fondly,
as tenderly, as ever they looked at his father. Oh, what tears have they
shed, gentle eyes! Oh, what faith has it kept, tender heart! If love
lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains
steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit
burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still
equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful
bosom--whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall
be immortal? Though we who remain are separated from it, is it not ours
in Heaven? If we love still those we lose, can we altogether lose those
we love? Forty years have passed away. Youth and dearest memories revisit
her, and Hope almost wakes up again out of its grave, as the constant
lady holds the young man's hand, and looks at the son of Thomas Newcome.




CHAPTER XLVI

The Hotel de Florac


Since the death of the Duc d'Ivry, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots,
the Comte de Florac, who is now the legitimate owner of the ducal title,
does not choose to bear it, but continues to be known in the world by his
old name. The old Count's world is very small. His doctor, and his
director, who comes daily to play his game of piquet; his daughter's
children, who amuse him by their laughter, and play round his chair in
the garden of his hotel; his faithful wife, and one or two friends as old
as himself, form his society. His son the Abbe is with them but seldom.
The austerity of his manners frightens his old father, who can little
comprehend the religionism of the new school. After going to hear his son
preach through Lent at Notre-Dame, where the Abbe de Florac gathered a
great congregation, the old Count came away quite puzzled at his son's
declamations. "I do not understand your new priests," he says; "I knew my
son had become a Cordelier; I went to hear him, and found he was a
Jacobin. Let me make my salut in quiet, my good Leonore. My director
answers for me, and plays a game at trictrac into the bargain with me."
Our history has but little to do with this venerable nobleman. He has his
chamber looking out into the garden of his hotel; his faithful old
domestic to wait upon him; his House of Peers to attend when he is well
enough, his few acquaintances to help him to pass the evening. The rest
of the hotel he gives up to his son, the Vicomte de Florac, and Madame la
Princesse de Moncontour, his daughter-in-law.

When Florac has told his friends of the Club why it is he has assumed a
new title--as a means of reconciliation (a reconciliation all
philosophical, my friends) with his wife nee Higg of Manchester, who
adores titles like all Anglaises, and has recently made a great
succession, everybody allows that the measure was dictated by prudence,
and there is no more laughter at his change of name. The Princess takes
the first floor of the hotel at the price paid for it by the American
General, who has returned to his original pigs at Cincinnati. Had not
Cincinnatus himself pigs on his farm, and was he not a general and member
of Congress too? The honest Princess has a bedchamber, which, to her
terror, she is obliged to open of reception-evenings, when gentlemen and
ladies play cards there. It is fitted up in the style of Louis XVI. In
her bed is an immense looking-glass, surmounted by stucco cupids: it is
an alcove which some powdered Venus, before the Revolution, might have
reposed in. Opposite that looking-glass, between the tall windows, at
some forty feet distance, is another huge mirror, so that when the poor
Princess is in bed, in her prim old curl-papers, she sees a vista of
elderly princesses twinkling away into the dark perspective; and is so
frightened that she and Betsy, her Lancashire maid, pin up the jonquil
silk curtains over the bed-mirror after the first night; though the
Princess never can get it out of her head that her image is still there,
behind the jonquil hangings, turning as she turns, waking as she wakes,
etc. The chamber is so vast and lonely that she has a bed made for Betsy
in the room. It is, of course, whisked away into a closet on
reception-evenings. A boudoir, rose-tendre, with more cupids and nymphs
by Boucher, sporting over door-panels--nymphs who may well shock old
Betsy and her old mistress--is the Pricess's morning-room. "Ah, mum, what
would Mr. Humper at Manchester, Mr. Jowls of Newcome" (the minister whom,
in early days, Miss Higg used to sit under) "say if they was browt into
this room?" But there is no question of Jowls and Mr. Humper, excellent
dissenting divines, who preached to Miss Higg, being brought into the
Princesse de Moncontour's boudoir.

That paragraph, respecting a conversion in high life, which F. B. in his
enthusiasm inserted in the Pall Mall Gazette, caused no small excitement
in the Florac family. The Florac family read the Pall Mall Gazette,
knowing that Clive's friends were engaged in that periodical. When Madame
de Florac, who did not often read newspapers, happened to cast her eye
upon that poetic paragraph of F. B.'s, you may fancy, with what a panic
it filled the good and pious lady. Her son become a Protestant! After all
the grief and trouble his wildness had occasioned to her, Paul forsake
his religion! But that her husband was so ill and aged as not to be able
to bear her absence, she would have hastened to London to rescue her son
out of that perdition. She sent for her younger son, who undertook the
embassy; and the Prince and Princesse de Moncontour, in their hotel at
London, were one day surprised by the visit of the Abbe de Florac.

As Paul was quite innocent of any intention of abandoning his religion,
the mother's kind heart was very speedily set at rest by her envoy. Far
from Paul's conversion to Protestantism, the Abbe wrote home the most
encouraging accounts of his sister-in-law's precious dispositions. He had
communications with Madame de Moncontour's Anglican director, a man of
not powerful mind, wrote M. l'Abbe, though of considerable repute for
eloquence in his Sect. The good dispositions of his sister-in-law were
improved by the French clergyman, who could be most captivating and
agreeable when a work of conversion was in hand. The visit reconciled the
family to their English relative, in whom good-nature and many other good
qualities were to be seen now that there were hopes of reclaiming her. It
was agreed that Madame de Moncontour should come and inhabit the Hotel de
Florac at Paris: perhaps the Abbe tempted the worthy lady by pictures of
the many pleasures and advantages she would enjoy in that capital. She
was presented at her own court by the French ambassadress of that day:
and was received at the Tuileries with a cordiality which flattered and
pleased her.

Having been presented herself, Madame la Princesse in turn presented to
her august sovereign Mrs. T. Higg and Miss Higg, of Manchester, Mrs.
Samuel Higg, of Newcome; the husbands of those ladies (the Princess's
brothers) also sporting a court-dress for the first time. Sam Higg's
neighbour, the member for Newcome; Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., was too ill
to act as Higg's sponsor before majesty; but Barnes Newcome was
uncommonly civil to the two Lancashire gentlemen; though their politics
were different to his, and Sam had voted against Sir Brian at his last
election. Barnes took them to dine at a club--recommended his tailor--and
sent Lady Clara Pulleyn to call on Mrs. Higg--who pronounced her to be a
pretty young woman and most haffable. The Countess of Dorking would have
been delighted to present these ladies had the Princess not luckily been
in London to do that office. The Hobson Newcomes were very civil to the
Lancashire party, and entertained them splendidly at dinner. I believe
Mrs. and Mr. Hobson themselves went to court this year, the latter in a
deputy-lieutenant's uniform.

If Barnes Newcome was so very civil to the Higg family we may suppose he
had good reason. The Higgs were very strong in Newcome, and it was
advisable to conciliate them. They were very rich, and their account
would not be disagreeable at the bank. Madame de Moncontour's--a large
easy private account--would be more pleasant still. And, Hobson Brothers
having entered largely into the Anglo-Continental Railway, whereof
mention has been made, it was a bright thought of Barnes to place the
Prince of Moncontour, etc. etc., on the French Direction of the Railway;
and to take the princely prodigal down to Newcome with his new title, and
reconcile him to his wife and the Higg family. Barnes we may say invented
the principality: rescued the Vicomte de Florac out of his dirty lodgings
in Leicester Square, and sent the Prince of Moncontour back to his worthy
middle-aged wife again. The disagreeable dissenting days were over. A
brilliant young curate of Doctor Bulders, who also wore long hair,
straight waistcoats, and no shirt-collars, had already reconciled the
Vicomtesse de Florac to the persuasion, whereof the ministers are clad in
that queer uniform. The landlord of their hotel at St. James's got his
wine from Sherrick, and sent his families to Lady Whittlesea's Chapel.
The Rev. Charles Honeyman's eloquence and amiability were appreciated by
his new disciple--thus the historian has traced here step by step how all
these people became acquainted.

Sam Higg, whose name was very good on 'Change in Manchester and London,
joined the direction of the Anglo-Continental. A brother had died lately,
leaving his money amongst them, and his wealth had added considerably to
Madame de Florac's means; his sister invested a portion of her capital in
the railway in her husband's name. The shares were at a premium, and gave
a good dividend. The Prince de Moncontour took his place with great
gravity at the Paris board, whither Barnes made frequent flying visits.
The sense of capitalism sobered and dignified Paul de Florac: at the age
of five-and-forty he was actually giving up being a young man, and was
not ill pleased at having to enlarge his waistcoats, and to show a little
grey in his moustache. His errors were forgotten: he was bien vu by the
Government. He might have had the Embassy Extraordinary to Queen Pomare;
but the health of Madame la Princesse was delicate. He paid his wife
visits every morning: appeared at her parties and her opera box, and was
seen constantly with her in public. He gave quiet little dinners still,
at which Clive was present sometimes: and had a private door and key to
his apartments, which were separated by all the dreary length of the
reception-rooms from the mirrored chamber and jonquil couch where the
Princess and Betsy reposed. When some of his London friends visited Paris
he showed us these rooms and introduced us duly to Madame la Princesse.
He was as simple and as much at home in the midst of these splendours, as
in the dirty little lodgings in Leicester Square, where he painted his
own boots, and cooked his herring over the tongs. As for Clive, he was
the infant of the house: Madame la Princesse could not resist his kind
face; and Paul was as fond of him in his way as Paul's mother in hers.
Would he live at the Hotel de Florac? There was an excellent atelier in
the pavilion, with a chamber for his servant. "No! you will be most at
ease in apartments of your own. You will have here but the society of
women. I do not rise till late: and my affairs, my board, call me away
for the greater part of the day. Thou wilt but be ennuyd to play trictrac
with my old father. My mother waits on him. My sister au second is given
up entirely to her children, who always have the pituite. Madame la
Princesse is not amusing for a young man. Come and go when thou wilt,
Clive, my garcon, my son: thy cover is laid. Wilt thou take the portraits
of all the family? Hast thou want of money? I had at thy age and almost
ever since, mon ami: but now we swim in gold, and when there is a louis
in my purse, there are ten francs for thee." To show his mother that he
did not think of the Reformed Religion, Paul did not miss going to mass
with her on Sunday. Sometimes Madame Paul went too, between whom and her
mother-in-law there could not be any liking, but there was now great
civility. They saw each other once a day: Madame Paul always paid her
visit to the Comte de Florac: and Betsy, her maid, made the old gentleman
laugh by her briskness and talk. She brought back to her mistress the
most wonderful stories which the old man told her about his doings during
the emigration--before he married Madame la Comtesse--when he gave
lessons in dancing, parbleu! There was his fiddle still, a trophy of
those old times. He chirped, and coughed, and sang, in his cracked old
voice, as he talked about them. "Lor! bless you, mum," says Betsy, "he
must have been a terrible old man!" He remembered the times well enough,
but the stories he sometimes told over twice or thrice in an hour. I am
afraid he had not repented sufficiently of those wicked old times: else
why did he laugh and giggle so when he recalled them? He would laugh and
giggle till he was choked with his old cough: and old S. Jean, his man,
came and beat M. le Comte on the back, and made M. le Comte take a
spoonful of his syrup.

Between two such women as Madame de Florac and Lady Kew, of course there
could be little liking or sympathy. Religion, love, duty, the family,
were the French lady's constant occupation,--duty and the family,
perhaps, Lady Kew's aim too,--only the notions of duty were different in
either person. Lady Kew's idea of duty to her relatives being to push
them on in the world: Madame de Florac's to soothe, to pray, to attend
them with constant watchfulness, to strive to mend them with pious
counsel. I don't know that one lady was happier than the other. Madame de
Florac's eldest son was a kindly prodigal: her second had given his whole
heart to the Church: her daughter had centred hers on her own children,
and was jealous if their grandmother laid a finger on them. So Leonore de
Florac was quite alone. It seemed as if Heaven had turned away all her
children's hearts from her. Her daily business in life was to nurse a
selfish old man, into whose service she had been forced in early youth,
by a paternal decree which she never questioned; giving him obedience,
striving to give him respect,--everything but her heart, which had gone
out of her keeping. Many a good woman's life is no more cheerful; a
spring of beauty, a little warmth and sunshine of love, a bitter
disappointment, followed by pangs and frantic tears, then a long
monotonous story of submission. "Not here, my daughter, is to be your
happiness," says the priest; "whom Heaven loves it afflicts." And he
points out to her the agonies of suffering saints of her sex; assures her
of their present beatitudes and glories; exhorts her to bear her pains
with a faith like theirs; and is empowered to promise her a like reward.

The other matron is not less alone. Her husband and son are dead, without
a tear for either,--to weep was not in Lady Kew's nature. Her grandson,
whom she had loved perhaps more than any human being, is rebellious and
estranged from her; her children, separated from her, save one whose
sickness and bodily infirmity the mother resents as disgraces to herself.
Her darling schemes fail somehow. She moves from town to town, and ball
to ball, and hall to castle, for ever uneasy and always alone. She sees
people scared at her coming; is received by sufferance and fear rather
than by welcome; likes perhaps the terror which she inspires, and to
enter over the breach rather than through the hospitable gate. She will
try and command wherever she goes; and trample over dependants and
society, with a grim consciousness that it dislikes her, a rage at its
cowardice, and an unbending will to domineer. To be old, proud, lonely,
and not have a friend in the world--that is her lot in it. As the French
lady may be said to resemble the bird which the fables say feeds her
young with her blood; this one, if she has a little natural liking for
her brood, goes hunting hither and thither and robs meat for them; And
so, I suppose, to make the simile good, we must compare the Marquis of
Farintosh to a lamb for the nonce, and Miss Ethel Newcome to a young
eaglet. Is it not a rare provision of nature (or fiction of poets, who
have their own natural history) that the strong-winged bird can soar to
the sun and gaze at it, and then come down from heaven and pounce on a
piece of carrion?

After she became acquainted with certain circumstances, Madame de Florac
was very interested about Ethel Newcome, and strove in her modest way to
become intimate with her. Miss Newcome and Lady Kew attended Madame de
Moncontour's Wednesday evenings. "It is as well, my dear, for the
interests of the family that we should be particularly civil to these
people," Lady Kew said; and accordingly she came to the Hotel de Florac,
and was perfectly insolent to Madame la Princesse every Thursday evening.
Towards Madame de Florac, even Lady Kew could not be rude. She was so
gentle as to give no excuse for assault: Lady Kew vouchsafed you to
pronounce that Madame de Florac was "tres grande dame;"--"of the sort
which is almost impossible to find nowadays," Lady Kew said, who thought
she possessed this dignity in her own person. When Madame de Florac,
blushing, asked Ethel to come and see her, Ethel's grandmother consented
with the utmost willingness. "She is very devote, I have heard, and will
try and convert you. Of course you will hold your own about that sort of
thing; and have the good sense to keep off theology. There is no Roman
Catholic parti in England or Scotland that is to be thought for a moment.
You will see they will marry young Lord Derwenwater to an Italian
princess; but he is only seventeen, and his directors never lose sight of
him. Sir Bartholomew Bawkes will have a fine property when Lord Campion
dies, unless Lord Campion leaves the money to the convent where his
daughter is--and, of the other families, who is there? I made every
inquiry purposely--that is, of course, one is anxious to know about the
Catholics as about one's own people: and little Mr. Rood, who was one of
my poor brother Steyne's lawyers, told me there is not one young man of
that party at this moment who can be called a desirable person. Be very
civil to Madame de Florac; she sees some of the old legitimists, and you
know I am brouillee with that party of late years."

"There is the Marquis de Montluc, who has a large fortune for France,"
said Ethel, gravely; "he has a humpback, but he is very spiritual.
Monsieur de Cadillan paid me some compliments the other night, and even
asked George Barnes what my dot was, He is a widower, and has a wig and
two daughters. Which do you think would be the greatest encumbrance,
grandmamma,--a humpback, or a wig and two daughters? I like Madame de
Florac; for the sake of the borough, I must try and like poor Madame de
Moncontour, and I will go and see them whenever you please."

So Ethel went to see Madame de Florac. She was very kind to Madame de
Preville's children, Madame de Florac's grandchildren; she was gay and
gracious with Madame de Moncontour. She went again and again to the Hotel
de Florac, not caring for Lady Kew's own circle of statesmen and
diplomatists, Russian, and Spanish, and French, whose talk about the
courts of Europe,--who was in favour at St. Petersburg, and who was in
disgrace at Schoenbrunn,--naturally did not amuse the lively young
person. The goodness of Madame de Florac's life, the tranquil grace and
melancholy kindness with which the French lady received her, soothed and
pleased Miss Ethel. She came and reposed in Madame de Florac's quiet
chamber, or sate in the shade in the sober old garden of her hotel; away
from all the trouble and chatter of the salons, the gossip of the
embassies, the fluttering ceremonial of the Parisian ladies' visits in
their fine toilettes, the fadaises of the dancing dandies, and the
pompous mysteries of the old statesmen who frequented her grandmother's
apartment. The world began for her at night; when she went in the train
of the old Countess from hotel to hotel, and danced waltz after waltz
with Prussian and Neapolitan secretaries, with princes' officers of
ordonnance,--with personages even more lofty very likely,--for the court
of the Citizen King was then in its splendour; and there must surely have
been a number of nimble young royal highnesses who would like to dance
with such a beauty as Miss Newcome. The Marquis of Farintosh had a share
in these polite amusements. His English conversation was not brilliant as
yet, although his French was eccentric; but at the court balls, whether
he appeared in his uniform of the Scotch Archers, or in his native
Glenlivat tartar there certainly was not in his own or the public
estimation a handsomer young nobleman in Paris that season. It has been
said that he was greatly improved in dancing; and, for a young man of his
age, his whiskers were really extraordinarily large and curly.

Miss Newcome, out of consideration for her grandmother's strange
antipathy to him, did not inform Lady Kew that a young gentleman by the
name of Clive occasionally came to visit the Hotel de Florac. At first,
with her French education, Madame de Florac never would have thought of
allowing the cousins to meet in her house; but with the English it was
different. Paul assured her that in the English chateaux, les meess
walked for entire hours with the young men, made parties of the fish,
mounted to horse with them, the whole with the permission of the mothers.
"When I was at Newcome, Miss Ethel rode with me several times," Paul
said; "a preuve that we went to visit an old relation of the family, who
adores Clive and his father." When Madame de Florac questioned her son
about the young Marquis to whom it was said Ethel was engaged, Florac
flouted the idea. "Engaged! This young Marquis is engaged to the Theatre
des Varietes, my mother. He laughs at the notion of an engagement." When
one charged him with it of late at the club; and asked how Mademoiselle
Louqsor--she is so tall, that they call her the Louqsor--she is an
Odalisque Obelisque, ma mere; when one asked how the Louqsor would pardon
his pursuit of Miss Newcome, my Ecossois permitted himself to say in full
club, that it was Miss Newcome pursued him,--that nymph, that Diane, that
charming and peerless young creature! On which, as the others laughed,
and his friend Monsieur Walleye applauded, I dared to say in my turn,
"Monsieur le Marquis, as a young man, not familiar with our language, you
have said what is not true, milor, and therefore luckily not mischievous.
I have the honour to count of my friends the parents of the young lady of
whom you have spoken. You never could have intended to say that a young
miss who lives under the guardianship of her parents, and is obedient to
them, whom you meet in society all the nights, and at whose door your
carriage is to be seen every day, is capable of that with which you
charge her so gaily. These things say themselves, monsieur, in the
coulisses of the theatre, of women from whom you learn our language; not
of young persons pure and chaste, Monsieur de Farintosh! Learn to respect
your compatriots; to honour youth and innocence everywhere, monsieur! and
when you forget yourself, permit one who might be your father to point
where you are wrong."

"And what did he answer?" asked the Countess.

"I attended myself to a soufflet," replied Florac; "but his reply was
much more agreeable. The young insulary, with many blushes and a gros
juron, as his polite way is, said he had not wished to say a word against
that person. 'Of whom the name,' cried I, 'ought never to be spoken in
these places.' Herewith our little dispute ended."

So, occasionally, Mr. Clive had the good luck to meet with his cousin at
the Hotel de Florac, where, I dare say, all the inhabitants wished he
should have his desire regarding this young lady. The Colonel had talked
early to Madame de Florac about this wish of his life, impossible then to
gratify, because Ethel was engaged to Lord Kew. Clive, in the fulness of
his heart, imparted his passion to Florac, and in answer to Paul's offer
to himself, had shown the Frenchman that kind letter in which his father
bade him carry aid to "Leonore de Florac's son," in case he should need
it. The case was all clear to the lively Paul. "Between my mother and
your good Colonel there must have been an affair of the heart in the
early days during the emigration." Clive owned his father had told him as
much, at least that he himself had been attached to Mademoiselle de
Blois. "It is for that that her heart yearns towards thee, that I have
felt myself entrained toward thee since I saw thee"--Clive momentarily
expected to be kissed again. "Tell thy father that I feel--am touched by
his goodness with an eternal gratitude, and love every one that loves my
mother." As far as wishes went, these two were eager promoters of Clive's
little love-affair; and Madame la Princesse became equally not less
willing. Clive's good looks and good-nature had had their effects upon
that good-natured woman, and he was as great a favourite with her as with
her husband. And thus it happened that when Miss Ethel came to pay her
visit, and sate with Madame de Florac and her grandchildren in the
garden, Mr. Newcome would sometimes walk up the avenue there, and salute
the ladies.

If Ethel had not wanted to see him, would she have come? Yes; she used to
say she was going to Madame de Preville's, not Madame de Florac's, and
would insist, I have no doubt, that it was Madame de Preville whom she
went to see (whose husband was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, a
Conseiller d'etat; or other French bigwig), and that she had no idea of
going to meet Clive, or that he was more than a casual acquaintance at
the Hotel de Florac. There was no part of her conduct in all her life,
which this lady, when it was impugned, would defend more strongly than
this intimacy at the Hotel de Florac. It is not with this I quarrel
especially. My fair young readers, who have seen a half-dozen of seasons,
can you call to mind the time when you had such a friendship for Emma
Tomkins, that you were always at the Tomkins's, and notes were constantly
passing between your house and hers? When her brother, Paget Tomkins,
returned to India, did not your intimacy with Emma fall off? If your
younger sister is not in the room, I know you will own as much to me. I
think you are always deceiving yourselves and other people. I think the
motive you put forward is very often not the real one; though you will
confess, neither to yourself, nor to any human being, what the real
motive is. I think that what you desire you pursue, and are as selfish in
your way as your bearded fellow-creatures are. And as for the truth being
in you, of all the women in a great acquaintance, I protest there are
but--never mind. A perfectly honest woman, a woman who never flatters,
who never manages, who never cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses
her eyes, who never speculates on the effect which she produces, who
never is conscious of unspoken admiration, what a monster, I say, would
such a female be! Miss Hopkins, you have been a coquette since you were a
year old; you worked on your papa's friends in the nurse's arms by the
fascination of your lace frock and pretty new sash and shoes; when you
could just toddle, you practised your arts upon other children in the
square, poor little lambkins sporting among the daisies; and nunc in
ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones, proceeding from the lambs to
reluctant dragoons, you tried your arts upon Captain Paget Tomkins, who
behaved so ill, and went to India without--without making those proposals
which of course you never expected. Your intimacy was with Emma. It has
cooled. Your sets are different. The Tomkins's are not quite etc. etc.
You believe Captain Tomkins married a Miss O'Grady, etc. etc. Ah, my
pretty, my sprightly Miss Hopkins, be gentle in your judgment of your
neighbours!




CHAPTER XLVII

Contains two or three Acts of a Little Comedy


All this story is told by one, who, if he was not actually present at the
circumstances here narrated, yet had information concerning them, and
could supply such a narrative of facts and conversations as is, indeed,
not less authentic than the details we have of other histories. How can I
tell the feelings in a young lady's mind; the thoughts in a young
gentleman's bosom?--As Professor Owen or Professor Agassiz takes a
fragment of a bone, and builds an enormous forgotten monster out of it,
wallowing in primeval quagmires, tearing down leaves and branches of
plants that flourished thousands of years ago, and perhaps may be coal by
this time--so the novelist puts this and that together: from the
footprint finds the foot; from the foot, the brute who trod on it; from
the brute, the plant he browsed on, the marsh in which he swam--and thus
in his humble way a physiologist too, depicts the habits, size,
appearance of the beings whereof he has to treat;--traces this slimy
reptile through the mud, and describes his habits filthy and rapacious;
prods down this butterfly with a pin, and depicts his beautiful coat and
embroidered waistcoat; points out the singular structure of yonder more
important animal, the megatherium of his history.

Suppose then, in the quaint old garden of the Hotel de Florac, two young
people are walking up and down in an avenue of lime-trees, which are
still permitted to grow in that ancient place. In the centre of that
avenue is a fountain, surmounted by a Triton so grey and moss-eaten, that
though he holds his conch to his swelling lips, curling his tail in the
arid basin, his instrument has had a sinecure for at least fifty years;
and did not think fit even to play when the Bourbons, in whose time he
was erected, came back from their exile. At the end of the lime-tree
avenue is a broken-nosed damp Faun, with a marble panpipe, who pipes to
the spirit ditties which I believe never had any tune. The perron of the
hotel is at the other end of the avenue; a couple of Caesars on either
side of the door-window, from which the inhabitants of the hotel issue
into the garden--Caracalla frowning over his mouldy shoulder at Nerva, on
to whose clipped hair the roofs of the grey chateau have been dribbling
for ever so many long years. There are more statues gracing this noble
place. There is Cupid, who has been at the point of kissing Psyche this
half-century at least, though the delicious event has never come off,
through all those blazing summers and dreary winters: there is Venus and
her Boy under the damp little dome of a cracked old temple. Through the
alley of this old garden, in which their ancestors have disported in
hoops and powder, Monsieur de Florac's chair is wheeled by St. Jean, his
attendant; Madame de Preville's children trot about, and skip, and play
at cache-cache. The R. P. de Florac (when at home) paces up and down and
meditates his sermons; Madame de Florac sadly walks sometimes to look at
her roses; and Clive and Ethel Newcome are marching up and down; the
children, and their bonne of course being there, jumping to and fro; and
Madame de Florac, having just been called away to Monsieur le Comte,
whose physician has come to see him.

Ethel says, "How charming and odd this solitude is: and how pleasant to
hear the voices of the children playing in the neighbouring Convent
garden," of which they can see the new chapel rising over the trees.

Clive remarks that "the neighbouring hotel has curiously changed its
destination. One of the members of the Directory had it; and, no doubt,
in the groves of its garden, Madame Tallien, and Madame Recamier, and
Madame Beauharnais have danced under the lamps. Then a Marshal of the
Empire inhabited it. Then it was restored to its legitimate owner,
Monsieur le Marquis de Bricquabracque, whose descendants, having a
lawsuit about the Bricquabracque succession, sold the hotel to the
Convent."

After some talk about nuns, Ethel says, "There were convents in England.
She often thinks she would like to retire to one;" and she sighs as if
her heart were in that scheme.

Clive, with a laugh, says, "Yes. If you could retire after the season,
when you were very weary of the balls, a convent would be very nice. At
Rome he had seen San Pietro in Montorio and Sant Onofrio, that delightful
old place where Tasso died: people go and make a retreat there. In the
ladies' convents, the ladies do the same thing--and he doubts whether
they are much more or less wicked after their retreat, than gentlemen and
ladies in England or France."

Ethel.  Why do you sneer at all faith? Why should not a retreat do people
good? Do you suppose the world is so satisfactory, that those who are in
it never wish for a while to leave it'd (She heaves a sigh and looks down
towards a beautiful new dress of many flounces, which Madame de
Flouncival, the great milliner, has sent her home that very day.)

Clive.  I do not know what the world is, except from afar off. I am like
the Peri who looks into Paradise and sees angels within it. I live in
Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square: which is not within the gates of
Paradise. I take the gate to be somewhere in Davies Street, leading out
of Oxford Street into Grosvenor Square. There's another gate in Hay Hill:
and another in Bruton Street, Bond----

Ethel.  Don't be a goose.

Clive.  Why not? It is as good to be a goose, as to be a lady--no, a
gentleman of fashion. Suppose I were a Viscount, an Earl, a Marquis, a
Duke, would you say Goose? No, you would say Swan.

Ethel.  Unkind and unjust!--ungenerous to make taunts which common people
make: and to repeat to me those silly sarcasms which your low Radical
literary friends are always putting in their books! Have I ever made any
difference to you? Would I not sooner see you than the fine people? Would
I talk with you, or with the young dandies most willingly? Are we not of
the same blood, Clive; and of all the grandees I see about, can there be
a grander gentleman than your dear old father? You need not squeeze my
hand so.--Those little imps are look--that has nothing to do with the
question. Viens, Leonore! Tu connois bien, monsieur, n'est-ce pas? qui te
fait de si jolis dessins?

Leonore.  Ah, oui! Vous m'en ferez toujours, n'est-ce pas Monsieur Clive?
des chevaux, et puis des petites filles avec leurs gouvernantes, et puis
des maisons--et puis--et puis des maisons encore--ou est bonne maman?

                          [Exit little LEONORE down an alley.

Ethel.  Do you remember when we were children, and you used to make
drawings for us? I have some now that you did--in my geography book,
which I used to read and read with Miss Quigley.

Clive.  I remember all about our youth, Ethel.

Ethel.  Tell me what you remember?

Clive.  I remember one of the days, when I first saw you, I had been
reading the Arabian Nights at school--and you came in in a bright dress
of shot silk, amber, and blue--and I thought you were like that
fairy-princess who came out of the crystal box--because----

Ethel.  Because why?

Clive.  Because I always thought that fairy somehow must be the most
beautiful creature in all the world--that is "why and because." Do not
make me Mayfair curtsies. You know whether you are good-looking or not:
and how long I have thought you so. I remember when I thought I would
like to be Ethel's knight, and that if there was anything she would have
me do, I would try and achieve it in order to please her. I remember when
I was so ignorant I did not know there was any difference in rank between
us.

Ethel.  Ah, Clive!

Clive.  Now it is altered. Now I know the difference between a poor
painter and a young lady of the world. Why haven't I a title and a great
fortune? Why did I ever see you, Ethel; or, knowing the distance which it
seems fate has placed between us, why have I seen you again?

Ethel (innocently).  Have I ever made any difference between us? Whenever
I may see you, am I not too glad? Don't I see you sometimes when I should
not--no--I do not say when I should not; but when others, whom I am bound
to obey, forbid me? What harm is there in my remembering old days? Why
should I be ashamed of our relationship?--no, not ashamed--shy should I
forget it? Don't do that, sir; we have shaken hands twice already.
Leonore! Xavier!

Clive.  At one moment you like me: and at the next you seem to repent it.
One day you seem happy when I come; and another day you are ashamed of
me. Last Tuesday, when you came with those fine ladies to the Louvre, you
seemed to blush when you saw me copying at my picture; and that stupid
young lord looked quite alarmed because you spoke to me. My lot in life
is not very brilliant; but I would not change it against that young
man's--no, not with all his chances.

Ethel.  What do you mean with all his chances?

Clive.  You know very well. I mean I would not be as selfish or as dull,
or as ill educated--I won't say worse of him--not to be as handsome, or
as wealthy, or as noble as he is. I swear I would not now change my place
against his, or give up being Clive Newcome to be my Lord Marquis of
Farintosh, with all his acres and titles of nobility.

Ethel.  Why are you for ever harping about Lord Farintosh and his titles?
I thought it was only women who were jealous--you gentlemen say so.--
(Hurriedly.) I am going to-night with grandmamma to the Minister of the
Interior, and then to the Russian ball; and to-morrow to the Tuileries.
We dine at the Embassy first; and on Sunday, I suppose, we shall go to
the Rue d'Aguesseau. I can hardly come here before Mon---. Madam de
Florac! Little Leonore is very like you--resembles you very much. My
cousin says he longs to make a drawing of her.

Madame de Florac.  My husband always likes that I should be present at
his dinner. Pardon me, young people, that I have been away from you for a
moment.

                [Exeunt CLIVE, ETHEL, and Madame DE F. into the house.


CONVERSATION II.-SCENE I

Miss Newcome arrives in Lady Kew's carriage, which enters the court of
the Hotel de Florac.

Saint Jean.  Mademoiselle--Madame la Comtesse is gone out but madame has
charged me to say, that she will be at home to the dinner of M. le Comte,
as to the ordinary.

Miss Newcome.  Madame de Preville is at home?

Saint Jean.  Pardon me, madame is gone out with M. le Baron, and M.
Xavier, and Mademoiselle de Preville. They are gone, miss, I believe, to
visit the parents of Monsieur le Baron; of whom it is probably to-day the
fete: for Mademoiselle Leonore carried a bouquet--no doubt for her
grandpapa. Will it please mademoiselle to enter? I think Monsieur the
Count sounds me. (Bell rings.)

Miss Newcome.  Madame la Prince--Madame la Vicomtesse is at home,
Monsieur St. Jean?

Saint Jean.  I go to call the people of Madame la Vicomtesse.

     [Exit Old SAINT JEAN to the carriage: a Lackey comes presently
     in a gorgeous livery, with buttons like little cheese plates.

The Lackey.  The Princess is at home, miss, and will be most appy to see
you, miss. (Miss trips up the great stair: a gentleman out of livery has
come forth to the landing, and introduces her to the apartments of Madame
la Princesse.)

The Lackey to the Servants on the box.  Good morning, Thomas. How dy' do,
old Backystopper?

Backystopper.  How de do, Jim? I say, you couldn't give a feller a drink
of beer, could yer, Muncontour? It was precious wet last night, I can
tell you. 'Ad to stop for three hours at the Napolitum Embassy, when we
was a dancing. Me and some chaps went into Bob Parsom's and had a drain.
Old Cat came out and couldn't find her carriage, not by no means, could
she, Tommy? Blest if I didn't nearly drive her into a wegetable-cart. I
was so uncommon scruey! Who's this a-hentering at your pot-coshare?
Billy, my fine feller!

Clive Newcome (by the most singular coincidence).  Madame la Princesse?

Lackey.  We, munseer. (He rings a bell: the gentleman in black appears as
before on the landing-place up the stair.)

                                             [Exit Clive.

Backystopper.  I say, Bill: is that young chap often a-coming about here?
They'd run pretty in a curricle, wouldn't they? Miss N. and Master N.
Quiet, old woman! Jest look to that mare's ead, will you, Billy? He's a
fine young feller, that is. He gave me a covering the other night.
Whenever I sor him in the Park, he was always riding an ansum hanimal.
What is he? They said in our 'all he was a hartis. I can 'ardly think
that. Why, there used to be a hartis come to our club, and painted two or
three of my 'osses, and my old woman too.

Lackey.  There's hartises and hartises, Backystopper. Why, there's some
on 'em comes here with more stars on their coats than Dukes has got. Have
you never 'eard of Mossyer Verny, or Mossyer Gudang?

Backystopper.  They say this young gent is sweet on Miss N.; which, I
guess, I wish he may git it.

Tommy.  He! he! he!

Backystopper.  Brayvo, Tommy. Tom ain't much of a man for conversation,
but he's a precious one to drink. Do you think the young gent is sweet on
her, Tommy? I sor him often prowling about our 'ouse in Queen Street,
when we was in London.

Tommy.  I guess he wasn't let in in Queen Street. I guess hour little
Buttons was very near turned away for saying we was at home to him--I
guess a footman's place is to keep his mouth hopen--no, his heyes hopen--
and his mouth shut. (He lapses into silence.)

Lackey.  I think Thomis is in love, Thomis is. Who was that young woman I
saw you a-dancing of at the Showmier, Thomis? How the young Marquis was
a-cuttin' of it about there! The pleace was obliged to come up and stop
him dancing. His man told old Buzfuz upstairs, that the Marquis's goings
on is hawful. Up till four or five every morning; blind hookey,
shampaign, the dooce's own delight. That party have had I don't know how
much in diamonds--and they quarrel and swear at each other, and fling
plates: it's tremendous.

Tommy.  Why doesn't the Marquis man mind his own affairs? He's a
supersellious beast: and will no more speak to a man, except he's
out-a-livery, than he would to a chimbly-swip. He! Cuss him, I'd fight
'im for 'alf-a-crown.

Lackey.  And we'd back you, Tommy. Buzfuz upstairs ain't supersellious;
nor is the Prince's walet nether. That old Sangjang's a rum old guvnor.
He was in England with the Count, fifty years ago--in the hemigration--in
Queen Hann's time, you know. He used to support the old Count. He says he
remembers a young Musseer Newcome then, that used to take lessons from
the Shevallier, the Countess' father--there's my bell.

                                               [Exit Lackey.

Backystopper.  Not a bad chap that. Sports his money very free--sings an
uncommon good song.

Thomas.  Pretty voice, but no cultiwation.

Lackey (who re-enters).  Be here at two o'clock for Miss N. Take
anything? Come round the corner.--There's a capital shop round the
corner.

                                             [Exeunt Servants.


SCENE II

Ethel.  I can't think where Madame de Moncontour has gone. How very odd
it was that you should come here--that we should both come here to-day!
How surprised I was to see you at the Minister's! Grandmamma was so
angry! "That boy pursues us wherever we go," she said. I am sure I don't
know why we shouldn't meet, Clive. It seems to be wrong even my seeing
you by chance here. Do you know, sir, what a scolding I had about--about
going to Brighton with you? My grandmother did not hear of it till we
were in Scotland, when that foolish maid of mine talked of it to her
maid; and, there was oh, such a tempest! If there were a Bastile here,
she would like to lock you into it. She says that you are always upon our
way--I don't know how, I am sure. She says, but for you I should have
been--you know what I should have been: but I am thankful that I wasn't,
and Kew has got a much nicer wife in Henrietta Pulleyn, than I could ever
have been to him. She will be happier than Clara, Clive. Kew is one of
the kindest creatures in the world--not very wise; not very strong: but
he is just such a kind, easy, generous little man, as will make a girl
like Henrietta quite happy.

Clive.  But not you, Ethel?

Ethel.  No, nor I him. My temper is difficult, Clive, and I fear few men
would bear with me. I feel, somehow, always very lonely. How old am I?
Twenty--I feel sometimes as if I was a hundred; and in the midst of all
these admirations and fetes and flatteries, so tired, oh, so tired! And
yet if I don't have them, I miss them. How I wish I was religious like
Madame de Florac: there is no day that she does not go to church. She is
for ever busy with charities, clergymen, conversions; I think the
Princess will be brought over ere long--that dear old Madame de Florac!
and yet she is no happier than the rest of us. Hortense is an empty
little thing, who thinks of her prosy fat Camille with spectacles, and of
her two children, and of nothing else in the world besides. Who is happy?
Clive!

Clive.  You say Barnes's wife is not.

Ethel.  We are like brother and sister, so I may talk to you. Barnes is
very cruel to her. At Newcome, last winter, poor Clara used to come into
my room with tears in her eyes morning after morning. He calls her a
fool; and seems to take a pride in humiliating her before company. My
poor father has luckily taken a great liking to her: and before him, for
he has grown very very hot-tempered since his illness, Barnes leaves poor
Clara alone. We were in hopes that the baby might make matters better,
but as it is a little girl, Barnes chooses to be very much disappointed.
He wants papa to give up his seat in Parliament, but he clings to that
more than anything. Oh, dear me! who is happy in the world? What a pity
Lord Highgate's father had not died sooner! He and Barnes have been
reconciled. I wonder my brother's spirit did not revolt against it. The
old lord used to keep a great sum of money at the bank, I believe: and
the present one does so still: he has paid all his debts off: and Barnes
is actually friends with him. He is always abusing the Dorkings, who want
to borrow money from the bank, he says. This eagerness for money is
horrible. If I had been Barnes I would never have been reconciled with
Mr. Belsize, never, never! And yet they say he was quite right: and
grandmamma is even pleased that Lord Highgate should be asked to dine in
Park Lane. Poor papa is there: come to attend his parliamentary duties as
he thinks. He went to a division the other night; and was actually lifted
out of his carriage and wheeled into the lobby in a chair. The ministers
thanked him for coming. I believe he thinks he will have his peerage yet.
Oh, what a life of vanity ours is!

Enter Madame de Moncontour.  What are you young folks a-talkin' about--
balls and operas? When first I was took to the opera I did not like it--
and fell asleep. But now, oh, it's 'eavenly to hear Grisi sing!

The Clock.  Ting, ting!

Ethel.  Two o'clock already! I must run back to grandmamma. Good-bye,
Madame de Moncontour; I am so sorry I have not been able to see dear
Madame de Florac. I will try and come to her on Thursday--please tell
her. Shall we meet you at the American minister's to-night, or at Madame
de Brie's to-morrow? Friday is your own night--I hope grandmamma will
bring me. How charming your last music was! Good-bye, mon cousin! You
shall not come downstairs with me, I insist upon it, sir: and had much
best remain here, and finish your drawing of Madame de Moncontour.

Princess.  I've put on the velvet, you see, Clive--though it's very 'ot
in May. Good-bye, my dear.

                                             [Exit ETHEL


As far as we can judge from the above conversation, which we need not
prolong--as the talk between Madame de Moncontour and Monsieur Clive,
after a few complimentary remarks about Ethel, had nothing to do with the
history of the Newcomes--as far as we can judge, the above little
colloquy took place on Monday: and about Wednesday, Madame la Comtesse de
Florac received a little note from Clive, in which he said, that one day
when she came to the Louvre, where he was copying, she had admired a
picture of a Virgin and Child, by Sasso Ferrato, since when he had been
occupied in making a water-colour drawing after the picture, and hoped
she would be pleased to accept the copy from her affectionate and
grateful servant, Clive Newcome. The drawing would be done the next day,
when he would call with it in his hand. Of course Madame de Florac
received this announcement very kindly; and sent back by Clive's servant
a note of thanks to that young gentleman.

Now on Thursday morning, about one o'clock, by one of those singular
coincidences which, etc. etc., who should come to the Hotel de Florac but
Miss Ethel Newcome? Madame la Comtesse was at home, waiting to receive
Clive and his picture: but Miss Ethel's appearance frightened the good
lady, so much so that she felt quite guilty at seeing the girl, whose
parents might think--I don't know what they might not think--that Madame
de Florac was trying to make a match between the young people. Hence
arose the words uttered by the Countess, after a while, in--


CONVERSATION III

Madame de Florac (at work).  And so you like to quit the world and to
come to our triste old hotel. After to-day you will find it still more
melancholy, my poor child.

Ethel.  And why?

Madame de F.  Some one who has been here to egager our little meetings
will come no more.

Ethel.  Is the Abbe de Florac going to quit Paris, madam?

Madame de F.  It is not of him that I speak, thou knowest it very well,
my daughter. Thou hast seen my poor Clive twice here. He will come once
again, and then no more. My conscience reproaches me that I have admitted
him at all. But he is like a son to me, and was so confided to me by his
father. Five years ago, when we met, after an absence--of how many
years!--Colonel Newcome told me what hopes he had cherished for his boy.
You know well, my daughter, with whom those hopes were connected. Then he
wrote me that family arrangements rendered his plans impossible--that the
hand of Miss Newcome was promised elsewhere. When I heard from my son
Paul how these negotiations were broken, my heart rejoiced, Ethel, for my
friend's sake. I am an old woman now, who have seen the world, and all
sorts of men. Men more brilliant no doubt I have known, but such a heart
as his, such a faith as his, such a generosity and simplicity as Thomas
Newcome's--never!

Ethel (smiling).  Indeed, dear lady, I think with you.

Madame de F.  I understand thy smile, my daughter. I can say to thee,
that when we were children almost, I knew thy good uncle. My poor father
took the pride of his family into exile with him. Our poverty only made
his pride the greater. Even before the emigration a contract had been
passed between our family and the Count de Florac. I could not be wanting
to the word given by my father. For how many long years have I kept it?
But when I see a young girl who may be made the victim--the subject of a
marriage of convenience, as I was--my heart pities her. And if I love
her, as I love you, I tell her my thoughts. Better poverty, Ethel: better
a cell in a convent: than a union without love. Is it written eternally
that men are to make slaves of us? Here in France, above all, our fathers
sell us every day. And what a society ours is! Thou wilt know this when
thou art married. There are some laws so cruel that nature revolts
against theme, and breaks them--or we die in keeping them. You smile. I
have been nearly fifty years dying--n'est-ce pas?--and am here an old
woman, complaining to a young girl. It is because our recollections of
youth are always young: and because I have suffered so, that I would
spare those I love a like grief. Do you know that the children of those
who do not love in marriage seem to bear an hereditary coldness, and do
not love their parents as other children do? They witness our differences
and our indifferences, hear our recriminations, take one side or the
other in our disputes, and are partisans for father or mother. We force
ourselves to be hypocrites, and hide our wrongs from them; we speak of a
bad father with false praises; we wear feint smiles over our tears, and
deceive our children--deceive them, do we? Even from the exercise of that
pious deceit there is no woman but suffers in the estimation of her sons.
They may shield her as champions against their father's selfishness or
cruelty. In this case, what a war! What a home, where the son sees a
tyrant in the father, and in the mother but a trembling victim! I speak
not for myself--whatever may have been the course of our long wedded
life, I have not to complain of these ignoble storms. But when the family
chief neglects his wife, or prefers another to her, the children too,
courtiers as we are, will desert her. You look incredulous about domestic
love. Tenez, my child, if I may so surmise, I think you cannot have seen
it.

Ethel (blushing, and thinking, perhaps, how she esteems her father, how
her mother, and how much they esteem each other).  My father and mother
have been most kind to all their children, madame; and no one can say
that their marriage has been otherwise than happy. My mother is the
kindest and most affectionate mother, and--(Here a vision of Sir Brian
alone in his room, and nobody really caring for him so much as his valet,
who loves him to the extent of fifty pounds a year and perquisites; or,
perhaps, Miss Cann, who reads to him, and plays a good deal of evenings,
much to Sir Brian's liking--here this vision, we say, comes, and stops
Miss Ethel's sentence.)

Madame de F.  Your father, in his infirmity--and yet he is five years
younger than Colonel Newcome--is happy to have such a wife and such
children. They comfort his age; they cheer his sickness; they confide
their griefs and pleasures to him--is it not so? His closing days are
soothed by their affection.

Ethel.  Oh, no, no! And yet it is not his fault or ours that he is a
stranger to us. He used to be all day at the bank, or at night in the
House of Commons, or he and mamma went to parties, and we young ones
remained with the governess. Mamma is very kind. I have never, almost,
known her angry; never with us; about us, sometimes, with the servants.
As children, we used to see papa and mamma at breakfast; and then when
she was dressing to go out. Since he has been ill, she has given up all
parties. I wanted to do so too. I feel ashamed in the world, sometimes,
when I think of my poor father at home, alone. I wanted to stay, but my
mother and my grandmother forbade me. Grandmamma has a fortune, which she
says I am to have: since then they have insisted on my being with her.
She is very clever you know: she is kind too in her way; but she cannot
live out of society. And I, who pretend to revolt, I like it too; and I,
who rail and scorn flatterers--oh, I like admiration! I am pleased when
the women hate me, and the young men leave them for me. Though I despise
many of these, yet I can't help drawing them towards me. One or two of
them I have seen unhappy about me, and I like it; and if they are
indifferent I am angry, and never tire till they come back. I love
beautiful dresses; I love jewels; I love a great name and a fine house--
oh, I despise myself, when I think of these things! When I lie in bed and
say I have been heartless and a coquette, I cry with humiliation; and
then rebel and say, Why not?--and to-night--yes, to-night--after leaving
you, I shall be wicked, I know I shall.

Madame de F. (sadly).  One will pray for thee, my child.

Ethel (sadly).  I thought I might be good once. I used to say my own
prayers then. Now I speak them but by rote, and feel ashamed--yes,
ashamed to speak them. Is it not horrid to say them, and next morning to
be no better than you were last night? Often I revolt at these as at
other things, and am dumb. The Vicar comes to see us at Newcome, and eats
so much dinner, and pays us such court, and "Sir Brians" papa, and
"Your Ladyship's" mamma. With grandmamma I go to hear a fashionable
preacher--Clive's uncle, whose sister lets lodgings at Brighton; such a
queer, bustling, pompous, honest old lady. Do you know that Clive's aunt
lets lodgings at Brighton?

Madame de F.  My father was an usher in a school. Monsieur de Florac gave
lessons in the emigration. Do you know in what?

Ethel.  Oh, the old nobility! that is different, you know. That Mr.
Honeyman is so affected that I have no patience with him!

Madame de F. (with a sigh).  I wish you could attend the services of a
better church. And when was it you thought you might be good, Ethel?

Ethel.  When I was a girl. Before I came out. When I used to take long
rides with my dear Uncle Newcome; and he used to talk to me in his sweet
simple way; and he said I reminded him of some one he once knew.

Madame de F.  Who--who was that, Ethel?

Ethel (looking up at Gerard's picture of the Countess de Florac).  What
odd dresses you wore in the time of the Empire, Madame de Florac! How
could you ever have such high waists, and such wonderful fraises!
                           (MADAME DE FLORAC kisses ETHEL. Tableau.)

Enter SAINT JEAN, preceding a gentleman with a drawing-board under his
arm.

Saint Jean.  Monsieur Claive!             [Exit SAINT JEAN.

Clive.  How do you do, Madame la Comtesse? Mademoiselle, j'ai l'honneur
de vous souhaiter le bon jour.

Madame de F.  Do you come from the Louvre? Have you finished that
beautiful copy, mon ami?

Clive.  I have brought it for you. It is not very good. There are always
so many petites demoiselles copying that Sasso Ferrato; and they chatter
about it so, and hop from one easel to another; and the young artists are
always coming to give them advice--so that there is no getting a good
look at the picture. But I have brought you the sketch; and am so pleased
that you asked for it.

Madame de F. (surveying the sketch).  It is charming--charming! What
shall we give to our painter for his chef-d'oeuvre?

Clive (kisses her hand).  There is my pay! And you will be glad to hear
that two of my portraits have been received at the Exhibition. My uncle,
the clergyman, and Mr. Butts, of the Life Guards.

Ethel.  Mr. Butts--quel nom! Je ne connois aucun M. Butts!

Clive.  He has a famous head to draw. They refused Crackthorpe and--and
one or two other heads I sent in.

Ethel (tossing up hers).  Miss Mackenzie's, I suppose!

Clive.  Yes, Miss Mackenzie's. It is a sweet little face; too delicate
for my hand, though.

Ethel.  So is a wax-doll's a pretty face. Pink cheeks; china-blue eyes;
and hair the colour of old Madame Hempenfeld's--not her last hair--her
last but one. (She goes to a window that looks into the court.)

Clive (to the Countess).  Miss Mackenzie speaks more respectfully of
other people's eyes and hair. She thinks there is nobody in the world to
compare to Miss Newcome.

Madame de F. (aside).  And you, mon ami? This is the last time,
entendez-vous? You must never come here again. If M. le Comte knew it he
never would pardon me. Encore? (He kisses her ladyship's hand again.)

Clive.  A good action gains to be repeated. Miss Newcome, does the view
of the courtyard please you? The old trees and the garden are better.
That dear old Faun without a nose! I must have a sketch of him: the
creepers round the base are beautiful.

Miss N.  I was looking to see if the carriage had come for me. It is time
that I return home.

Clive.  That is my brougham. May I carry you anywhere? I hire him by the
hour: and I will carry you to the end of the world.

Miss N.  Where are you going, Madame de Floras?--to show that sketch to
M. le Comte? Dear me! I don't fancy that M. de Florac can care for such
things! I am sure I have seen many as pretty on the quays for twenty-five
sous. I wonder the carriage is not come for me.

Clive.  You can take mine without my company, as that seems not to please
you.

Miss N.  Your company is sometimes very pleasant--when you please.
Sometimes, as last night, for instance, when you particularly lively.

Clive.  Last night, after moving heaven and earth to get an invitation to
Madame de Brie--I say, heaven and earth, that is a French phrase--I
arrive there; I find Miss Newcome engaged for almost every dance,
waltzing with M. de Klingenspohr, galloping with Count de Capri,
galloping and waltzing with the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh. She
will scarce speak to me during the evening; and when I wait till
midnight, her grandmamma whisks her home, and I am left alone for my
pains. Lady Kew is in one of her high moods, and the only words she
condescends to say to me are, "Oh, I thought you had returned to London,"
with which she turns her venerable back upon me.

Miss N.  A fortnight ago you said you were going to London. You said the
copies you were about here would not take you another week, and that was
three weeks since.

Clive.  It were best I had gone.

Miss N.  If you think so, I cannot but think so.

Clive.  Why do I stay and hover about you, and follow you know--I follow
you? Can I live on a smile vouchsafed twice a week, and no brighter than
you give to all the world? What I do I get, but to hear your beauty
praised, and to see you, night after night, happy and smiling and
triumphant, the partner of other men? Does it add zest to your triumph,
to think that I behold it? I believe you would like a crowd of us to
pursue you.

Miss N.  To pursue me; and if they find me alone, by chance to compliment
me with such speeches as you make? That would be pleasure indeed! Answer
me here in return, Clive. Have I ever disguised from any of my friends
the regard I have for you? Why should I? Have not I taken your part when
you were maligned? In former days, when--when Lord Kew asked me, as he
had a right to do then--I said it was as a brother I held you; and always
would. If I have been wrong, it has been for two or three times in seeing
you at all--or seeing you thus; in letting you speak to me as you do--
injure me as you do. Do you think I have not hard enough words said to me
about you, but that you must attack me too in turn? Last night only,
because you were at the ball,--it was very, very wrong of me to tell you
I was going there,--as we went home, Lady Kew--Go, sir. I never thought
you would have seen in me this humiliation.

Clive.  Is it possible that I should have made Ethel Newcome shed tears?
Oh, dry them, dry them. Forgive me, Ethel, forgive me! I have no right to
jealousy, or to reproach you--I know that. If others admire you, surely I
ought to know that they--they do but as I do: I should be proud, not
angry, that they admire my Ethel--my sister, if you can be no more.

Ethel.  I will be that always, whatever harsh things you think or say of
me. There, sir, I am not going to be so foolish as to cry again. Have you
been studying very hard? Are your pictures good at the Exhibition? I like
you with your mustachios best, and order you not to cut them off again.
The young men here wear them. I hardly knew Charles Beardmore when he
arrived from Berlin the other day, like a sapper and miner. His little
sisters cried out, and were quite frightened by his apparition. Why are
you not in diplomacy? That day, at Brighton, when Lord Farintosh asked
whether you were in the army, I thought to myself, why is he not?

Clive.  A man in the army may pretend to anything, n'est-ce pas? He wears
a lovely uniform. He may be a General, a K.C.B., a Viscount, an Earl. He
may be valiant in arms, and wanting a leg, like the lover in the song. It
is peace-time, you say? so much the worse career for a soldier. My father
would not have me, he said, for ever dangling in barracks, or smoking in
country billiard-rooms. I have no taste for law: and as for diplomacy, I
have no relations in the Cabinet, and no uncles in the House of Peers.
Could my uncle, who is in Parliament, help me much, do you think? or
would he, if he could?--or Barnes, his noble son and heir, after him?

Ethel (musing).  Barnes would not, perhaps, but papa might even still,
and you have friends who are fond of you.

Clive.  No--no one can help me: and my art, Ethel, is not only my choice
and my love, but my honour too. I shall never distinguish myself in it: I
may take smart likenesses, but that is all. I am not fit to grind my
friend Ridley's colours for him. Nor would my father, who loves his own
profession so, make a good general probably. He always says so. I thought
better of myself when I began as a boy; and was a conceited youngster,
expecting to carry it all before me. But as I walked the Vatican, and
looked at Raphael, and at the great Michael--I knew I was but a poor
little creature; and in contemplating his genius, shrunk up till I felt
myself as small as a man looks under the dome of St. Peter's. Why should
I wish to have a great genius?--Yes, there is one reason why I should
like to have it.

Ethel.  And that is?

Clive.  To give it you, if it pleased you, Ethel. But I might wish for
the roc's egg: there is no way of robbing the bird. I must take a humble
place, and you want a brilliant one. A brilliant one! Oh, Ethel, what a
standard we folks measure fame by! To have your name in the Morning Post,
and to go to three balls every night. To have your dress described at the
Drawing-Room; and your arrival, from a round of visits in the country, at
your town-house; and the entertainment of the Marchioness of Farin----

Ethel.  Sir, if you please, no calling names.

Clive.  I wonder at it. For you are in the world, and you love the world,
whatever you may say. And I wonder that one of your strength of mind
should so care for it. I think my simple old father is much finer than
all your grandees: his single-mindedness more lofty than all their
bowing, and haughtiness, and scheeming. What are you thinking of, as you
stand in that pretty attitude--like Mnemosyne--with your finger on your
chin?

Ethel.  Mnemosyne! who was she? I think I like you best when you are
quiet and gentle, and not when you are flaming out and sarcastic, sir.
And so you think you will never be a famous painter? They are quite in
society here. I was so pleased, because two of them dined at the
Tuileries when grandmamma was there; and she mistook one, who was covered
all over with crosses, for an ambassador, I believe, till the Queen call
him Monsieur Delaroche. She says there is no knowing people in this
country. And do you think you will never be able to paint as well as M.
Delaroche?

Clive.  No--never.

Ethel.  And--and--you will never give up painting?

Clive.  No--never. That would be like leaving your friend who was poor;
or deserting your mistress because you were disappointed about her money.
They do those things in the great world, Ethel.

Ethel (with a sigh).  Yes.

Clive.  If it is so false, and base, and hollow, this great world--if its
aims are so mean, its successes so paltry, the sacrifices it asks of you
so degrading, the pleasures it gives you so wearisome, shameful even, why
does Ethel Newcome cling to it? Will you be fairer, dear, with any other
name than your own? Will you be happier, after a month, at bearing a
great title, with a man whom you can't esteem, tied for ever to you, to
be the father of Ethel's children, and the lord and master of her life
and actions? The proudest woman in the world consents to bend herself to
this ignominy, and own that a coronet is a bribe sufficient for her
honour! What is the end of a Christian life, Ethel; a girl's pure
nurture?--it can't be this! Last week, as we walked in the garden here,
and heard the nuns singing in their chapel, you said how hard it was that
poor women should be imprisoned so, and were thankful that in England we
had abolished that slavery. Then you cast your eyes to the ground, and
mused as you paced the walk; and thought, I know, that perhaps their lot
was better than some others.

Ethel.  Yes, I did. I was thinking that almost all women are made slaves
one way or other, and that these poor nuns perhaps were better off than
we are.

Clive.  I never will quarrel with nun or matron for following her
vocation. But for our women, who are free, why should they rebel against
Nature, shut their hearts up, sell their lives for rank and money, and
forgo the most precious right of their liberty? Look, Ethel, dear. I love
you so, that if I thought another had your heart, an honest man, a loyal
gentleman, like--like him of last year even, I think I could go back with
a God bless you, and take to my pictures again, and work on in my own
humble way. You seem like a queen to me, somehow; and I am but a poor,
humble fellow, who might be happy, I think, if you were. In those balls,
where I have seen you surrounded by those brilliant young men, noble and
wealthy, admirers like me, I have often thought, "How could I aspire to
such a creature, and ask her to forgo a palace to share the crust of a
poor painter?"

Ethel.  You spoke quite scornfully of palaces just now, Clive. I won't
say a word about the--the regard which you express for me. I think you
have it. Indeed, I do. But it were best not said, Clive; best for me,
perhaps, not to own that I know it. In your speeches, my poor boy--and
you will please not to make any more, or I never can see you or speak to
you again, never--you forgot one part of a girl's duty: obedience to her
parents. They would never agree to my marrying any one below--any one
whose union would not be advantageous in a worldly point of view. I never
would give such pain to the poor father, or to the kind soul who never
said a harsh word to me since I was born. My grandmamma is kind, too, in
her way. I came to her of my own free will. When she said she would leave
me her fortune, do you think it was for myself alone that I was glad? My
father's passion was to make an estate, and all my brothers and sisters
will be but slenderly portioned. Lady Kew said she would help them if I
came to her--and--it is the welfare of those little people that depends
upon me, Clive. Now, do you see, brother, why you must speak to me so no
more? There is the carriage. God bless you, dear Clive.

(Clive sees the carriage drive away after Miss Newcome has entered it
without once looking up to the window where he stands. When it is gone he
goes to the opposite windows of the salon, which are open, towards the
garden. The chapel music begins to play from the Convent, next door. As
he hears it he sinks down, his head in his hands.)

Enter Madame de Florac (She goes to him with anxious looks.).  What hast
thou, my child? Hast thou spoken?

Clive (very steadily).  Yes.

Madame de F.  And she loves thee? I know she loves thee.

Clive.  You hear the organ of the convent?

Madame de F.  Qu'as tu?

Clive.  I might as well hope to marry one of the sisters of yonder
convent, dear lady. (He sinks down again, and she kisses him.)

Clive.  I never had a mother; but you seem like one.

Madame de F.  Mon fils! Oh, mon fils!




CHAPTER XLVIII

In which Benedick is a Married Man


We have all heard of the dying French Duchess, who viewed her coming
dissolution and subsequent fate so easily, because she said she was
sure that Heaven must deal politely with a person of her quality;--I
suppose Lady Kew had some such notions regarding people of rank: her
long-suffering towards them was extreme; in fact, there were vices which
the old lady thought pardonable, and even natural, in a young nobleman of
high station, which she never would have excused in persons of vulgar
condition.

Her ladyship's little knot of associates and scandal-bearers--elderly
roues and ladies of the world, whose business it was to know all sorts of
noble intrigues and exalted tittle-tattle; what was happening among the
devotees of the exiled court at Frobsdorf; what among the citizen princes
of the Tuileries; who was the reigning favourite of the Queen Mother at
Aranjuez; who was smitten with whom at Vienna or Naples; and the last
particulars of the chroniques scandaleuses of Paris and London;--Lady
Kew, I say, must have been perfectly aware of my Lord Farintosh's
amusements, associates, and manner of life, and yet she never, for one
moment, exhibited any anger or dislike towards that nobleman. Her amiable
heart was so full of kindness and forgiveness towards the young prodigal
that, even without any repentance on his part, she was ready to take him
to her old arms, and give him her venerable benediction. Pathetic
sweetness of nature! Charming tenderness of disposition! With all his
faults and wickednesses, his follies and his selfishness, there was no
moment when Lady Kew would not have received the young lord, and endowed
him with the hand of her darling Ethel.

But the hopes which this fond forgiving creature had nurtured for one
season, and carried on so resolutely to the next, were destined to be
disappointed yet a second time, by a most provoking event, which occurred
in the Newcome family. Ethel was called away suddenly from Paris by her
father's third and last paralytic seizure. When she reached her home, Sir
Brian could not recognise her. A few hours after her arrival, all the
vanities of the world were over for him: and Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet,
reigned in his stead. The day after Sir Brian was laid in his vault at
Newcome--a letter appeared in the local papers addressed to the
Independent Electors of that Borough, in which his orphan son, feelingly
alluding to the virtue, the services, and the political principles of the
deceased, offered himself as a candidate for the seat in Parliament now
vacant. Sir Barnes announced that he should speedily pay his respects in
person to the friends and supporters of his lamented father. That he was
a staunch friend of our admirable constitution need not be said. That he
was a firm, but conscientious upholder of our Protestant religion, all
who knew Barnes Newcome must be aware. That he would do his utmost to
advance the interests of this great agricultural, this great
manufacturing county and borough, we may be sure he avowed; as that he
would be (if returned to represent Newcome in Parliament) the advocate of
every rational reform, the unhesitating opponent of every reckless
innovation. In fine, Barnes Newcome's manifesto to the Electors of
Newcome was as authentic a document and gave him credit for as many
public virtues, as that slab over poor Sir Brian's bones in the chancel
of Newcome church, which commemorated the good qualities of the defunct,
and the grief of his heir.

In spite of the virtues, personal and inherited, of Barnes, his seat for
Newcome was not got without a contest. The dissenting interest and the
respectable Liberals of the borough wished to set up Samuel Higg, Esq.;
against Sir Barnes Newcome: and now it was that Barnes's civilities of
the previous year, aided by Madame de Moncontour's influence over her
brother, bore their fruit. Mr. Higg declined to stand against Sir Barnes
Newcome, although Higg's political principles were by no means those of
the honourable Baronet; and the candidate from London, whom the Newcome
extreme Radicals set up against Barnes, was nowhere on the poll when the
day of election came. So Barnes had the desire of his heart; and, within
two months after his father's demise, he sate in Parliament as Member for
Newcome.

The bulk of the late Baronet's property descended, of course, to his
eldest son: who grumbled, nevertheless, at the provision made for his
brothers and sisters, and that the town-house should have been left to
Lady Anne, who was too poor to inhabit it. But Park Lane is the best
situation in London, and Lady Anne's means were greatly improved by the
annual produce of the house in Park Lane, which, as we all know, was
occupied by a foreign minister for several subsequent seasons. Strange
mutations of fortune: old places; new faces; what Londoner does not see
and speculate upon them every day? Coelia's boudoir, who is dead with the
daisies over her at Kensal Green, is now the chamber where Delia is
consulting Dr. Locock, or Julia's children are romping: Florio's
dining-tables have now Pollio's wine upon them: Calista, being a widow,
and (to the surprise of everybody who knew Trimalchio, and enjoyed his
famous dinners) left but very poorly off, lets the house, and the rich,
chaste, and appropriate planned furniture, by Dowbiggin, and the proceeds
go to keep her little boys at Eton. The next year, as Mr. Clive Newcome
rode by the once familiar mansion (whence the hatchment had been removed,
announcing that there was in Coelo Quies for the late Sir Brian Newcome,
Bart.), alien faces looked from over the flowers in the balconies. He got
a card for an entertainment from the occupant of the mansion, H.E. the
Bulgarian minister; and there was the same crowd in the reception-room
and on the stairs, the same grave men from Gunter's distributing the
refreshments in the dining-room, the same old Smee, R. A. (always in the
room where the edibles were), cringing and flattering to the new
occupants; and the same effigy of poor Sir Brian, in his
deputy-lieutenant's uniform, looking blankly down from over the
sideboard, at the feast which his successors were giving. A dreamy old
ghost of a picture. Have you ever looked at those round George IV.'s
banqueting-hall at Windsor? Their frames still hold them, but they smile
ghostly smiles, and swagger in robes and velvets which are quite faint
and faded: their crimson coats have a twilight tinge: the lustre of their
stars has twinkled out: they look as if they were about to flicker off
the wall and retire to join their originals in limbo.

         *     *     *     *     *     *

Nearly three years had elapsed since the good Colonel's departure for
India, and during this time certain changes had occurred in the lives of
the principal actors and the writer of this history. As regards the
latter, it must be stated that the dear old firm of Lamb Court had been
dissolved, the junior member having contracted another partnership. The
chronicler of these memoirs was a bachelor no longer. My wife and I had
spent the winter at Rome (favourite resort of young married couples); and
had heard from the artists there Clive's name affectionately repeated;
and many accounts of his sayings and doings, his merry supper-parties,
and the talents of young Ridley, his friend. When we came to London in
the spring, almost our first visit was to Clive's apartments in Charlotte
Street, whither my wife delightedly went to give her hand to the young
painter.

But Clive no longer inhabited that quiet region. On driving to the house
we found a bright brass plate, with the name of Mr. J. J. Ridley on the
door, and it was J. J.'s hand which I shook (his other being engaged with
a great palette, and a sheaf of painting-brushes) when we entered the
well-known quarters. Clive's picture hung over the mantelpiece, where his
father's head used to hang in our time--a careful and beautifully
executed portrait of the lad in a velvet coat and a Roman hat, with that
golden beard which was sacrificed to the exigencies of London fashion. I
showed Laura the likeness until she could become acquainted with the
original. On her expressing her delight at the picture, the painter was
pleased to say, in his modest blushing way, that he would be glad to
execute my wife's portrait too, nor, as I think, could any artist find a
subject more pleasing.

After admiring others of Mr. Ridley's works, our talk naturally reverted
to his predecessor. Clive had migrated to much more splendid quarters.
Had we not heard? he had become a rich man, a man of fashion. "I fear he
is very lazy about the arts," said J. J., with regret on his countenance;
"though I begged and prayed him to be faithful to his profession. He
would have done very well in it, in portrait-painting especially. Look
here, and here, and here!" said Ridley, producing fine vigorous sketches
of Clive's. "He had the art of seizing the likeness, and of making all
his people look like gentlemen, too. He was improving every day, when
this abominable bank came in the way, and stopped him."

What bank? I did not know the new Indian bank of which the Colonel was a
director. Then, of course, I was aware that the mercantile affair in
question was the Bundelcund Bank, about which the Colonel had written to
me from India more than a year since, announcing that fortunes were to be
made by it, and that he had reserved shares for me in the company. Laura
admired all Clive's sketches, which his affectionate brother-artist
showed to her with the exception of one representing the reader's humble
servant; which, Mrs. Pendennis considered, by no means did justice to the
original.

Bidding adieu to the kind J. J., and leaving him to pursue his art, in
that silent serious way in which he daily laboured at it, we drove to
Fitzroy Square hard by, where I was not displeased to show the good old
hospitable James Binnie the young lady who bore my name. But here, too,
we were disappointed. Placards wafered in the windows announced that the
old house was to let. The woman who kept it brought a card in Mrs.
Mackenzie's frank handwriting, announcing Mr. James Binnie's address was
"Poste-restante, Pau, in the Pyrenees," and that his London agents were
Messrs. So-and-so. The woman said she believed the gentleman had been
unwell. The house, too, looked very pale, dismal, and disordered. We
drove away from the door, grieving to think that ill-health, or any other
misfortunes, had befallen good old James.

Mrs. Pendennis drove back to our lodgings, Brixham's, in Jermyn Street,
while I sped to the City, having business in that quarter. It has been
said that I kept a small account with Hobson Brothers, to whose bank I
went, and entered the parlour with that trepidation which most poor men
feel on presenting themselves before City magnates and capitalists. Mr.
Hobson Newcome shook hands most jovially and good-naturedly,
congratulated me on my marriage, and so forth, and presently Sir Barnes
Newcome made his appearance, still wearing his mourning for his deceased
father.

Nothing could be more kind, pleasant, and cordial than Sir Barnes's
manner. He seemed to know well about my affairs; complimented me on every
kind of good fortune; had heard that I had canvassed the borough in which
I lived; hoped sincerely to see me in Parliament and on the right side;
was most anxious to become acquainted with Mrs. Pendennis, of whom Lady
Rockminster said all sorts of kind things; and asked for our address, in
order that Lady Clara Newcome might have the pleasure of calling on my
wife. This ceremony was performed soon afterwards; and an invitation to
dinner from Sir Barnes and Lady Clara Newcome speedily followed it.

Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., M.P., I need not say, no longer inhabited the
small house which he had occupied immediately after his marriage: but
dwelt in a much more spacious mansion in Belgravia, where he entertained
his friends. Now that he had come into his kingdom, I must say that
Barnes was by no means so insufferable as in the days of his
bachelorhood. He had sown his wild oats, and spoke with regret and
reserve of that season of his moral culture. He was grave, sarcastic,
statesmanlike; did not try to conceal his baldness (as he used before his
father's death, by bringing lean wisps of hair over his forehead from the
back of his head); talked a great deal about the House; was assiduous in
his attendance there and in the City; and conciliating with all the
world. It seemed as if we were all his constituents, and though his
efforts to make himself agreeable were rather apparent, the effect
succeeded pretty well. We met Mr. and Mrs. Hobson Newcome, and Clive, and
Miss Ethel looking beautiful in her black robes. It was a family party,
Sir Barnes said, giving us to understand, with a decorous solemnity in
face and voice, that no large parties as yet could be received in that
house of mourning.

To this party was added, rather to my surprise, my Lord Highgate, who
under the sobriquet of Jack Belsize has been presented to the reader of
this history. Lord Highgate gave Lady Clara his arm to dinner, but went
and took a place next Miss Newcome, on the other side of her; that
immediately by Lady Clara being reserved for a guest who had not as yet
made his appearance.

Lord Highgate's attentions to his neighbour, his laughing and talking,
were incessant; so much so that Clive, from his end of the table, scowled
in wrath at Jack Belsize's assiduities: it was evident that the youth,
though hopeless, was still jealous and in love with his charming cousin.

Barnes Newcome was most kind to all his guests: from Aunt Hobson to your
humble servant, there was not one but the of master the house had an
agreeable word for him. Even for his cousin Samuel Newcome, a gawky youth
with an eruptive countenance, Barnes had appropriate words of
conversation, and talked about King's College, of which the lad was an
ornament, with the utmost affability. He complimented that institution
and young Samuel, and by that shot knocked not only over Sam but his
mamma too. He talked to Uncle Hobson about his crops; to Clive about his
pictures; to me about the great effect which a certain article in the
Pall Mall Gazette had produced in the House, where the Chancellor of the
Exchequer was perfectly livid with fury, and Lord John bursting out
laughing at the attack: in fact, nothing could be more amiable than our
host on this day. Lady Clara was very pretty--grown a little stouter
since her marriage; the change only became her. She was a little silent,
but then she had Uncle Hobson on her left-hand side, between whom and her
ladyship there could not be much in common, and the place at the right
hand was still vacant. The person with whom she talked most freely was
Clive, who had made a beautiful drawing of her and her little girl, for
which the mother and the father too, as it appeared, were very grateful.

What had caused this change in Barnes's behaviour? Our particular merits
or his own private reform? In the two years over which this narrative has
had to run in the course of as many chapters, the writer had inherited a
property so small that it could not occasion a banker's civility; and I
put down Sir Barnes Newcome's politeness to a sheer desire to be well
with me. But with Lord Highgate and Clive the case was different, as you
must now hear.

Lord Highgate, having succeeded to his father's title and fortune, had
paid every shilling of his debts, and had sowed his wild oats to the very
last corn. His lordship's account at Hobson Brothers was very large.
Painful events of three years' date, let us hope, were forgotten--
gentlemen cannot go on being in love and despairing, and quarrelling for
ever. When he came into his funds, Highgate behaved with uncommon
kindness to Rooster, who was always straitened for money: and when the
late Lord Dorking died and Rooster succeeded to him, there was a meeting
at Chanticlere between Highgate and Barnes Newcome and his wife, which
went off very comfortably. At Chanticlere the Dowager Lady Kew and Miss
Newcome were also staying, when Lord Highgate announced his prodigious
admiration for the young lady; and, it was said, corrected Farintosh, as
a low-minded, foul-tongued young cub, for daring to speak disrespectfully
of her. Nevertheless, vous concevez, when a man of the Marquis's rank was
supposed to look with the eyes of admiration upon a young lady, Lord
Highgate would not think of spoiling sport, and he left Chanticlere
declaring that he was always destined to be unlucky in love. When old
Lady Kew was obliged to go to Vichy for her lumbago, Highgate said to
Barnes, "Do ask your charming sister to come to you in London; she will
bore herself to death with the old woman at Vichy, or with her mother at
Rugby" (whither Lady Anne had gone to get her boys educated), and
accordingly Miss Newcome came on a visit to her brother and sister, at
whose house we have just had the honour of seeing her.

When Rooster took his seat in the House of Lords, he was introduced by
Highgate and Kew, as Highgate had been introduced by Kew previously. Thus
these three gentlemen all rode in gold coaches; had all got coronets on
their heads; as you will, my respected young friend, if you are the
eldest son of a peer who dies before you. And now they were rich, they
were all going to be very good boys, let us hope. Kew, we know, married
one of the Dorking family, that second Lady Henrietta Pulleyn, whom we
described as frisking about at Baden, and not in the least afraid of him.
How little the reader knew, to whom we introduced the girl in that chatty
offhand way, that one day the young creature would be a countess! But we
knew it all the while--and, when she was walking about with the
governess, or romping with her sisters; and when she had dinner at one
o'clock; and when she wore a pinafore very likely--we secretly respected
her as the future Countess of Kew, and mother of the Viscount Walham.

Lord Kew was very happy with his bride, and very good to her. He took
Lady Kew to Paris, for a marriage trip; but they lived almost altogether
at Kewbury afterwards, where his lordship sowed tame oats now after his
wild ones, and became one of the most active farmers of his county. He
and the Newcomes were not very intimate friends; for Lord Kew was heard
to say that he disliked Barnes more after his marriage than before. And
the two sisters, Lady Clara and Lady Kew, had a quarrel on one occasion,
when the latter visited London just before the dinner at which we have
just assisted--nay, at which we are just assisting, took place,--a
quarrel about Highgate's attentions to Ethel, very likely. Kew was
dragged into it, and hot words passed between him and Jack Belsize; and
Jack did not go down to Kewbury afterwards, though Kew's little boy was
christened after him. All these interesting details about people of the
very highest rank, we are supposed to whisper in the reader's ear as we
are sitting at a Belgravian dinner-table. My dear Barmecide friend, isn't
it pleasant to be in such fine company?

And now we must tell how it is that Clive Newcome, Esq., whose eyes are
flashing fire across the flowers of the table at Lord Highgate, who is
making himself so agreeable to Miss Ethel--now we must tell how it is
that Clive and his cousin Barnes have grown to be friends again.

The Bundelcund Bank, which had been established for four years, had now
grown to be one of the most flourishing commercial institutions in
Bengal. Founded, as the prospectus announced, at a time when all private
credit was shaken by the failure of the great Agency Houses, of which the
downfall had carried dismay and ruin throughout the Presidency, the B. B.
had been established on the only sound principle of commercial
prosperity--that is association. The native capitalists, headed by the
great firm of Rummun Loll and Co., of Calcutta, had largely embarked in
the B. B., and the officers of the two services and the European
mercantile body of Calcutta had been invited to take shares in an
institution which, to merchants, native and English, civilian and
military men, was alike advantageous and indispensable. How many young
men of the latter services had been crippled for life by the ruinous cost
of agencies, of which the profits to the agents themselves were so
enormous! The shareholders of the B. B. were their own agents; and the
greatest capitalist in India as well as the youngest ensign in the
service might invest at the largest and safest premium, and borrow at the
smallest interest, by becoming according to his means, a shareholder in
the B. B. Their correspondents were established in each presidency and in
every chief city of India, as well as at Sydney, Singapore, Canton, and,
of course. London. With China they did, an immense opium-trade, of which
the profits were so great, that it was only in private sittings of the B.
B. managing committee that the details and accounts of these operations
could be brought forward. Otherwise the books of the bank were open to
every shareholder; and the ensign or the young civil servant was at
liberty at any time to inspect his own private account as well as the
common ledger. With New South Wales they carried on a vast trade in wool,
supplying that great colony with goods, which their London agents enabled
them to purchase in such a way as to give them the command of the market.
As if to add to their prosperity, coppermines were discovered on lands in
the occupation of the B. Banking Company, which gave the most astonishing
returns. And throughout the vast territories of British India, through
the great native firm of Rummun Loll and Co., the Bundelcund Banking
Company had possession of the native markets. The order from Birmingham
for idols alone (made with their copper and paid in their wool) was
enough to make the Low Church party in England cry out; and a debate upon
this subject actually took place in the House of Commons, of which the
effect was to send up the shares of the Bundelcund Banking Company very
considerably upon the London Exchange.

The fifth half-yearly dividend was announced at twelve and a quarter per
cent of the paid-up capital: the accounts from the copper-mine sent the
dividend up to a still greater height, and carried the shares to an
extraordinary premium. In the third year of the concern, the house of
Hobson Brothers, of London, became the agents of the Bundelcund Banking
Company of India and amongst our friends, James Binnie, who had prudently
held out for some time and Clive Newcome, Esq., became shareholders,
Clive's good father having paid the first instalments of the lad's shares
up in Calcutta, and invested every rupee he could himself command in this
enterprise. When Hobson Brothers joined it, no wonder James Binnie was
convinced; Clive's friend, the Frenchman, and through that connexion the
house of Higg, of Newcome and Manchester, entered into the affair; and
amongst the minor contributors in England we may mention Miss Cann, who
took a little fifty-pound-note share and dear old Miss Honeyman; and J.
J., and his father, Ridley, who brought a small bag of saving--all
knowing that their Colonel, who was eager that his friends should
participate in his good fortune, would never lead them wrong. To Clive's
surprise Mrs. Mackenzie, between whom and himself there was a
considerable coolness, came to his chambers, and with a solemn injunction
that the matter between them should be quite private, requested him to
purchase 1500 pounds worth of Bundelcund shares for her and her darling
girls, which he did, astonished to find the thrifty widow in possession
of so much money. Had Mr. Pendennis's mind not been bent at this moment
on quite other subjects, he might have increased his own fortune by the
Bundelcund Bank speculation; but in these two years I was engaged in
matrimonial affairs (having Clive Newcome, Esq., as my groomsman on a
certain interesting occasion). When we returned from our tour abroad the
India Bank shares were so very high that I did not care to purchase,
though I found an affectionate letter from our good Colonel (enjoining me
to make my fortune) awaiting me at the agent's, and my wife received a
pair of beautiful Cashmere shawls from the same kind friend.




CHAPTER XLIX

Contains at least six more Courses and two Desserts


The banker's dinner-party over, we returned to our apartments, having
dropped Major Pendennis at his lodgings, and there, as the custom is
amongst most friendly married couples, talked over the company and the
dinner. I thought my wife would naturally have liked Sir Barnes Newcome,
who was very attentive to her, took her to dinner as the bride, and
talked ceaselessly to her during the whole entertainment.

Laura said No--she did not know why--could there be any better reason?
There was a tone about Sir Barnes Newcome she did not like--especially in
his manner to women.

I remarked that he spoke sharply and in a sneering manner to his wife,
and treated one or two remarks which she made as if she was an idiot.

Mrs. Pendennis flung up her head as much as to say, "and so she is."

Mr. Pendennis.  What, the wife too, my dear Laura! I should have thought
such a pretty, simple, innocent young woman, with just enough good looks
to make her pass muster, who is very well bred and not brilliant at all,
--I should have thought such a one might have secured a sister's
approbation.

Mrs. Pendennis.  You fancy we are all jealous of one another. No protests
of ours can take that notion out of your heads. My dear Pen, I do not
intend to try. We are not jealous of mediocrity: we are not patient of
it. I dare say we are angry because we see men admire it so. You
gentlemen, who pretend to be our betters, give yourselves such airs of
protection, and profess such a lofty superiority over us, prove it by
quitting the cleverest woman in the room for the first pair of bright
eyes and dimpled cheeks that enter. It was those charms which attracted
you in Lady Clara, sir.

Pendennis.  I think she is very pretty, and very innocent, and artless.

Mrs. P.  Not very pretty, and perhaps not so very artless.

Pendennis.  How can you tell, you wicked woman? Are you such a profound
deceiver yourself, that you can instantly detect artifice in others? O
Laura!

Mrs. P.  We can detect all sorts of things. The inferior animals have
instincts, you know. (I must say my wife is always very satirical upon
this point of the relative rank of the sexes.) One thing I am sure of is,
that she is not happy; and oh, Pen! that she does not care much for her
little girl.

Pendennis.  How do you know that, my dear?

Mrs. P.  We went upstairs to see the child after dinner. It was at my
wish. The mother did not offer to go. The child was awake and crying.
Lady Clara did not offer to take it. Ethel--Miss Newcome took it, rather
to my surprise, for she seems very haughty; and the nurse, who I suppose
was at supper, came running up at the noise, and then the poor little
thing was quiet.

Pendennis.  I remember we heard the music as the dining-room door was
open; and Newcome said, "That is what you will have to expect,
Pendennis."

Mrs. P.  Hush, sir! If my baby cries, I think you must expect me to run
out of the room. I liked Miss Newcome after seeing her with the poor
little thing. She looked so handsome as she walked with it! I longed to
have it myself.

Pendennis.  Tout vient a fin, a qui sait----

Mrs. P.  Don't be silly. What a dreadful dreadful place this great world
of yours is, Arthur; where husbands do not seem to care for their wives;
where mothers do not love their children; where children love their
nurses best; where men talk what they call gallantry!

Pendennis.  What?

Mrs. P.  Yes, such as that dreary, languid, pale, bald, cadaverous,
leering man whispered to me. Oh, how I dislike him! I am sure he is
unkind to his wife. I am sure he has a bad temper; and if there is any
excuse for----

Pendennis.  For what?

Mrs. P.  For nothing. But you heard yourself that he had a bad temper,
and spoke sneeringly to his wife. What could make her marry him?

Pendennis.  Money, and the desire of papa and mamma. For the same reason
Clive's flame, poor Miss Newcome, was brought out to-day; that vacant
seat at her side was for Lord Farintosh. who did not come. And the
Marquis not being present, the Baron took his innings. Did you not see
how tender he was to her, and how fierce poor Clive looked?

Mrs. P.  Lord Highgate was very attentive to Miss Newcome, was he?

Pendennis.  And some years ago, Lord Highgate was breaking his heart
about whom do you think? about Lady Clara Pulleyn, our hostess of last
night. He was Jack Belsize then, a younger son, plunged over head and
ears in debt; and of course there could be no marriage. Clive was present
at Baden when a terrible scene took place, and carried off poor Jack to
Switzerland and Italy, where he remained till his father died, and he
came into the title in which he rejoices. And now he is off with the old
love, Laura, and on with the new. Why do you look at me so? Are you
thinking that other people have been in love two or three times too?

Mrs. P.  I am thinking that I should not like to live in London, Arthur.

And this was all that Mrs. Laura could be brought to say. When this young
woman chooses to be silent, there is no power that can extract a word
from her. It is true that she is generally in the right; but that is only
the more aggravating. Indeed, what can be more provoking, after a dispute
with your wife, than to find it is you, and not she, who has been in the
wrong?


Sir Barnes Newcome politely caused us to understand that the
entertainment of which we had just partaken was given in honour of the
bride. Clive must needs not be outdone in hospitality; and invited us and
others to a fine feast at the Star and Garter at Richmond, where Mrs.
Pendennis was placed at his right hand. I smile as I think how much
dining has been already commemorated in these veracious pages; but the
story is an everyday record; and does not dining form a certain part of
the pleasure and business of every day? It is at that pleasant hour that
our set has the privilege of meeting the other. The morning man and woman
alike devote to business; or pass mainly in the company of their own
kind. John has his office; Jane her household, her nursery, her milliner,
her daughters and their masters. In the country he has his hunting, his
fishing, his farming, his letters; she her schools, her poor, her garden,
or what not. Parted through the shining hours, and improving them, let us
trust, we come together towards sunset only, we make merry and amuse
ourselves. We chat with our pretty neighbour, or survey the young ones
sporting; we make love and are jealous; we dance, or obsequiously turn
over the leaves of Cecilia's music-book; we play whist, or go to sleep in
the arm-chair, according to our ages and conditions. Snooze gently in thy
arm-chair, thou easy bald-head! play your whist, or read your novel, or
talk scandal over your work, ye worthy dowagers and fogies! Meanwhile the
young ones frisk about, or dance, or sing, or laugh; or whisper behind
curtains in moonlit windows; or shirk away into the garden, and come back
smelling of cigars; nature having made them so to do.

Nature at this time irresistibly impelled Clive Newcome towards
love-making. It was pairing-season with him. Mr. Clive was now some
three-and-twenty years old: enough has been said about his good looks,
which were in truth sufficient to make him a match for the young lady on
whom he had set his heart, and from whom, during this entertainment which
he gave to my wife, he could never keep his eyes away for three minutes.
Laura's did not need to be so keen as they were in order to see what poor
Clive's condition was. She did not in the least grudge the young fellow's
inattention to herself; or feel hurt that he did not seem to listen when
she spoke; she conversed with J. J., her neighbour, who was very modest
and agreeable; while her husband, not so well pleased, had Mrs. Hobson
Newcome for his partner during the chief part of the entertainment. Mrs.
Hobson and Lady Clara were the matrons who gave the sanction of their
presence to this bachelor-party. Neither of their husbands could come to
Clive's little fete; had they not the City and the House of Commons to
attend? My uncle, Major Pendennis, was another of the guests; who for his
part found the party was what you young fellows call very slow. Dreading
Mrs. Hobson and her powers of conversation, the old gentleman nimbly
skipped out of her neighbourhood, and fell by the side of Lord Highgate,
to whom the Major was inclined to make himself very pleasant. But Lord
Highgate's broad back was turned upon his neighbour, who was forced to
tell stories to Captain Crackthorpe, which had amused dukes and marquises
in former days, and were surely quite good enough for any baron in this
realm. "Lord Highgate sweet upon la belle Newcome, is he?" said the testy
Major afterwards. "He seemed to me to talk to Lady Clara the whole time.
When I awoke in the garden after dinner, as Mrs. Hobson was telling one
of her confounded long stories, I found her audience was diminished to
one. Crackthorpe, Lord Highgate, and Lady Clara. we had all been sitting
there when the bankeress cut in (in the mid of a very good story I was
telling them, which entertained them very much), and never ceased talking
till I fell off into a doze. When I roused myself, begad, she was still
going on. Crackthorpe was off, smoking a cigar on the terrace: my Lord
and Lady Clara were nowhere; and you four, with the little painter, were
chatting cosily in another arbour. Behaved himself very well, the little
painter. Doosid good dinner Ellis gave us. But as for Highgate being aux
soins with la belle Banquiere, trust me, my boy, he is--upon my word, my
dear, it seemed to me his thoughts went quite another way. To be sure,
Lady Clara is a belle Banquiere too now. He, he, he! How could he say he
had no carriage to go home in? He came down in Crackthorpe's cab, who
passed us just now, driving back young What-dye-call the painter."

Thus did the Major discourse, as we returned towards the City. I could
see in the open carriage which followed us (Lady Clara Newcome's) Lord
Highgate's white hat, by Clive's on the back seat.

Laura looked at her husband. The same thought may have crossed their
minds, though neither uttered it; but although Sir Barnes and Lady Clara
Newcome offered us other civilities during our stay in London, no
inducements could induce Laura to accept the proffered friendship of that
lady. When Lady Clara called, my wife was not at home; when she invited
us, Laura pleaded engagements. At first she bestowed on Miss Newcome,
too, a share of this haughty dislike, and rejected the advances which
that young lady, who professed to like my wife very much, made towards an
intimacy. When I appealed to her (for Newcome's house was after all a
very pleasant one, and you met the best people there), my wife looked at
me with an expression of something like scorn, and said: "Why don't I
like Miss Newcome? Of course because I am jealous of her--all women, you
know, Arthur, are jealous of such beauties." I could get for a long while
no better explanation than these sneers, for my wife's antipathy towards
this branch of the Newcome family; but an event presently came which
silenced my remonstrances, and showed to me, that Laura had judged Barnes
and his wife only too well.

Poor Mrs. Hobson Newcome had reason to be sulky at the neglect which
all the Richmond party showed her, for nobody, not even Major Pendennis,
as we have seen, would listen to her intellectual conversation; nobody,
not even Lord Highgate, would drive back to town in her carriage, though
the vehicle was large and empty, and Lady Clara's barouche, in which his
lordship chose to take a place, had already three occupants within it:--
but in spite of these rebuffs and disappointments the virtuous lady of
Bryanstone Square was bent upon being good-natured and hospitable; and I
have to record, in the present chapter, yet one more feast of which Mr.
and Mrs. Pendennis partook at the expense of the most respectable Newcome
family.

Although Mrs. Laura here also appeared, and had the place of honour in
her character of bride, I am bound to own my opinion that Mrs. Hobson
only made us the pretext of her party, and that in reality it was given
to persons of a much more exalted rank. We were the first to arrive, our
good old Major, the most punctual of men, bearing us company. Our hostess
was arrayed in unusual state and splendour; her fat neck was ornamented
with jewels, rich bracelets decorated her arms, and this Bryanstone
Square Cornelia had likewise her family jewels distributed round her,
priceless male and female Newcome gems, from the King's College youth,
with whom we have made a brief acquaintance, and his elder sister, now
entering into the world, down to the last little ornament of the nursery,
in a prodigious new sash, with ringlets hot and crisp from the tongs of a
Marylebone hairdresser, We had seen the cherub faces of some of these
darlings pressed against the drawing-room windows as our carriage drove
up to the door; when, after a few minutes' conversation, another vehicle
arrived, away they dashed to the windows again, the innocent little dears
crying out, "Here's the Marquis;" and in sadder tones, "No, it isn't the
Marquis," by which artless expressions they showed how eager they were to
behold an expected guest of a rank only inferior to Dukes in this great
empire.

Putting two and two together, as the saying is, it was not difficult for
me to guess who the expected Marquis was--and, indeed, the King's College
youth set that question at once to rest, by wagging his head at me, and
winking his eye, and saying, "We expect Farintosh."

"Why, my dearest children," Matronly Virtue exclaimed, "this anxiety to
behold the young Marquis of Farintosh, whom we expect at our modest
table, Mrs. Pendennis, to-day? Twice you have been at the window in your
eagerness to look for him. Louisa, you silly child, do you imagine that
his lordship will appear in his robes and coronet? Rodolf, you absurd
boy, do you think that a Marquis is other than a man? I have never
admired aught but intellect, Mrs. Pendennis; that, let us be thankful, is
the only true title to distinction in our country nowadays."

"Begad, sir," whispers the old Major to me, "intellect may be a doosid
fine thing, but in my opinion, a Marquisate and eighteen or twenty
thousand a year--I should say the Farintosh property, with the Glenlivat
estate and the Roy property in England, must be worth nineteen thousand a
year at the very lowest figure and I remember when this young man's
father was only Tom Roy, of the 42nd, with no hope of succeeding to the
title, and doosidly out at elbows too--I say what does the bankeress mean
by chattering about intellect? Hang me, a Marquis is a Marquis; and Mrs.
Newcome knows it as well as I do." My good Major was growing old, and was
not unnaturally a little testy at the manner in which his hostess
received him. Truth to tell, she hardly took any notice of him and cut
down a couple of the old gentleman's stories before he had been five
minutes in the room.

To our party presently comes the host in a flurried countenance, with a
white waistcoat, holding in his hand an open letter, towards which his
wife looks with some alarm. "How dy' doo, Lady Clara, how dy' doo,
Ethel?" he says, saluting those ladies, whom the second carriage had
brought to us. "Sir Barnes is not coming, that's one place vacant; that,
Lady Clara, you won't mind, you see him at home: but here's a
disappointment for yon, Miss Newcome, Lord Farintosh can't come."

At this, two of the children cry out "Oh! oh!" with such a melancholy
accent that Miss Newcome and Lady Clara burst out laughing.

"Got a dreadful toothache," said Mr. Hobson; "here's his letter."

"Hang it, what a bore!" cries artless young King's College.

"Why a bore, Samuel? A bore, as you call it, for Lord Farintosh, I grant;
but do you suppose that the high in station are exempt from the ills of
mortality? I know nothing more painful than a toothache," exclaims a
virtuous matron, using the words of philosophy, but showing the
countenance of anger.

"Hang it, why didn't he have it out?" says Samuel.

Miss Ethel laughed. "Lord Farintosh would not have that tooth out for the
world, Samuel," she cried, gaily. "He keeps it in on purpose, and it
always aches when be does not want to go out to dinner."

"I know one humble family who will never ask him again," Mrs. Hobson
exclaims, rustling in all her silks, and tapping her fan and her foot.
The eclipse, however, passes off her countenance and light is restored;
when at this moment, a cab having driven up during the period of
darkness, the door is flung open, and Lord Highgate is announced by a
loud-voiced butler.

My wife, being still the bride on this occasion, had the honour of being
led to the dinner-table by our banker and host. Lord Highgate was
reserved for Mrs. Hobson, who, in an engaging manner, requested poor
Clive to conduct his cousin Maria to dinner, handing over Miss Ethel to
another guest. Our Major gave his arm to Lady Clara, and I perceived that
my wife looked very grave as he passed the place where she sat, and
seated Lady Clara in the next chair to that which Lord Highgate chanced
to occupy. Feeling himself en vein, and the company being otherwise
rather mum and silent, my uncle told a number of delightful anecdotes
about the beau-monde of his time, about the Peninsular war, the Regent,
Brummell, Lord Steyne, Pea Green Payne, and so forth. He said the evening
was very pleasant, though some others of the party, as it appeared to me,
scarcely seemed to think so. Clive had not a word for his cousin Maria,
but looked across the table at Ethel all dinner-time. What could Ethel
have to say to her partner, old Colonel Sir Donald M'Craw, who gobbled
and drank, as his wont is, and if he had a remark to make, imparted it to
Mrs. Hobson, at whose right hand he was sitting, and to whom, during the
whole course, or courses, of the dinner, my Lord Highgate scarcely
uttered one single word?

His lordship was whispering all the while into the ringlets of Lady
Clara; they were talking a jargon which their hostess scarcely
understood, of people only known to her by her study of the Peerage. When
we joined the ladies after dinner, Lord Highgate again made way towards
Lady Clara, and at an order from her, as I thought, left her ladyship,
and strove hard to engage in a conversation with Mrs. Newcome. I hope he
succeeded in smoothing the frowns in that round little face. Mrs. Laura,
I own, was as grave as a judge all the evening; very grave even and
reserved with my uncle, when the hour for parting came, and we took him
home.

"He, he!" said the old man, coughing, and nodding his old head and
laughing in his senile manner, when I saw him on the next day; "that was
a pleasant evening we had yesterday; doosid pleasant, and I think my two
neighbours seemed to be uncommonly pleased with each other; not an
amusing fellow, that young painter of yours, though he is good-looking
enough, but there's no conversation in him. Do you think of giving a
little dinner, Arthur, in return for these hospitalities? Greenwich, hey,
or something of that sort? I'll go you halves, sir, and we'll ask the
young banker and bankeress--not yesterday's Amphitryon nor his wife; no,
no, hang it! but Barnes Newcome is a devilish clever, rising man, and
moves in about as good society as any in London. We'll ask him and Lady
Clara and Highgate, and one or two more, and have a pleasant party."

But to this proposal, when the old man communicated it to her, in a very
quiet, simple, artful way, Laura, with a flushing face said No quite
abruptly, and quitted the room, rustling in her silks, and showing at
once dignity and indignation.


Not many more feasts was Arthur Pendennis, senior, to have in this world.
Not many more great men was he to flatter, nor schemes to wink at, nor
earthly pleasures to enjoy. His long days were well-nigh ended: on his
last couch, which Laura tended so affectionately, with his last breath
almost, he faltered out to me. "I had other views for you, my boy, and
once hoped to see you in a higher position in life; but I begin to think
now, Arthur, that I was wrong; and as for that girl, sir, I am sure she
is an angel."

May I not inscribe the words with a grateful heart? Blessed he--blessed
though maybe undeserving--who has the love of a good woman.




CHAPTER L

Clive in New Quarters


My wife was much better pleased with Clive than with some of his
relatives to whom I had presented her. His face carried a recommendation
with it that few honest people could resist. He was always a welcome
friend in our lodgings, and even our uncle the Major signified his
approval of the lad as a young fellow of very good manners and feelings,
who, if he chose to throw himself away and be a painter, ma foi, was rich
enough no doubt to follow his own caprices. Clive executed a capital head
of Major Pendennis, which now hangs in our drawing-room at Fairoaks, and
reminds me of that friend of my youth. Clive occupied ancient lofty
chambers in Hanover Square now. He had furnished them in an antique
manner, with hangings, cabinets, carved work, Venice glasses, fine
prints, and water-colour sketches of good pictures by his own and other
hands. He had horses to ride, and a liberal purse full of paternal money.
Many fine equipages drew up opposite to his chambers: few artists had
such luck as young Mr. Clive. And above his own chambers were other three
which the young gentleman had hired, and where, says he, "I hope ere very
long my dear old father will be lodging with me. In another year he says
he thinks he will be able to come home; when the affairs of the Bank are
quite settled. You shake your head! why? The shares are worth four times
what we gave for them. We are men of fortune, Pen, I give you my word.
You should see how much they make of me at Baynes and Jolly's, and how
civil they are to me at Hobson Brothers'! I go into the City now and
then, and see our manager, Mr. Blackmore. He tells me such stories about
indigo, and wool, and copper, and sicca rupees, and Company's rupees. I
don't know anything about the business, but my father likes me to go and
see Mr. Blackmore. Dear cousin Barnes is for ever asking me to dinner; I
might call Lady Clara Clara if I liked, as Sam Newcome does in Bryanstone
Square. You can't think how kind they are to me there. My aunt reproaches
me tenderly for not going there oftener--it's not very good fun dining in
Bryanstone Square, is it? And she praises my cousin Maria to me--you
should hear my aunt praise her! I have to take Maria down to dinner; to
sit by the piano and listen to her songs in all languages. Do you know
Maria can sing Hungarian and Polish, besides your common German, Spanish,
and Italian? Those I have at our other agents', Baynes and Jolly's--
Baynes's that is in the Regent's Park, where the girls are prettier and
just as civil to me as at Aunt Hobson's." And here Clive would amuse us
by the accounts which he gave us of the snares which the Misses Baynes,
those young sirens of Regent's Park, set for him; of the songs which they
sang to enchant him, the albums in which they besought him to draw--the
thousand winning ways which they employed to bring him into their cave in
York Terrace. But neither Circe's smiles nor Calypso's blandishments had
any effect on him; his ears were stopped to their music, and his eyes
rendered dull to their charms by those of the flighty young enchantress
with whom my wife had of late made acquaintance.

Capitalist though he was, our young fellow was still very affable. He
forgot no old friends in his prosperity; and the lofty antique chambers
would not unfrequently be lighted up at nights to receive F. B. and some
of the old cronies of the Haunt, and some of the Gandishites, who, if
Clive had been of a nature that was to be spoiled by flattery, had
certainly done mischief to the young man. Gandish himself, when Clive
paid a visit to that illustrious artist's Academy, received his former
pupil as if the young fellow had been a sovereign prince almost,
accompanied him to his horse; and would have held his stirrup as he
mounted; whilst the beautiful daughters of the house waved adieus to him
from the parlour-window. To the young men assembled in his Gandish
studio, was never tired of talking about Clive. The Professor would take
occasion to inform them that he had been to visit his distinguished young
friend, Mr. Newcome, son of Colonel Newcome; that last evening he had
been present at an elegant entertainment at Mr. Newcome's news
apartments. Clive's drawings were hung up in Gandish's gallery, and
pointed out to visitors by the worthy Professor. On one or two occasions,
I was allowed to become a bachelor again, and participate in these jovial
meetings. How guilty my coat was on my return home; how haughty the looks
of the mistress of my house, as she bade Martha carry away the obnoxious
garment! How grand F. B. used to be as president of Clive's
smoking-party, where he laid down the law, talked the most talk, sang the
jolliest song, and consumed the most drink of all the jolly talkers and
drinkers! Clive's popularity rose prodigiously; not only youngsters, but
old practitioners of the fine arts, lauded his talents. What a shame that
his pictures were all refused this year at the Academy! Alfred Smee,
Esq., R.A., was indignant at their rejection, but J. J. confessed with a
sigh, and Clive owned good-naturedly, that he had been neglecting his
business, and that his pictures were not so good as those of two years
before. I am afraid Mr. Clive went to too many balls and parties, to
clubs and jovial entertainments, besides losing yet more time in that
other pursuit we wot of. Meanwhile J. J. went steadily on with his work,
no day passed without a line: and Fame was not very far off, though this
he heeded but little; and Art, his sole mistress, rewarded him for his
steady and fond pursuit of her.

"Look at him," Clive would say with a sigh. "Isn't he the mortal of all
others the most to be envied! He is so fond of his art that in all the
world there is no attraction like it for him. He runs to his easel at
sunrise, and sits before it caressing his picture all day till nightfall.
He takes leave of it sadly when dark comes, spends the night in a Life
Academy, and begins next morning da capo. Of all the pieces of good
fortune which can befall a man, is not this the greatest: to have your
desire, and then never tire of it? I have been in such a rage with my own
shortcomings that I have dashed my foot through the canvases, and vowed I
would smash my palette and easel. Sometimes I succeed a little better in
my work, and then it will happen for half an hour that I am pleased, but
pleased at what? pleased at drawing Mr. Muggins's head rather like Mr.
Muggins. Why, a thousand fellows can do better, and when one day I reach
my very best, yet thousands will be able to do better still. Ours is a
trade for which nowadays there is no excuse unless one can be great in
it: and I feel I have not the stuff for that. No. 666. 'Portrait of
Joseph Muggins, Esq., Newcome, Great George Street.' No. 979. 'Portrait
of Mrs. Muggins, on her grey pony, Newcome.' No. 579. 'Portrait of Joseph
Muggins Esq.'s dog Toby, Newcome'--this is--what I'm fit for. These are the
victories I have set myself on achieving. Oh, Mrs. Pendennis, isn't it
humiliating? Why isn't there a war? Why can't I go and distinguish myself
somewhere and be a general? Why haven't I a genius? I say, Pen, sir, why
haven't I a genius? There is a painter who lives hard by, and who sends
sometimes, to beg me to come and look at his work. He is in the Muggins
line too. He gets his canvases with a good light upon them: excludes the
contemplation of all other objects, stands beside his pictures in an
attitude himself, and thinks that he and they are masterpieces.
Masterpieces! Oh me, what drivelling wretches we are! Fame!--except that
of just the one or two--what's the use of it? I say, Pen, would you feel
particularly proud now if you had written Hayley's poems? And as for a
second place in painting, who would care to be Caravaggio or Caracci? I
wouldn't give a straw to be Caracci or Caravaggio. I would just as soon
be yonder artist who is painting up Foker's Entire over the public-house
at the corner. He will have his payment afterwards, five shillings a day,
and a pot of beer. Your head a little more to the light, Mrs. Pendennis,
if you please. I am tiring you, I dare say, but then, oh, I am doing it
so badly!"

I, for my part, thought Clive was making a very pretty drawing of my
wife, and having affairs of my own to attend to, would often leave her at
his chambers as a sitter, or find him at our lodgings visiting her. They
became the very greatest friends. I knew the young fellow could have no
better friend than Laura; and not being ignorant of the malady under
which he was labouring, concluded naturally and justly that Clive grew so
fond of my wife, not for her sake entirely, but for his own, because he
could pour his heart out to her, and her sweet kindness and compassion
would soothe him in his unhappy condition.

Miss Ethel, I have said, also professed a great fondness for Mrs.
Pendennis; and there was that charm in the young lady's manner which
speedily could overcome even female jealousy. Perhaps Laura determined
magnanimously to conquer it; perhaps she hid it so as to vex me and prove
the injustice of my suspicions: perhaps, honestly, she was conquered by
the young beauty, and gave her a regard and admiration which the other
knew she could inspire whenever she had the will. My wife was fairly
captivated by her at length. The untameable young creature was docile and
gentle in Laura's presence; modest, natural, amiable, full of laughter
and spirits, delightful to see and to hear; her presence cheered our
quiet little household; her charm fascinated my wife as it had subjugated
poor Clive. Even the reluctant Farintosh was compelled to own her power,
and confidentially told his male friends, that, hang it, she was so
handsome, and so clever, and so confoundedly pleasant and fascinating,
and that--that he had been on the point of popping the fatal question
ever so many times, by Jove. "And hang it, you know," his lordship would
say, "I don't want to marry until I have had my fling, you know." As for
Clive, Ethel treated him like a boy, like a big brother. She was jocular,
kind, pert, pleasant with him, ordered him on her errands, accepted his
bouquets and compliments, admired his drawings, liked to hear him
praised, and took his part in all companies; laughed at his sighs, and
frankly owned to Laura her liking for him and her pleasure in seeing him.
"Why," said she, "should not I be happy as long as the sunshine lasts?
To-morrow, I know, will be glum and dreary enough. When grandmamma comes
back I shall scarcely be able to come and see you. When I am settled in
life--eh! I shall be settled in life! Do not grudge me my holiday, Laura.
Oh, if you knew how stupid it is to be in the world, and how much
pleasanter to come and talk, and laugh, and sing, and be happy with you,
than to sit in that dreary Eaton Place with poor Clara!"

"Why do you stay in Eaton Place?" asks Laura.

"Why? because I must go out with somebody. What an unsophisticated little
country creature you are! Grandmamma is away, and I cannot go about to
parties by myself."

"But why should you go to parties, and why not go back to your mother?"
says Mrs. Pendennis, gently.

"To the nursery, and my little sisters, and Miss Cann? I like being in
London best, thank you. You look grave? You think a girl should like to
be with her mother and sisters best? My dear mamma wishes me to be here,
and I stay with Barnes and Clara by grandmamma's orders. Don't you know
that I have been made over to Lady Kew, who has adopted me? Do you think
a young lady of my pretensions can stop at home in a damp house in
Warwickshire and cut bread-and-butter for little schoolboys? Don't look
so very grave and shake your head so, Mrs. Pendennis! If you had been
bred as I have, you would be as I am. I know what you are thinking,
madam."

"I am thinking," said Laura, blushing and bowing her head--"I am
thinking, if it pleases God to give me children, I should like to live at
home at Fairoaks." My wife's thoughts, though she did not utter them, and
a certain modesty and habitual awe kept her silent upon subjects so very
sacred, went deeper yet. She had been bred to measure her actions by a
standard which the world may nominally admit, but which it leaves for the
most part unheeded. Worship, love, duty, as taught her by the devout
study of the Sacred Law which interprets and defines it--if these formed
the outward practice of her life, they were also its constant and secret
endeavours and occupation. She spoke but very seldom of her religion,
though it filled her heart and influenced all her behaviour. Whenever she
came to that sacred subject, her demeanour appeared to her husband so
awful that he scarcely dared to approach it in her company, and stood
without as this pure creature entered into the Holy of Holies. What must
the world appear to such a person? Its ambitious rewards,
disappointments, pleasures, worth how much? Compared to the possession of
that priceless treasure and happiness unspeakable, a perfect faith, what
has Life to offer? I see before me now her sweet grave face, as she looks
out from the balcony of the little Richmond villa we occupied during the
first happy year after our marriage, following Ethel Newcome, who rides
away, with a staid groom behind her, to her brother's summer residence,
not far distant. Clive had been with us in the morning, and had brought
us stirring news. The good Colonel was by this time on his way home. "If
Clive could tear himself away from London," the good man wrote (and we
thus saw he was acquainted with the state of the young man's mind), "why
should not Clive go and meet his father at Malta?" He was feverish and
eager to go; and his two friends strongly counselled him to take the
journey. In the midst of our talk Miss Ethel came among us. She arrived
flushed and in high spirits; she rallied Clive upon his gloomy looks; she
turned rather pale, as it seemed to us, when she heard the news. Then she
coldly told him she thought the voyage must be a pleasant one, and would
do him good: it was pleasanter than that journey she was going to take
herself with her dreary grandmother, to those German springs which the
old Countess frequented year after year. Mr. Pendennis having business,
retired to his study, whither presently Mrs. Laura followed, having to
look for her scissors, or a book she wanted, or upon some pretext or
other. She sate down in the conjugal study; not one word did either of us
say for a while about the young people left alone in the drawing-room
yonder. Laura talked about our own home at Fairoaks, which our tenants
were about to vacate. She vowed and declared that we must live at
Fairoaks; that Clavering, with all its tittle-tattle and stupid
inhabitants, was better than this wicked London. Besides, there were some
new and very pleasant families settled in the neighbourhood. Clavering
Park was taken by some delightful people--"and you know, Pen, you were
always very fond of fly-fishing, and may fish the Brawl, as you used in
old days, when--" The lips of the pretty satirist who alluded to these
unpleasant bygones were silenced as they deserved to be by Mr. Pendennis.
"Do you think, sir, I did not know," says the sweetest voice in the
world, "when you went out on your fishing excursions with Miss Amory?"
Again the flow of words is checked by the styptic previously applied.

"I wonder," says Mr. Pendennis, archly, bending over his wife's fair
hand--"I wonder whether this kind of thing is taking place in the
drawing-room?"

"Nonsense, Arthur. It is time to go back to them. Why, I declare, I have
been three-quarters of an hour away!"

"I don't think they will much miss you, my dear," says the gentleman.

"She is certainly very fond of him. She is always coming here. I am sure
it is not to hear you read Shakspeare, Arthur; or your new novel, though
it is very pretty. I wish Lady Kew and her sixty thousand pounds were at
the bottom of the sea."

"But she says she is going to portion her younger brothers with a part of
it; she told Clive so," remarks Mr. Pendennis.

"For shame! Why does not Barnes Newcome portion his younger brothers? I
have no patience with that----Why! Goodness! There is Clive going away,
actually! Clive! Mr. Newcome!" But though my wife ran to the study-window
and beckoned our friend, he only shook his head, jumped on his horse, and
rode away gloomily.

"Ethel had been crying when I went into the room," Laura afterwards told
me. "I knew she had; but she looked up from some flowers over which she
was bending, began to laugh and rattle, would talk about nothing but Lady
Hautboi's great breakfast the day before, and the most insufferable
Mayfair jargon; and then declared it was time to go home and dress for
Mrs. Booth's dejeuner, which was to take place that afternoon."

And so Miss Newcome rode away--back amongst the roses and the rouges--
back amongst the fiddling, flirting, flattery, falseness--and Laura's
sweet serene face looked after her departing. Mrs. Booth's was a very
grand dejeuner. We read in the newspapers a list of the greatest names
there. A Royal Duke and Duchess; a German Highness, a Hindoo Nabob, etc.;
and, amongst the Marquises, Farintosh; and, amongst the Lords, Highgate;
and Lady Clara Newcome, and Miss Newcome, who looked killing, our
acquaintance Captain Crackthorpe informs us, and who was in perfectly
stunning spirits. "His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke of Farintosh is
wild about her," the Captain said, "and our poor young friend Clive may
just go and hang himself. Dine with us at the Gar and Starter? Jolly
party. Oh! I forgot! married man now!" So saying, the Captain entered the
hostelry near which I met him, leaving this present chronicler to return
to his own home.




CHAPTER LI

An Old Friend


I might open the present chapter as a contemporary writer of Romance is
occasionally in the habit of commencing his tales of Chivalry, by a
description of a November afternoon falling leaves, tawny forests,
gathering storms, and other autumnal phenomena; and two horsemen winding
up the romantic road which leads from--from Richmond Bridge to the Star
and Garter. The one rider is youthful, and has a blonde moustache. The
cheek of the other has been browned by foreign suns; it is easy to see by
the manner in which he bestrides his powerful charger that he has
followed the profession of arms. He looks as if he had faced his
country's enemies on many a field of Eastern battle. The cavaliers alight
before the gate of a cottage on Richmond Hill, where a gentleman receives
them with eager welcome. Their steeds are accommodated at a neighbouring
hostelry,--I pause in the midst of the description, for the reader has
made the acquaintance of our two horsemen long since. It is Clive
returned from Malta, from Gibraltar, from Seville, from Cadiz, and with
him our dear old friend the Colonel. His campaigns are over, his sword is
hung up, he leaves Eastern suns and battles to warm younger blood.
Welcome back to England, dear Colonel and kind friend! How quickly the
years have passed since he has been gone! There is a streak or two more
silver in his hair. The wrinkles about his honest eyes are somewhat
deeper, but their look is as steadfast and kind as in the early, almost
boyish days when first we knew them.

We talk a while about the Colonel's voyage home, the pleasures of the
Spanish journey, the handsome new quarters in which Clive has installed
his father and himself, my own altered condition in life, and what not.
During the conversation a little querulous voice makes itself audible
above-stairs, at which noise Mr. Clive begins to laugh, and the Colonel
to smile. It is for the first time in his life Mr. Clive listens to the
little voice; indeed, it is only since about six weeks that that small
organ has been heard in the world at all. Laura Pendennis believes its
tunes to be the sweetest, the most interesting, the most mirth-inspiring,
the most pitiful and pathetic, that ever baby uttered; which opinions, of
course, are backed by Mrs. Hokey, the confidential nurse. Laura's husband
is not so rapturous; but, let us trust, behaves in a way becoming a man
and a father. We forgo the description of his feelings as not pertaining
to the history at present under consideration. A little while before the
dinner is served, the lady of the cottage comes down to greet her
husband's old friends.

And here I am sorely tempted to a third description, which has nothing to
do with the story, to be sure, but which, if properly his off might fill
half a page very prettily. For is not a young mother one of the sweetest
sights which life shows us? If she has been beautiful before, does not
her present pure joy give a character of refinement and sacredness almost
to her beauty, touch her sweet cheeks with fairer blushes, and impart I
know not what serene brightness to her eyes? I give warning to the artist
who designs the pictures for this veracious story, to make no attempt at
this subject. I never would be satisfied with it were his drawing ever so
good.

When Sir Charles Grandison stepped up and made his very beautifullest bow
to Miss Byron, I am sure his gracious dignity never exceeded that of
Colonel Newcome's first greeting to Mrs. Pendennis. Of course from the
very moment they beheld one another they became friends. Are not most of
our likings thus instantaneous? Before she came down to see him, Laura
had put on one of the Colonel's shawls--the crimson one, with the red
palm-leaves and the border of many colours. As for the white one, the
priceless, the gossamer, the fairy web, which might pass through a ring,
that, every lady must be aware, was already appropriated to cover the
cradle, or what I believe is called the bassinet, of Master Pendennis.

So we all became the very best of friends; and during the winter months
whilst we still resided at Richmond, the Colonel was my wife's constant
visitor. He often came without Clive. He did not care for the world which
the young gentleman frequented, and was more pleased and at home by my
wife's fireside than at more noisy and splendid entertainments. And,
Laura being a sentimental person interested in pathetic novels and all
unhappy attachments, of course she and the Colonel talked a great deal
about Mr. Clive's little affair, over which they would have such deep
confabulations that even when the master of the house appeared, Pater
Familias, the man whom, in the presence of the Rev. Dr. Portman, Mrs.
Laura had sworn to love and honour these two guilty ones would be silent, or
change the subject of conversation, not caring to admit such an
unsympathising person as myself into their conspiracy.

From many a talk which they have had together since the Colonel and his
son embraced at Malta, Clive's father had been led to see how strongly
the passion which our friend had once fought and mastered, had now taken
possession of the young man. The unsatisfied longing left him indifferent
to all other objects of previous desire or ambition. The misfortune
darkened the sunshine of his spirit, and clouded the world before his
eyes. He passed hours in his painting-room, though he tore up what he did
there. He forsook his usual haunts, or appeared amongst his old comrades
moody and silent. From cigar-smoking, which I own to be a reprehensible
practice, he plunged into still deeper and darker dissipation; for I am
sorry to say, he took to pipes and the strongest tobacco, for which there
is no excuse. Our young man was changed. During the last fifteen or
twenty months, the malady had been increasing on him, of which we have
not chosen to describe at length the stages; knowing very well that the
reader (the male reader at least) does not care a fig about other
people's sentimental perplexities, and is not wrapped up heart and soul
in Clive's affairs like his father, whose rest was disturbed if the boy
had a headache, or who would have stripped the coat off his back to keep
his darling's feet warm.

The object of this hopeless passion had, meantime, returned to the
custody of the dark old duenna, from which she had been liberated for a
while. Lady Kew had got her health again, by means of the prescriptions
of some doctors, or by the efficacy of some baths; and was again on foot
and in the world, tramping about in her grim pursuit of pleasure. Lady
Julia, we are led to believe, had retired upon half-pay, and into an
inglorious exile at Brussels, with her sister, the outlaw's wife, by
whose bankrupt fireside she was perfectly happy. Miss Newcome was now her
grandmother's companion, and they had been on a tour of visits in
Scotland, and were journeying from country-house to country-house about
the time when our good Colonel returned to his native shores.

The Colonel loved his nephew Barnes no better than before, perhaps,
though we must say that since his return from India the young Baronet's
conduct had been particularly friendly. "No doubt marriage had improved
him; Lady Clara seemed a good-natured young woman enough; besides," says
the Colonel, wagging his good old head knowingly, "Tom Newcome, of the
Bundelcund Bank, is a personage to be conciliated; whereas Tom Newcome,
of the Bengal Cavalry, was not worth Master Barnes's attention. He has
been very good and kind on the whole; so have his friends been uncommonly
civil. There was Clive's acquaintance, Mr. Belsize that was, Lord
Highgate who is now, entertained our whole family sumptuously last week--
wants us and Barnes and his wife to go to his country-house at Christmas
--is as hospitable, my dear Mrs. Pendennis, as man can be. He met you at
Barnes's, and as soon as we are alone," says the Colonel, turning round
to Laura's husband, "I will tell you in what terms Lady Clara speaks of
your wife. Yes. She is a good-natured, kind little woman, that Lady
Clara." Here Laura's face assumed that gravity and severeness, which it
always wore when Lady Clara's name was mentioned, and the conversation
took another turn.

Returning home from London one afternoon, I met the Colonel, who hailed
me on the omnibus, and rode on his way towards the City, I knew, of
course, that he had been colloquying with my wife; and taxed that young
woman with these continued flirtations. "Two or three times a week, Mrs.
Laura, you dare to receive a Colonel of Dragoons. You sit for hours
closeted with the young fellow of sixty; you change the conversation when
your own injured husband enters the room, and pretend to talk about the
weather, or the baby. You little arch hypocrite, you know you do. Don't
try to humbug me, miss; what will Richmond, what will society, what will
Mrs. Grundy in general say to such atrocious behaviour?"

"Oh! Pen," says my wife, closing my mouth in a way which I do not choose
further to particularise; "that man is the best, the dearest, the kindest
creature. I never knew such a good man; you ought to put him into a book.
Do you know, sir, that I felt the very greatest desire to give him a kiss
when he went away; and that one which you had just now, was intended for
him.

"Take back thy gift, false girl!" says Mr Pendennis; and then, finally,
we come to the particular circumstance which had occasioned so much
enthusiasm on Mrs. Laura's part.

Colonel Newcome had summoned heart of grace, and in Clive's behalf had
regularly proposed him to Barnes, as a suitor to Ethel, taking an artful
advantage of his nephew Barnes Newcome, and inviting that Barnes to a
private meeting, where they were to talk about the affairs of the
Bundelcund Banking Company.

Now this Bundelcund Banking Company, in the Colonel's eyes, was in
reality his son Clive. But for Clive there might have been a hundred
banking companies established, yielding a hundred per cent, in as many
districts of India, and Thomas Newcome, who had plenty of money for his
own wants, would never have thought of speculation. His desire was to see
his boy endowed with all the possible gifts of fortune. Had he built a
palace for Clive, and been informed that a roc's egg was required to
complete the decoration of the edifice, Tom Newcome would have travelled
to the world's end in search of the wanting article. To see Prince Clive
ride in a gold coach with a princess beside him, was the kind old
Colonel's ambition; that done, he would be content to retire to a garret
in the prince's castle, and smoke his cheroot there in peace. So the
world is made. The strong and eager covet honour and enjoyment for
themselves; the gentle and disappointed (once, they may have been strong
and eager, too) desire these gifts for their children. I think Clive's
father never liked or understood the lad's choice of a profession. He
acquiesced in it as he would in any of his son's wishes. But, not being a
poet himself, he could not see the nobility of that calling; and felt
secretly that his son was demeaning himself by pursuing the art of
painting. "Had he been a soldier, now," thought Thomas Newcome, "(though
I prevented that) had he been richer than he is, he might have married
Ethel, instead of being unhappy as he now is, God help him! I remember my
own time of grief well enough: and what years it took before my wound
wound was scarred over."

So with these things occupying his brain Thomas Newcome artfully invited
Barnes, his nephew, to dinner under pretence of talking of the affairs of
the great B. B. C. With the first glass of wine at dessert, and according
to the Colonel's good old-fashioned custom of proposing toasts, they
drank the health of the B. B. C. Barnes drank the toast with all his
generous heart. The B. B. C. sent to Hobson Brothers and Newcome a great
deal of business, was in a most prosperous condition, kept a great
balance at the bank, a balance that would not be overdrawn, as Sir Barnes
Newcome very well knew. Barnes was for having more of these bills,
provided there were remittances to meet the same. Barnes was ready to do
any amount of business with the Indian bank, or with any bank, or with
any individual, Christian or heathen, white or black, who could do good
to the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. He spoke upon this subject
with great archness and candour: of course as a City man he would be glad
to do a profitable business anywhere, and the B. B. C.'s business was
profitable. But the interested motive which he admitted frankly as a man
of the world, did not prevent other sentiments more agreeable. "My dear
Colonel," says Barnes, "I am happy, most happy, to think that our house
and our name should have been useful, as I know they have been, in the
establishment of a concern in which one of our family is interested; one
whom we all so sincerely respect and regard." And he touched his glass
with his lips and blushed a little, as he bowed towards his uncle. He
found himself making a little speech, indeed; and to do so before one
single person seems rather odd. Had there been a large company present
Barnes would not have blushed at all, but have tossed off his glass,
struck his waistcoat possibly, and looked straight in the face of his
uncle as the chairman; well, he did very likely believe that he respected
and regarded the Colonel.

The Colonel said--"Thank you, Barnes, with all my heart. It is always
good for men to be friends, much more for blood relations, as we are."

"A relationship which honours me, I'm sure!" says Barnes, with a tone of
infinite affability. You see, he believed that Heaven had made him the
Colonel's superior.

"And I am very glad," the elder went on, "that you and my boy are good
friends."

"Friends! of course. It would be unnatural if such near relatives were
otherwise than good friends."

"You have been hospitable to him, and Lady Clara very kind, and he wrote
to me telling me of your kindness. Ahem! this is tolerable claret. I
wonder where Clive gets it?"

"You were speaking about that indigo, Colonel!" here Barnes interposes.
"Our house has done very little in that way, to be sure but I suppose
that our credit is about as good as Battie's and Jolly's, and if----" but
the Colonel is in a brown study.

"Clive will have a good bit of money when I die," resumes Clive's father.

"Why, you are a hale man--upon my word, quite a young man, and may marry
again, Colonel," replies the nephew fascinatingly.

"I shall never do that," replies the other. "Ere many years are gone, I
shall be seventy years old, Barnes."

"Nothing in this country, my dear sir! positively nothing. Why, there was
Titus, my neighbour in the country--when will you come down to Newcome?--
who married a devilish pretty girl, of very good family, too, Miss
Burgeon, one of the Devonshire Burgeons. He looks, I am sure, twenty
years older than you do. Why should not you do likewise?"

"Because I like to remain single, and want to leave Clive a rich man.
Look here, Barnes, you know the value of our bank shares, now?"

"Indeed I do; rather speculative; but of course I know what some sold for
last week," says Barnes.

"Suppose I realise now. I think I am worth six lakhs. I had nearly two
from my poor father. I saved some before and since I invested in this
affair; and could sell out to-morrow with sixty thousand pounds."

"A very pretty sum of money, Colonel," says Barnes.

"I have a pension of a thousand a year."

"My dear Colonel, you are a capitalist! we know it very well," remarks
Sir Barnes.

"And two hundred a year is as much as I want for myself," continues the
capitalist, looking into the fire, and jingling his money in his pockets.
"A hundred a year for a horse; a hundred a year for pocket-money, for I
calculate, you know, that Clive will give me a bedroom and my dinner."

"He! he! If your son won't, your nephew will, my dear Colonel!" says the
affable Barnes, smiling sweetly.

"I can give the boy a handsome allowance, you see," resumes Thomas
Newcome.

"You can make him a handsome allowance now, and leave him a good fortune
when you die!" says the nephew, in a noble and courageous manner,--and as
if he said Twelve times twelve are a hundred and forty-four and you have
Sir Barnes Newcome's authority--Sir Barnes Newcome's, mind you--to say
so.

"Not when I die, Barnes," the uncle goes on. "I will give him every
shilling I am worth to-morrow morning, if he marries as I wish him."

"Tant mieux pour lui!" cries the nephew; and thought to himself, "Lady
Clara must ask Clive to dinner instantly. Confound the fellow. I hate
him--always have; but what luck he has!"

"A man with that property may pretend to a good wife, as the French say;
hey Barnes?" asks the Colonel, rather eagerly looking up in his nephew's
face.

That countenance was lighted up with a generous enthusiasm. "To any
woman, in any rank--to a nobleman's daughter, my dear sir!" exclaims Sir
Barnes.

"I want your sister; I want dear Ethel for him, Barnes," cries Thomas
Newcome, with a trembling voice, and a twinkle in his eyes. "That was the
hope I always had till my talk with your poor father stopped it. Your
sister was engaged to my Lord Kew then; and my wishes of course were
impossible. The poor boy is very much cut up, and his whole heart is bent
upon possessing her. She is not, she can't be, indifferent to him. I am
sure she would not be, if her family in the least encouraged him. Can
either of these young folks have a better chance of happiness again
offered to them in life? There's youth, there's mutual liking, there's
wealth for them almost--only saddled with the encumbrance of an old
dragoon, who won't be much in their way. Give us your good word, Barnes,
and let them come together; and upon my word the rest of my days will be
made happy if I can eat my meal at their table."

Whilst the poor Colonel was making his appeal, Barnes had time to collect
his answer; which, since in our character of historians we take leave to
explain gentlemen's motives as well as record their speeches and actions,
we may thus interpret. "Confound the young beggar!" thinks Barnes, then.
"He will have three or four thousand a year, will he? Hang him, but it's
a good sum of money. What a fool his father is to give it away! Is he
joking? No, he was always half crazy--the Colonel. Highgate seemed
uncommonly sweet on her, and was always hanging about our house.
Farintosh has not been brought to book yet; and perhaps neither of them
will propose for her. My grandmother, I should think, won't hear of her
making a low marriage, as this certainly is: but it's a pity to throw
away four thousand a year, ain't it?" All these natural calculations
passed briskly through Barnes Newcome's mind, as his uncle, from the
opposite side of the fireplace, implored him in the above little speech.

"My dear Colonel," said Barnes, "my dear, kind Colonel! I needn't tell
you that your proposal flatters us, as much as your extraordinary
generosity surprises me. I never heard anything like it--never. Could I
consult my own wishes I would at once--I would, permit me to say, from
sheer admiration of your noble character, say yes, with all my heart, to
your proposal. But, alas, I haven't that power."

"Is--is she engaged?" asks the Colonel, looking as blank and sad as Clive
himself when Ethel had conversed with him.

"No--I cannot say engaged--though a person of the very highest rank has
paid her the most marked attention. But my sister has, in a way, gone
from our family, and from my influence as the head of it--an influence
which I, I am sure, had most gladly exercised in your favour. My
grandmother, Lady Kew, has adopted her; purposes, I believe, to leave
Ethel the greater part of her fortune, upon certain conditions; and, of
course, expects the--the obedience, and so forth, which is customary in
such cases. By the way, Colonel, is our young soupirant aware that papa
is pleading his cause for him?"

The Colonel said no; and Barnes lauded the caution which his uncle had
displayed. It was quite as well for the young man's interests (which Sir
Barnes had most tenderly at heart) that Clive Newcome should not himself
move in the affair, or present himself to Lady Kew. Barnes would take the
matter in hand at the proper season; the Colonel might be sure it would
be most eagerly, most ardently pressed. Clive came home at this juncture,
whom Barnes saluted affectionately. He and the Colonel had talked over
their money business; their conversation had been most satisfactory,
thank you. "Has it not, Colonel?" The three parted the very best of
friends.

As Barnes Newcome professed that extreme interest for his cousin and
uncle, it is odd he did not tell them that Lady Kew and Miss Ethel
Newcome were at that moment within a mile of them, at her ladyship's
house in Queen Street, Mayfair. In the hearing of Clive's servant, Barnes
did not order his brougham to drive to Queen Street, but waited until he
was in Bond Street before he gave the order.

And, of course, when he entered Lady Kew's house, he straightway asked
for his sister, and communicated to her the generous offer which the good
Colonel had made.

You see, Lady Kew was in town, and not in town. Her ladyship was but
passing through, on her way from a tour of visits in the North, to
another tour of visits somewhere else. The newspapers were not even off
the blinds. The proprietor of the house cowered over a bed-candle and a
furtive teapot in the back drawing-room. Lady Kew's gens were not here.
The tall canary ones with white polls, only showed their plumage and sang
in spring. The solitary wretch who takes charge of London houses, and the
two servants specially affected to Lady Kew's person, were the only
people in attendance. In fact, her ladyship was not in town. And that is
why, no doubt, Barnes Newcome said nothing about her being there.




CHAPTER LII

Family Secrets


The figure cowering over the furtive teapot glowered grimly at Barnes as
he entered; and an old voice said--"Ho, it's you!"

"I have brought you the notes, ma'am," says Barnes, taking a packet of
those documents from his pocket-book. "I could not come sooner, I have
been engaged upon bank business until now."

"I dare say! You smell of smoke like a courier."

"A foreign capitalist: he would smoke. They will, ma'am. I didn't smoke,
upon my word."

"I don't see why you shouldn't, if you like it. You will never get
anything out of me whether you do or don't. How is Clara? Is she gone to
the country with the children? Newcome is the best place for her."

"Doctor Bambury thinks she can move in a fortnight. The boy has had a
little----"

"A little fiddlestick! I tell you it is she who likes to stay, and makes
that fool, Bambury, advise her not going away. I tell you to send her to
Newcome. The air is good for her."

"By that confounded smoky town, my dear Lady Kew?"

"And invite your mother and little brothers and sisters to stay Christmas
there. The way in which you neglect them is shameful, it is, Barnes."

"Upon my word, ma'am, I propose to manage my own affairs without your
ladyship's assistance," cries Barnes, starting up, "and did not come at
this time of night to hear this kind of----"

"Of good advice. I sent for you to give it you. When I wrote to you to
bring me the money I wanted it was but a pretext; Barkins might have
fetched it from the City in the morning. I want you to send Clara and the
children to Newcome. They ought to go, sir. That is why I sent for you;
to tell you that. Have you been quarrelling as much as usual?"

"Pretty much as usual," says Barnes, drumming on his hat.

"Don't beat that devil's tattoo; you agacez my poor old nerves. When
Clara was given to you she was as well broke a girl as any in London."

Sir Barnes responded by a groan.

"She was as gentle and amenable to reason, as good-natured a girl as
could be; a little vacant and silly, but you men like dolls for your
wives; and now in three years you have utterly spoiled her. She is
restive, she is artful, she flies into rages, she fights you and beats
you. He! he! and that comes of your beating her!"

"I didn't come to hear this, ma'am," says Barnes, livid with rage

"You struck her, you know you did, Sir Barnes Newcome. She rushed over to
me last year on the night you did it, you know she did."

"Great God, ma'am! You know the provocation," screams Barnes.

"Provocation or not, I don't say. But from that moment she has beat you.
You fool, to write her a letter and ask her pardon. If I had been a man I
would rather have strangled my wife, than have humiliated myself so
before her. She will never forgive that blow."

"I was mad when I did it; and she drove me mad," says Barnes. "She has
the temper of a fiend, and the ingenuity of the devil. In two years an
entire change has come over her. If I had used a knife to her I should
not have been surprised. But it is not with you to reproach me about
Clara. Your ladyship found her for me."

"And you spoilt her after she was found, sir. She told me part of her
story that night she came to me. I know it is true, Barnes. You have
treated her dreadfully, sir."

"I know that she makes my life miserable, and there is no help for it,"
says Barnes, grinding a curse between his teeth. "Well, well, no more
about this. How is Ethel? Gone to sleep after her journey? What do you
think, ma'am, I have brought for her? A proposal."

"Bon Dieu! You don't mean to say Charles Belsize was in earnest!" cries
the dowager. "I always thought it was a----"

"It is not from Lord Highgate, ma'am," Sir Barnes said, gloomily. "It is
some time since I have known that he was not in earnest; and he knows
that I am now."

"Gracious goodness! come to blows with him, too? You have not? That would
be the very thing to make the world talk," says the dowager, with some
anxiety.

"No," answers Barnes. "He knows well enough that there can be no open
rupture. We had some words the other day at a dinner he gave at his own
house; Colonel Newcome and that young beggar, Clive, and that fool, Mr.
Hobson, were there. Lord Highgate was confoundedly insolent. He told me
that I did not dare to quarrel with him because of the account he kept at
our house. I should like to have massacred him! She has told him that I
struck her,--the insolent brute--he says he will tell it at my clubs; and
threatens personal violence to me, there, if I do it again. Lady Kew, I'm
not safe from that man and that woman," cries poor Barnes, in an agony of
terror.

"Fighting is Jack Belsize's business, Barnes Newcome; banking is yours,
luckily," said the dowager. "As old Lord Highgate was to die and his
eldest son, too, it is a pity certainly they had not died a year or two
earlier, and left poor Clara and Charles to come together. You should
have married some woman in the serious way; my daughter Walham could have
found you one. Frank, I am told, and his wife go on very sweetly
together; her mother-in-law governs the whole family. They have turned
the theatre back into a chapel again: they have six little ploughboys
dressed in surplices to sing the service; and Frank and the Vicar of
Kewbury play at cricket with them on holidays. Stay, why should not Clara
go to Kewbury?"

"She and her sister have quarrelled about this very affair with Lord
Highgate. Some time ago it appears they had words about it and when I
told Kew that bygones had best be bygones, that Highgate was very sweet
upon Ethel now, and that I did not choose to lose such a good account as
his, Kew was very insolent to me; his conduct was blackguardly, ma'am,
quite blackguardly, and you may be sure but for our relationship I would
have called him to----"

Here the talk between Barnes and his ancestress was interrupted by the
appearance of Miss Ethel Newcome, taper in hand, who descended from the
upper regions enveloped in a shawl.

"How do you do, Barnes? How is Clara? I long to see my little nephew. Is
he like his pretty papa?" cries the young lady, giving her fair cheek to
her brother.

"Scotland has agreed with our Newcome rose," says Barnes, gallantly. "My
dear Ethel, I never saw you in greater beauty."

"By the light of one bedroom candle! what should I be if the whole room
were lighted? You would see my face then was covered all over with
wrinkles, and quite pale and woebegone, with the dreariness of the Scotch
journey. Oh, what a time we have spent! haven't we, grandmamma? I never
wish to go to a great castle again; above all, I never wish to go to a
little shooting-box. Scotland may be very well for men; but for women--
allow me to go to Paris when next there is talk of a Scotch expedition. I
had rather be in a boarding-school in the Champs Elysees than in the
finest castle in the Highlands. If it had not been for a blessed quarrel
with Fanny Follington, I think I should have died at Glen Shorthorn. Have
you seen my dear, dear uncle, the Colonel? When did he arrive?"

"Is he come? Why is he come?" asks Lady Kew.

"Is he come? Look here, grandmamma! did you ever see such a darling
shawl! I found it in a packet in my room."

"Well, it is beautiful," cries the Dowager, bending her ancient nose over
the web. "Your Colonel is a galant homme. That must be said of him; and
in this does not quite take after the rest of the family. Hum! hum! is he
going away again soon?"

"He has made a fortune, a very considerable fortune for a man in that
rank in life," says Sir Barnes. "He cannot have less than sixty thousand
pounds."

"Is that much?" asks Ethel.

"Not in England, at our rate of interest; but his money is in India,
where he gets a great percentage. His income must be five or six thousand
pounds, ma'am," says Barnes, turning to Lady Kew.

"A few of the Indians were in society in my time, my dear," says Lady
Kew, musingly. "My father has often talked to me about Barbell of
Stanstead, and his house in St. James's Square; the man who ordered more
curricles when there were not carriages enough for his guests. I was
taken to Mr. Hastings's trial. It was very stupid and long. The young
man, the painter, I suppose will leave his paint-pots now, and set up as
a gentleman. I suppose they were very poor, or his father would not have
put him to such a profession. Barnes, why did you not make him a clerk in
the bank, and save him from the humiliation?"

"Humiliation! why, he is proud of it. My uncle is as proud as a
Plantagenet; though he is as humble as--as what! Give me a simile Barnes.
Do you know what my quarrel with Fanny Follington was about? She said we
were not descended from the barber-surgeon, and laughed at the Battle of
Bosworth. She says our great-grandfather was a weaver. Was he a weaver?"

"How should I know? and what on earth does it matter, my child? Except
the Gaunts, the Howards, and one or two more, there is scarcely any good
blood in England. You are lucky in sharing some of mine. My poor Lord
Kew's grandfather was an apothecary at Hampton Court, and founded the
family by giving a dose of rhubarb to Queen Caroline. As a rule, nobody
is of a good family. Didn't that young man, that son of the Colonel's, go
about last year? How did he get in society? Where did we meet him? Oh! at
Baden, yes; when Barnes was courting, and my grandson--yes, my grandson,
acted so wickedly." Here she began to cough, and to tremble so, that her
old stick shook under her hand. "Ring the bell for Ross. Ross, I will go
to bed. Go you too, Ethel. You have been travelling enough to-day."

"Her memory seems to fail her a little," Ethel whispered to her brother;
"or she will only remember what she wishes. Don't you see that she has
grown very much older?"

"I will be with her in the morning. I have business with her," said
Barnes.

"Good night. Give my love to Clara, and kiss the little ones for me. Have
you done what you promised me, Barnes?"

"What?"

"To be--to be kind to Clara. Don't say cruel things to her. She has a
high spirit, and she feels them, though she says nothing."

"Doesn't she?" said Barnes, grimly.

"Ah, Barnes, be gentle with her. Seldom as I saw you together, when I
lived with you in the spring, I could see that you were harsh, though she
affected to laugh when she spoke of your conduct to her. Be kind. I am
sure it is the best, Barnes; better than all the wit in the world. Look
at grandmamma, how witty she was and is; what a reputation she had, how
people were afraid of her; and see her now--quite alone."

"I'll see her in the morning quite alone, my dear," says Barnes, waving a
little gloved hand. "Bye-bye!" and his brougham drove away. While Ethel
Newcome had been under her brother's roof, where I and friend Clive, and
scores of others, had been smartly entertained, there had been quarrels
and recriminations, misery and heart-burning, cruel words and shameful
struggles, the wretched combatants in which appeared before the world
with smiling faces, resuming their battle when the feast was concluded
and the company gone.

On the next morning, when Barnes came to visit his grandmother, Miss
Newcome was gone away to see her sister-in-law, Lady Kew said, with whom
she was going to pass the morning; so Barnes and Lady Kew had an
uninterrupted tete-a-tete, in which the former acquainted the old lady
with the proposal which Colonel Newcome had made to him on the previous
night.

Lady Kew wondered what the impudence of the world's would come to. An
artist propose for Ethel! One of her footmen might propose next, and she
supposed Barnes would bring the message. "The father came and proposed
for this young painter, and you didn't order him out of the room!"

Barnes laughed. "The Colonel is one of my constituents. I can't afford to
order the Bundelcund Banking Company out of its own room."

"You did not tell Ethel this pretty news, I suppose?"

"Of course I didn't tell Ethel. Nor did I tell the Colonel that Ethel was
in London. He fancies her in Scotland with your ladyship at this moment."

"I wish the Colonel were at Calcutta, and his son with him. I wish he was
in the Ganges, I wish he was under Juggernaut's car," cried the old lady.
"How much money has the wretch really got? If he is of importance to the
bank, of course you must keep well with him. Five thousand a year, and he
says he will settle it all on his son? He must be crazy. There is nothing
some of these people will not do, no sacrifice they will not make, to
ally themselves with good families. Certainly you must remain on good
terms with him and his bank. And we must say nothing of the business to
Ethel, and trot out of town as quickly as we can. Let me see? We go to
Drummington on Saturday. This is Tuesday. Barkins, you will keep the
front drawing-room shutters shut, and remember we are not in town, unless
Lady Glenlivat or Lord Farintosh should call."

"Do you think Farintosh will--will call, ma'am?" asked Sir Barnes
demurely.

"He will be going through to Newmarket. He has been where we have been at
two or three places in Scotland," replies the lady, with equal gravity.
"His poor mother wishes him to give up his bachelor's life--as well she
may--for you young men are terribly dissipated. Rossmont is quite a regal
place. His Norfolk house is not inferior. A young man of that station
ought to marry, and live at his places, and be an example to his people,
instead of frittering away his time at Paris and Vienna amongst the most
odious company."

"Is he going to Drummington?" asks the grandson.

"I believe he has been invited. We shall go to Paris for November: he
probably will be there," answered the Dowager casually; "and tired of the
dissipated life he has been leading, let us hope he will mend his ways,
and find a virtuous, well-bred young woman to keep him right." With this
her ladyship's apothecary is announced, and her banker and grandson takes
his leave.

Sir Barnes walked into the City with his umbrella, read his letters,
conferred with his partners and confidential clerks; was for a while not
the exasperated husband, or the affectionate brother, or the amiable
grandson, but the shrewd, brisk banker, engaged entirely with his
business. Presently he had occasion to go on 'Change, or elsewhere, to
confer with brother-capitalists, and in Cornhill behold he meets his
uncle, Colonel Newcome, riding towards the India House, a groom behind
him.

The Colonel springs off his horse, and Barnes greets him in the blandest
manner. "Have you any news for me, Barnes?" cries the officer.

"The accounts from Calcutta are remarkably good. That cotton is of
admirable quality really. Mr. Briggs, of our house, who knows cotton as
well as any man in England, says----"

"It's not the cotton, my dear Sir Barnes," cries the other.

"The bills are perfectly good; there is no sort of difficulty about them.
Our house will take half a million of 'em, if----"

"You are talking of bills, and I am thinking of poor Clive," the Colonel
interposes. "I wish you could give me good news for him, Barnes."

"I wish I could. I heartily trust that I may some day. My good wishes you
know are enlisted in your son's behalf," cries Barnes, gallantly. "Droll
place to talk sentiment in--Cornhill, isn't it? But Ethel, as I told you,
is in the hands of higher powers, and we must conciliate Lady Kew if we
can. She has always spoken very highly of Clive; very."

"Had I not best go to her?" asks the Colonel.

"Into the North, my good sir? She is--ah--she is travelling about. I
think you had best depend upon me, Good morning. In the City we have no
hearts, you know, Colonel. Be sure you shall hear from me as soon as Lady
Kew and Ethel come to town."

And the banker hurried away, shaking his finger-tips to his uncle, and
leaving the good Colonel utterly surprised at his statements. For the
fact is, the Colonel knew that Lady Kew was in London, having been
apprised of the circumstance in the simplest manner in the world, namely,
by a note from Miss Ethel, which billet he had in his pocket, whilst he
was talking with the head of the house of Hobson Brothers:--

"My dear uncle" (the note said), "how glad I shall be to see you! How
shall I thank you for the beautiful shawl, and the kind, kind remembrance
of me? I found your present yesterday evening, on our arrival from the
North. We are only here en passant, and see nobody in Queen Street but
Barnes, who has just been about business, and he does not count, you
know. I shall go and see Clara to-morrow, and make her take me to see
your pretty friend, Mrs. Pendennis. How glad I should be if you happened
to pay Mrs. P. a visit about two! Good-night. I thank you a thousand
times, and am always your affectionate                    E."

"Queen Street. Tuesday night. Twelve o'clock."

This note came to Colonel Newcome's breakfast-table, and he smothered the
exclamation of wonder which was rising to his lips, not choosing to
provoke the questions of Clive, who sate opposite to him. Clive's father
was in a woeful perplexity all that forenoon. "Tuesday night, twelve
o'clock," thought he. "Why, Barnes must have gone to his grandmother from
my dinner-table; and he told me she was out of town, and said so again
just now when we met in the City." (The Colonel was riding towards
Richmond at this time.) "What cause had the young man to tell me these
lies? Lady Kew may not wish to be at home for me, but need Barnes Newcome
say what is untrue to mislead me? The fellow actually went away
simpering, and kissing his hand to me, with a falsehood on his lips! What
a pretty villain! A fellow would deserve, and has got, a horse-whipping
for less. And to think of a Newcome doing this to his own flesh and
blood; a young Judas!" Very sad and bewildered, the Colonel rode towards
Richmond, where he was to happen to call on Mrs. Pendennis.

It was not much of a fib that Barnes had told. Lady Kew announcing that
she was out of town, her grandson, no doubt, thought himself justified in
saying so, as any other of her servants would have done. But if he had
recollected how Ethel came down with the Colonel's shawl on her
shoulders, how it was possible she might have written to thank her uncle,
surely Barnes Newcome would not have pulled that unlucky long-bow. The
banker had other things to think of than Ethel and her shawl.

When Thomas Newcome dismounted at the door of Honeymoon Cottage,
Richmond, the temporary residence of A. Pendennis, Esq., one of the
handsomest young women in England ran into the passage with outstretched
arms, called him her dear old uncle, and gave him two kisses, that I dare
say brought blushes on his lean sunburnt cheeks. Ethel clung always to
his affection. She wanted that man, rather than any other in the whole
world, to think well of her. When she was with him, she was the amiable
and simple, the loving impetuous creature of old times. She chose to
think of no other. Worldliness, heartlessness, eager scheming, cold
flirtations, marquis-hunting and the like, disappeared for a while--and
were not, as she sate at that honest man's side. O me! that we should
have to record such charges against Ethel Newcome!

"He was come home for good now? He would never leave that boy he spoiled
so, who was a good boy, too: she wished she could see him oftener. At
Paris, at Madame de Florac's--I found out all about Madame de Florac,
sir," says Miss Ethel, with a laugh--"we used often to meet there; and
here, sometimes, in London. But in London it was different. You know what
peculiar notions some people have; and as I live with grandmamma, who is
most kind to me and my brothers, of course I must obey her, see her,"
etc. etc. That the young lady went on talking, defending herself, whom
nobody attacked, protesting her dislike to gaiety and dissipation--you
would have fancied her an artless young country lass, only longing to
trip back to her village, milk her cows at sunrise, and sit spinning of
winter evenings by the fire.

"Why do you come and spoil my tete-a-tete with my uncle, Mr. Pendennis?"
cries the young lady to the master of the house, who happens to enter "Of
all the men in the world the one I like best to talk to! Does he not look
younger than when he went to India? When Clive marries that pretty little
Miss Mackenzie, you will marry again, uncle, and I will be jealous of
your wife."

"Did Barnes tell you that we had met last night, my dear?" asks the
Colonel.

"Not one word. Your shawl and your dear kind note told me you were come.
Why did not Barnes tell us? Why do you look so grave?"

"He has not told her that I was here, and would have me believe her
absent," thought Newcome, as his countenance fell. "Shall I give her my
own message, and plead my poor boy's cause with her?" I know not whether
he was about to lay his suit before her; he said himself subsequently
that his mind was not made up; but at this juncture, a procession of
nurses and babies made their appearance, followed by the two mothers, who
had been comparing their mutual prodigies (each lady having her own
private opinion)--Lady Clara and my wife--the latter for once gracious to
Lady Clara Newcome, in consideration of the infantine company with which
she came to visit Mrs. Pendennis.

Luncheon was served presently. The carriage of the Newcomes drove away,
my wife smilingly pardoning Ethel for the assignation which the young
person had made at our house. And when those ladies were gone, our good
Colonel held a council of war with us his two friends, and told us what
had happened between him and Barnes on that morning and the previous
night. His offer to sacrifice every shilling of his fortune to young
Clive seemed to him to be perfectly simple (though the recital of the
circumstance brought tears into my wife's eyes)--he mentioned it by the
way, and as a matter that was scarcely to call for comment, much less
praise.

Barnes's extraordinary statements respecting Lady Kew's absence puzzled
the elder Newcome; and he spoke of his nephew's conduct with much
indignation. In vain I urged that her ladyship desiring to be considered
absent from London, her grandson was bound to keep her secret. "Keep her
secret, yes! Tell me lies, no!" cries out the Colonel. Sir Barnes's
conduct was in fact indefensible, though not altogether unusual--the
worst deduction to be drawn from it, in my opinion, was, that Clive's
chance with the young lady was but a poor one, and that Sir Barnes
Newcome, inclined to keep his uncle in good-humour, would therefore give
him no disagreeable refusal.

Now this gentleman could no more pardon a lie than he could utter one. He
would believe all and everything a man told him until deceived once,
after which he never forgave. And wrath being once roused in his simple
mind and distrust firmly fixed there, his anger and prejudices gathered
daily. He could see no single good quality in his opponent; and hated him
with a daily increasing bitterness.

As ill luck would have it, that very same evening, at his return to town,
Thomas Newcome entered Bays's club, of which, at our request, he had
become a member during his last visit to England, and there was Sir
Barnes, as usual, on his way homewards from the City. Barnes was writing
at a table, and sealing and closing a letter, as he saw the Colonel
enter; he thought he had been a little inattentive and curt with his
uncle in the morning; had remarked, perhaps, the expression of
disapproval on the Colonel's countenance. He simpered up to his uncle as
the latter entered the clubroom, and apologised for his haste when they
met in the City in the morning--all City men were so busy! "And I have
been writing about that little affair, just as you came in," he said;
"quite a moving letter to Lady Kew, I assure you, and I do hope and trust
we shall have a favourable answer in a day or two."

"You said her ladyship was in the North, I think?" said the Colonel,
drily.

"Oh, yes--in the North, at--at Lord Wallsend's--great coal-proprietor,
you know."

"And your sister is with her?"

"Ethel is always with her."

"I hope you will send her my very best remembrances," said the Colonel.

"I'll open the letter, and add 'em in a postscript," said Barnes.

"Confounded liar?" cried the Colonel, mentioning the circumstance to me
afterwards, "why does not somebody pitch him out of the bow-window?"

If we were in the secret of Sir Barnes Newcome's correspondence, and
could but peep into that particular letter to his grandmother, I dare say
we should read that he had seen the Colonel, who was very anxious about
his darling youth's suit, but, pursuant to Lady Kew's desire, Barnes had
stoutly maintained that her ladyship was still in the North, enjoying the
genial hospitality of Lord Wallsend. That of course he should say nothing
to Ethel, except with Lady Kew's full permission: that he wished her a
pleasant trip to ----, and was, etc. etc.

Then if we could follow him, we might see him reach his Belgravian
mansion, and fling an angry word to his wife as she sits alone in the
darkling drawing-room, poring over the embers. He will ask her, probably
with an oath, why the ----- she is not dressed? and if she always intends
to keep her company waiting? An hour hence, each with a smirk, and the
lady in smart raiment, with flowers in her hair, will be greeting their
guests as they arrive. Then will come dinner and such conversation as it
brings. Then at night Sir Barnes will issue forth, cigar in mouth; to
return to his own chamber at his own hour; to breakfast by himself; to go
Citywards, money-getting. He will see his children once a fortnight, and
exchange a dozen sharp words with his wife twice in that time.

More and more sad does the Lady Clara become from day to day; liking more
to sit lonely over the fire; careless about the sarcasms of her husband;
the prattle of her children. She cries sometimes over the cradle of the
young heir. She is aweary, aweary. You understand, the man to whom her
parents sold her does not make her happy, though she has been bought with
diamonds, two carriages, several large footmen, a fine country-house with
delightful gardens, and conservatories, and with all this she is
miserable--is it possible?




CHAPTER LIII

In which Kinsmen fall out


Not the least difficult part of Thomas Newcome's present business was to
keep from his son all knowledge of the negotiation in which he was
engaged on Clive's behalf. If my gentle reader has had sentimental
disappointments, he or she is aware that the friends who have given him
most sympathy under these calamities have been persons who have had
dismal histories of their own at some time of their lives, and I conclude
Colonel Newcome in his early days must have suffered very cruelly in that
affair of which we have a slight cognisance, or he would not have felt so
very much anxiety about Clive's condition.

A few chapters back and we described the first attack, and Clive's manful
cure: then we had to indicate the young gentleman's relapse, and the
noisy exclamations of the youth under this second outbreak of fever.
Calling him back after she had dismissed him, and finding pretext after
pretext to see him,--why did the girl encourage him, as she certainly
did? I allow, with Mrs. Grundy and most moralists, that Miss Newcome's
conduct in this matter was highly reprehensible; that if she did not
intend to marry Clive she should have broken with him--altogether; that a
virtuous young woman of high principle, etc. etc., having once determined
to reject a suitor, should separate from him utterly then and there--
never give him again the least chance of a hope, or reillume the
extinguished fire in the wretch's bosom.

But coquetry, but kindness, but family affection, and a strong, very
strong partiality for the rejected lover--are these not to be taken in
account, and to plead as excuses for her behaviour to her cousin? The
least unworthy part of her conduct, some critics will say, was that
desire to see Clive and be well with him: as she felt the greatest regard
for him, the showing it was not blameable; and every flutter which she
made to escape out of the meshes which the world had cast about her was
but the natural effort at liberty. It was her prudence which was wrong;
and her submission wherein she was most culpable. In the early church
story, do we not read how young martyrs constantly had to disobey worldly
papas and mammas, who would have had them silent, and not utter their
dangerous opinions? how their parents locked them up, kept them on
bread-and-water, whipped and tortured them in order to enforce
obedience?--nevertheless they would declare the truth: they would defy
the gods by law established, and deliver themselves up to the lions or
the tormentors. Are not there Heathen Idols enshrined among us still?
Does not the world worship them, and persecute those who refuse to kneel?
Do not many timid souls sacrifice to them; and other bolder spirits rebel
and, with rage at their hearts, bend down their stubborn knees at their
altars? See! I began by siding with Mrs. Grundy and the world, and at the
next turn of the see-saw have lighted down on Ethel's side, and am
disposed to think that the very best part of her conduct has been those
escapades which--which right-minded persons most justly condemn. At
least, that a young beauty should torture a man with alternate liking and
indifference; allure, dismiss, and call him back out of banishment;
practise arts to please upon him, and ignore them when rebuked for her
coquetry--these are surely occurrences so common in young women's history
as to call for no special censure; and if on these charges Miss Newcome
is guilty, is she, of all her sex, alone in her criminality?

So Ethel and her duenna went away upon their tour of visits to mansions
so splendid, and among hosts and guests so polite, that the present
modest historian does not dare to follow them. Suffice it to say that
Duke This and Earl That were, according to their hospitable custom,
entertaining a brilliant circle of friends at their respective castles,
all whose names the Morning Post gave; and among them those of the
Dowager Countess of Kew and Miss Newcome.

During her absence, Thomas Newcome grimly awaited the result of his
application to Barnes. That Baronet showed his uncle a letter, or rather
a postscript, from Lady Kew, which probably had been dictated by Barnes
himself, in which the Dowager said she was greatly touched by Colonel
Newcome's noble offer; that though she owned she had very different views
for her granddaughter, Miss Newcome's choice of course lay with herself.
Meanwhile, Lady K. and Ethel were engaged in a round of visits to the
country, and there would be plenty of time to resume this subject when
they came to London for the season. And, lest dear Ethel's feelings
should be needlessly agitated by a discussion of the subject, and the
Colonel should take a fancy to write to her privately, Lady Kew gave
orders that all letters from London should be despatched under cover to
her ladyship, and carefully examined the contents of the packet before
Ethel received her share of the correspondence.

To write to her personally on the subject of the marriage, Thomas Newcome
had determined was not a proper course for him to pursue. "They consider
themselves," says he, "above us, forsooth, in their rank of life (oh,
mercy! what pigmies we are! and don't angels weep at the brief authority
in which we dress ourselves up!) and of course the approaches on our side
must be made in regular form, and the parents of the young people must
act for them. Clive is too honourable a man to wish to conduct the affair
in any other way. He might try the influence of his beaux yeux, and run
off to Gretna with a girl who had nothing; but the young lady being
wealthy, and his relation, sir, we must be on the point of honour; and
all the Kews in Christendom shan't have more pride than we in this
matter."

All this time we are keeping Mr. Clive purposely in the background. His
face is so woebegone that we do not care to bring it forward in the
family picture. His case is so common that surely its lugubrious symptoms
need not be described at length. He works away fiercely at his pictures,
and in spite of himself improves in his art. He sent a "Combat of
Cavalry," and a picture of "Sir Brian the Templar carrying off Rebecca,"
to the British Institution this year; both of which pieces were praised
in other journals besides the Pall Mall Gazette. He did not care for the
newspaper praises. He was rather surprised when a dealer purchased his
"Sir Brian the Templar." He came and went from our house a melancholy
swain. He was thankful for Laura's kindness and pity. J. J.'s studio was
his principal resort; and I dare say, as he set up his own easel there,
and worked by his friend's side, he bemoaned his lot to his sympathising
friend.

Sir Barnes Newcome's family was absent from London during the winter. His
mother, and his brothers and sisters, his wife and his two children, were
gone to Newcome for Christmas. Some six weeks after seeing him, Ethel
wrote her uncle a kind, merry letter. They had been performing private
theatricals at the country-house where she and Lady Kew were staying.
"Captain Crackthorpe made an admirable Jeremy Diddler in 'Raising the
Wind.' Lord Farintosh broke down lamentably as Fusbos in 'Bombastes
Furioso.'" Miss Ethel had distinguished herself in both of these
facetious little comedies. "I should like Clive to paint me as Miss
Plainways," she wrote. "I wore a powdered front, painted my face all over
wrinkles, imitated old Lady Griffin as well as I could, and looked sixty
at least."

Thomas Newcome wrote an answer to his fair niece's pleasant letter;
"Clive," he said, "would be happy to bargain to paint her, and nobody
else but her, all the days of his life; and," the Colonel was sure,
"would admire her at sixty as much as he did now, when she was forty
years younger." But, determined on maintaining his appointed line of
conduct respecting Miss Newcome, he carried his letter to Sir Barnes, and
desired him to forward it to his sister. Sir Barnes took the note, and
promised to despatch it. The communications between him and his uncle had
been very brief and cold, since the telling of these little fibs
concerning old Lady Kew's visits to London, which the Baronet dismissed
from his mind as soon as they were spoken, and which the good Colonel
never could forgive. Barnes asked his uncle to dinner once or twice, but
the Colonel was engaged. How was Barnes to know the reason of the elder's
refusal? A London man, a banker, and a Member of Parliament, has a
thousand things to think of; and no time to wonder that friends refuse
his invitations to dinner. Barnes continued to grin and smile most
affectionately when he met the Colonel; to press his hand, to
congratulate him on the last accounts from India, unconscious of the
scorn and distrust with which his senior mentally regarded him. "Old boy
is doubtful about the young cub's love-affair," the Baronet may have
thought. "We'll ease his old mind on that point some time hence." No
doubt Barnes thought he was conducting the business very smartly and
diplomatically.

I heard myself news at this period from the gallant Crackthorpe, which,
being interested in my young friend's happiness, filled me with some
dismay. "Our friend the painter and glazier has been hankering about our
barracks at Knightsbridge" (the noble Life Guards Green had now pitched
their tents in that suburb), "and pumping me about la belle cousin. I
don't like to break it to him--I don't really, now. But it's all up with
his chance, I think. Those private theatricals at Fallowfield have done
Farintosh's business. He used to rave about the Newcomes to me, as we
were riding home from hunting. He gave Bob Henchman the lie, who told a
story which Bob got from his man, who had it from Miss Newcome's
lady's-maid, about--about some journey to Brighton, which the cousins
took." Here Mr. Crackthorpe grinned most facetiously. "Farintosh swore
he'd knock Henchman down; and vows he will be the death of--will murder
our friend Clive when he comes to town. As for Henchman, he was in a
desperate way. He lives on the Marquis, you know, and Farintosh's anger
or his marriage will be the loss of free quarters, and ever so many good
dinners a year to him." I did not deem it necessary to impart
Crackthorpe's story to Clive, or explain to him the reason why Lord
Farintosh scowled most fiercely upon the young painter, and passed him
without any other sign of recognition one day as Clive and I were walking
together in Pall Mall. If my lord wanted a quarrel, young Clive was not a
man to balk him; and would have been a very fierce customer to deal with,
in his actual state of mind.

A pauper child in London at seven years old knows how to go to market, to
fetch the beer, to pawn father's coat, to choose the largest fried fish
or the nicest ham-bone, to nurse Mary Jane of three,--to conduct a
hundred operations of trade or housekeeping, which a little Belgravian
does not perhaps acquire in all the days of her life. Poverty and
necessity force this precociousness on the poor little brat. There are
children who are accomplished shoplifters and liars almost as soon as
they can toddle and speak. I dare say little Princes know the laws of
etiquette as regards themselves, and the respect due to their rank, at a
very early period of their royal existence. Every one of us, according to
his degree, can point to the Princekins of private life who are flattered
and worshipped, and whose little shoes grown men kiss as soon almost as
they walk upon ground.

It is a wonder what human nature will support: and that, considering the
amount of flattery some people are crammed with from their cradles, they
do not grow worse and more selfish than they are. Our poor little pauper
just mentioned is dosed with Daffy's Elixir, and somehow survives
the drug. Princekin or lordkin from his earliest days has nurses,
dependants, governesses, little friends, schoolfellows, schoolmasters,
fellow-collegians, college tutors, stewards and valets, led captains of
his suite, and women innumerable flattering him and doing him honour. The
tradesman's manner, which to you and me is decently respectful, becomes
straightway frantically servile before Princekin. Honest folks at railway
stations whisper to their families, "That's the Marquis of Farintosh,"
and look hard at him as he passes. Landlords cry, "This way, my lord;
this room for your lordship." They say at public schools Princekin is
taught the beauties of equality, and thrashed into some kind of
subordination. Psha! Toad-eaters in pinafores surround Princekin. Do not
respectable people send their children so as to be at the same school
with him; don't they follow him to college, and eat his toads through
life?

And as for women--oh, my dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears
--did you ever see anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as the way
in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable, and pursue him
with their daughters? Who was the British nobleman in old old days who
brought his three daughters to the King of Mercia, that His Majesty might
choose one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty province, and its
king in fact a Princekin. Ever since those extremely ancient and
venerable times the custom exists not only in Mercia, but in all the rest
of the provinces inhabited by the Angles, and before Princekins the
daughters of our nobles are trotted out.

There was no day of his life which our young acquaintance, the Marquis of
Farintosh, could remember on which he had not been flattered; and no
society which did not pay him court. At a private school he could
recollect the master's wife stroking his pretty curls and treating him
furtively to goodies; at college he had the tutor simpering and bowing as
he swaggered over the grass-plat; old men at clubs would make way for him
and fawn on him--not your mere pique-assiettes and penniless parasites,
but most respectable toad-eaters, fathers of honest families, gentlemen
themselves of good station, who respected this young gentleman as one of
the institutions of their country, and the admired wisdom of the nation
that set him to legislate over us. When Lord Farintosh walked the streets
at night, he felt himself like Haroun Alraschid--(that is, he would have
felt so had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate)--a monarch in
disguise affably observing and promenading the city. And let us be sure
there was a Mesrour in his train to knock at the doors for him and run
the errands of this young caliph. Of course he met with scores of men in
life who neither flattered him nor would suffer his airs; but he did not
like the company of such, or for the sake of truth undergo the ordeal of
being laughed at; he preferred toadies, generally speaking. "I like,"
says he, "you know, those fellows who are always saying pleasant things,
you know, and who would run from here to Hammersmith if I asked 'em--much
better than those fellows who are always making fun of me, you know." A
man of his station who likes flatterers need not shut himself up; he can
get plenty of society.

As for women, it was his lordship's opinion that every daughter of Eve
was bent on marrying him. A Scotch marquis, an English earl, of the best
blood in the empire, with a handsome person, and a fortune of fifteen
thousand a year, how could the poor creatures do otherwise than long for
him? He blandly received their caresses; took their coaxing and cajolery
as matters of course; and surveyed the beauties of his time as the Caliph
the moonfaces of his harem. My lord intended to marry certainly. He did
not care for money, nor for rank; he expected consummate beauty and
talent, and some day would fling his handkerchief to the possessor of
these, and place her by his side upon the Farintosh throne.

At this time there were but two or three young ladies in society endowed
with the necessary qualifications, or who found favour in his eyes. His
lordship hesitated in his selection from these beauties. He was not in a
hurry, he was not angry at the notion that Lady Kew (and Miss Newcome
with her) hunted him. What else should they do but pursue an object so
charming? Everybody hunted him. The other young ladies, whom we need not
mention, languished after him still more longingly. He had little notes
from these; presents of purses worked by them, and cigar-cases
embroidered with his coronet. They sang to him in cosy boudoirs--mamma
went out of the room, and sister Ann forgot something in the
drawing-room. They ogled him as they sang. Trembling they gave him a
little foot to mount them, that they might ride on horseback with him.
They tripped along by his side from the Hall to the pretty country church
on Sundays. They warbled hymns: sweetly looking at him the while mamma
whispered confidentially to him, "What an angel Cecilia is!" And so
forth, and so forth--with which chaff our noble bird was by no means to
be caught. When he had made up his great mind, that the time was come and
the woman, he was ready to give a Marchioness of Farintosh to the English
nation.


Miss Newcome has been compared ere this to the statue of "Huntress Diana"
at the Louvre, whose haughty figure and beauty the young lady indeed
somewhat resembled. I was not present when Diana and Diana's grandmother
hunted the noble Scottish stag of whom we have just been writing; nor
care to know how many times Lord Farintosh escaped, and how at last he
was brought to bay and taken by his resolute pursuers. Paris, it appears,
was the scene of his fall and capture. The news was no doubt well known
amongst Lord Farintosh's brother-dandies, among exasperated matrons and
virgins in Mayfair, and in polite society generally, before it came to
simple Tom Newcome and his son. Not a word on the subject had Sir Barnes
mentioned to the Colonel: perhaps not choosing to speak till the
intelligence was authenticated; perhaps not wishing to be the bearer of
tidings so painful.

Though the Colonel may have read in his Pall Mall Gazette a paragraph
which announced an approaching MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE, "between a noble
young marquis and an accomplished and beautiful young lady, daughter and
sister of a Northern baronet," he did not know who were the fashionable
persons about to be made happy, nor, until he received a letter from an
old friend who lived at Paris, was the fact conveyed to him. Here is the
letter preserved by him along with all that he ever received from the
same hand:--

"Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain,

"Paris, 10 Fev.

"So behold you of return, my friend! you quit for ever the sword and
those arid plains where you have passed so many years of your life,
separated from those to whom, at the commencement, you held very nearly.
Did it not seem once as if two hands never could unlock, so closely were
they enlaced together? Ah, mine are old and feeble now; forty years have
passed since the time when you used to say they were young and fair. How
well I remember me of every one of those days, though there is a death
between me and them, and it is as across a grave I review them! Yet
another parting, and tears and regrets are finished. Tenez, I do not
believe them when they say there is no meeting for us afterwards, there
above. To what good to have seen you, friend, if we are to part here, and
in Heaven too? I have not altogether forgotten your language, is it not
so? I remember it because it was yours, and that of my happy days. I
radote like an old woman as I am. M. de Florac has known my history from
the commencement. May I not say that after so many of years I have been
faithful to him and to all my promises? When the end comes with its great
absolution, I shall not be sorry. One supports the combats of life, but
they are long, and one comes from them very wounded; ah, when shall they
be over?

"You return and I salute you with wishes for parting. How much egotism! I
have another project which I please myself to arrange. You know how I am
arrived to love Clive as own my child. I very quick surprised his secret,
the poor boy, when he was here it is twenty months. He looked so like you
as I repeal me of you in the old time! He told me he had no hope of
his beautiful cousin. I have heard of the fine marriage that one makes
her. Paul, my son, has been at the English Ambassade last night and has
made his congratulations to M. de Farintosh. Paul says him handsome,
young, not too spiritual, rich, and haughty, like all, all noble
Montagnards.

"But it is not of M. de Farintosh I write, whose marriage, without doubt,
has been announced to you. I have a little project; very foolish,
perhaps. You know Mr. the Duke of Ivry has left me guardian of his little
daughter Antoinette, whose affreuse mother no one sees more. Antoinette
is pretty and good, and soft, and with an affectionate heart. I love her
already as my infant. I wish to bring her up, and that Clive should marry
her. They say you are returned very rich. What follies are these I write!
In the long evenings of winter, the children escaped it is a long time
from the maternal nest, a silent old man my only company,--I live but of
the past; and play with its souvenirs as the detained caress little
birds, little flowers, in their prisons. I was born for the happiness; my
God! I have learned it in knowing you. In losing you I have lost it. It
is not against the will of Heaven I oppose myself. It is man, who makes
himself so much of this evil and misery, this slavery, these tears, these
crimes, perhaps.

"This marriage of the young Scotch Marquis and the fair Ethel (I love her
in spite of all, and shall see her soon and congratulate her, for, do you
see, I might have stopped this fine marriage, and did my best and more
than my duty for our poor Clive) shall make itself in London next spring,
I hear. You shall assist scarcely at the ceremony; he, poor boy, shall
not care to be there. Bring him to Paris to make the court to my little
Antoinette: bring him to Paris to his good friend,  Comtesse de Florac."

"I read marvels of his works in an English journal, which one sends me."


Clive was not by when this letter reached his father. Clive was in his
painting-room, and lest he should meet his son, and in order to devise
the best means of breaking the news to the lad, Thomas Newcome retreated
out of doors; and from the Oriental he crossed Oxford Street, and from
Oxford Street he stalked over the roomy pavements of Gloucester Place,
and there he bethought him how he had neglected Mrs. Hobson Newcome of
late, and the interesting family of Bryanstone Square. So he went to
leave his card at Maria's door: her daughters, as we have said, are quite
grown girls. If they have been lectured, and learning, and back-boarded,
and practising, and using the globes, and laying in a store of 'ologies,
ever since, what a deal they must know! Colonel Newcome was admitted to
see his nieces, and Consummate Virtue, their parent. Maria was charmed to
see her brother-in-law; she greeted him with reproachful tenderness:
"Why, why," her fine eyes seemed to say, "have you so long neglected us?
Do you think because I am wise, and gifted, and good, and you are, it
must be confessed, a poor creature with no education, I am not also
affable? Come, let the prodigal be welcomed by his virtuous relatives:
come and lunch with us, Colonel!" He sate down accordingly to the family
tiffin.

When the meal was over, the mother, who had matter of importance to
impart to him, besought him to go to the drawing-room, and there poured
out such a eulogy upon her children's qualities as fond mothers know how
to utter. They knew this and they knew that. They were instructed by the
most eminent professors; "that wretched Frenchwoman, whom you may
remember here, Mademoiselle Lenoir," Maria remarked parenthetically,
"turned out, oh, frightfully! She taught the girls the worst accent, it
appears. Her father was not a colonel; he was--oh! never mind! It is a
mercy I got rid of that fiendish woman, and before my precious ones knew
what she was!" And then followed details of the perfections of the two
girls, with occasional side-shots at Lady Anne's family, just as in the
old time. "Why don't you bring your boy, whom I have always loved as a
son, and who avoids me? Why does not Clive know his cousins? They are
very different from others of his kinswomen, who think best of the
heartless world."

"I fear, Maria, there is too much truth in what you say," sighs the
Colonel, drumming on a book on the drawing-room table, and looking down
sees it is a great, large, square, gilt Peerage, open at FARINTOSH,
MARQUIS OF.--Fergus Angus Malcolm Mungo Roy, Marquis of Farintosh, Earl
of Glenlivat, in the peerage of Scotland; also Earl of Rossmont, in that
of the United Kingdom. Son of Angus Fergus Malcolm, Earl of Glenlivat,
and grandson and heir of Malcolm Mungo Angus, first Marquis of Farintosh,
and twenty-fifth Earl, etc. etc.

"You have heard the news regarding Ethel?" remarks Hobson.

"I have just heard," says the poor Colonel.

"I have a letter from Anne this morning," Maria continues. "They are of
course delighted with the match. Lord Farintosh is wealthy, handsome; has
been a little wild, I hear; is not such a husband as I would choose for
my darlings, but poor Brian's family have been educated to love the
world; and Ethel no doubt is flattered by the prospects before her. I
have heard that some one else was a little epris in that quarter. How
does Clive bear the news, my dear Colonel?"

"He has long expected it," says the Colonel, rising: "and I left him very
cheerful at breakfast this morning."

"Send him to see us, the naughty boy!" cries Maria. "We don't change; we
remember old times, to us he will ever be welcome!" And with this
confirmation of Madame de Florac's news, Thomas Newcome walked sadly
homewards.

And now Thomas Newcome had to break the news to his son; who received the
shot in such a way as caused his friends and confidants to admire his
high spirit. He said he had long been expecting some such announcement:
it was many months since Ethel had prepared him for it. Under her
peculiar circumstances he did not see how she could act otherwise than
she had done. And he narrated to the Colonel the substance of the
conversation which the two young people had had together several months
before, in Madame de Florac's garden.

Clive's father did not tell his son of his own bootless negotiation with
Barnes Newcome. There was no need to recall that now; but the Colonel's
wrath against his nephew exploded in conversation with me, who was the
confidant of father and son in this business. Ever since that luckless
day when Barnes thought proper to--to give a wrong address for Lady Kew,
Thomas Newcome's anger had been growing. He smothered it yet for a while,
sent a letter to Lady Anne Newcome, briefly congratulating her on the
choice which he had heard Miss Newcome had made; and in acknowledgment of
Madame de Florac's more sentimental epistle he wrote a reply which has
not been preserved, but in which he bade her rebuke Miss Newcome for not
having answered him when he wrote to her, and not having acquainted her
old uncle with her projected union.

To this message, Ethel wrote back a brief, hurried reply; it said:--

"I saw Madame de Florac last night at her daughter's reception, and she
gave me my dear uncle's messages. Yes, the news is true which you have
heard from Madame de Florac, and in Bryanstone Square. I did not like to
write it to you, because I know one whom I regard as a brother (and a
great, great deal better), and to whom I know it will give pain. He knows
that I have done my duty, and why I have acted as I have done. God bless
him and his dear father!

"What is this about a letter which I never answered? Grandmamma knows
nothing about a letter. Mamma has enclosed to me that which you wrote to
her, but there has been no letter from T. N. to his sincere and
affectionate E. N.

"Rue de Rivoli. Friday."


This was too much, and the cup of Thomas Newcome's wrath overflowed.
Barnes had lied about Ethel's visit to London: Barnes had lied in saying
that he delivered the message with which his uncle charged him: Barnes
had lied about the letter which he had received, and never sent. With
these accusations firmly proven in his mind against his nephew, the
Colonel went down to confront that sinner.

Wherever he should find Barnes, Thomas Newcome was determined to tell him
his mind. Should they meet on the steps of a church, on the flags of
'Change, or in the newspaper-room at Bays's, at evening-paper time, when
men most do congregate, Thomas the Colonel was determined upon exposing
and chastising his father's grandson. With Ethel's letter in his pocket,
he took his way into the City, penetrated into the unsuspecting
back-parlour of Hobson's bank, and was disappointed at first at only
finding his half-brother Hobson there engaged over his newspaper. The
Colonel signified his wish to see Sir Barnes Newcome. "Sir Barnes was not
come in yet. You've heard about the marriage," says Hobson. "Great news
for the Barnes's, ain't it? The head of the house is as proud as a
peacock about it. Said he was going out to Samuels, the diamond
merchants; going to make his sister some uncommon fine present. Jolly to
be uncle to a marquis, ain't it, Colonel? I'll have nothing under a duke
for my girls. I say, I know whose nose is out of joint. But young fellows
get over these things, and Clive won't die this time, I dare say."

While Hobson Newcome made these satiric and facetious remarks, his
half-brother paced up and down the glass parlour, scowling over the panes
into the bank where the busy young clerks sate before their ledgers. At
last he gave an "Ah!" as of satisfaction. Indeed, he had seen Sir Barnes
Newcome enter into the bank.

The Baronet stopped and spoke with a clerk, and presently entered,
followed by that young gentleman into his private parlour. Barnes tried
to grin when he saw his uncle, and held out his hand to greet the
Colonel; but the Colonel put both his behind his back--that which carried
his faithful bamboo cane shook nervously. Barnes was aware that the
Colonel had the news. "I was going to--to write to you this morning,
with--with some intelligence that I am--very--very sorry to give."

"This young gentleman is one of your clerks?" asked Thomas Newcome,
blandly.

"Yes; Mr. Boltby, who has your private account. This is Colonel Newcome,
Mr. Boltby," says Sir Barnes, in some wonder.

"Mr. Boltby, brother Hobson, you heard what Sir Barnes Newcome said just
now respecting certain intelligence which he grieved to give me?"

At this the three other gentlemen respectively wore looks of amazement.

"Allow me to say in your presence, that I don't believe one single word
Sir Barnes Newcome says, when he tells me that he is very sorry for some
intelligence he has to communicate. He lies, Mr. Boltby; he is very glad.
I made up my mind that in whatsoever company I met him, and on the very
first day I found him--hold your tongue, sir; you shall speak afterwards
and tell more lies when I have done--I made up my mind, I say, that on
the very first occasion I would tell Sir Barnes Newcome that he was a
liar and a cheat. He takes charge of letters and keeps them back. Did you
break the seal, sir? There was nothing to steal in my letter to Miss
Newcome. He tells me people are out of town, when he goes to see in the
next street, after leaving my table, and whom I see myself half an hour
before he lies to me about their absence."

"D--n you, go out, and don't stand staring there, you booby!" screams out
Sir Barnes to the clerk. "Stop, Boltby. Colonel Newcome, unless you leave
this room I shall--I shall----"

"You shall call a policeman. Send for the gentleman, and I will tell the
Lord Mayor what I think of Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet. Mr. Boltby, shall
we have the constable in?"

"Sir, you are an old man, and my father's brother, or you know very well
I would----"

"You would what, Sir? Upon my word, Barnes Newcome" (here the Colonel's
two hands and the bamboo cane came from the rear and formed in front),
"but that you are my father's grandson, after a menace like that, I would
take you out and cane you in the presence of your clerks. I repeat, sir,
that I consider you guilty of treachery, falsehood, and knavery. And if I
ever see you at Bays's Club, I will make the same statement to your
acquaintance at the west end of the town. A man of your baseness ought to
be known, sir; and it shall be my business to make men of honour aware of
your character. Mr. Boltby, will you have the kindness to make out my
account? Sir Barnes Newcome, for fear of consequences that I should
deplore, I recommend you to keep a wide berth of me, sir." And the Colonel
twirled his mustachios, and waved his cane in an ominous manner, and
Barnes started back spontaneously out of its dangerous circle.

What Mr. Boltby's sentiments may have been regarding this extraordinary
scene in which his principal cut so sorry a figure;--whether he narrated
the conversation to other gentlemen connected with the establishment of
Hobson Brothers, or prudently kept it to himself, I cannot say, having no
means of pursuing Mr. B.'s subsequent career. He speedily quitted his
desk at Hobson Brothers; and let us presume that Barnes thought Mr. B.
had old all the other clerks of the avuncular quarrel. That conviction
will make us imagine Barnes still more comfortable. Hobson Newcome no
doubt was rejoiced at Barnes's discomfiture; he had been insolent and
domineering beyond measure of late to his vulgar good-natured uncle,
whereas after the above interview with the Colonel he became very humble
and quiet in his demeanour, and for a long, long time never said a rude
word. Nay, I fear Hobson must have carried an account of the transaction
to Mrs. Hobson and the circle in Bryanstone Square; for Sam Newcome, now
entered at Cambridge, called the Baronet "Barnes" quite familiarly; asked
after Clara and Ethel; and requested a small loan of Barnes.

Of course the story did not get wind at Bays's; of course Tom Eaves did
not know all about it, and say that Sir Barnes had been beaten
black-and-blue. Having been treated very ill by the committee in a
complaint which he made about the Club cookery, Sir Barnes Newcome never
came to Bays's, and at the end of the year took off his name from the
lists of the Club.

Sir Barnes, though a little taken aback in the morning, and not ready
with an impromptu reply to the Colonel and his cane, could not allow the
occurrence to pass without a protest; and indited a letter which Thomas
Newcome kept along with some others previously quoted by the compiler of
the present memoirs.

It is as follows:--


Belgrave St., Feb. 15, 18--.

"Colonel Newcome, C..B., private.

"SIR--The incredible insolence and violence of your behaviour to-day
(inspired by whatever causes or mistakes of your own), cannot be passed
without some comment, on my part. I laid before a friend of your own
profession, a statement of the words which you applied to me in the
presence of my partner and one of my clerks this morning; and my adviser
is of opinion, that considering the relationship unhappily subsisting
between us, I can take no notice of insults for which you knew when you
uttered them, I could not call you to account."

"There is some truth in that," said the Colonel. "He couldn't fight, you
know; but then he was such a liar I could not help speaking my mind."

"I gathered from the brutal language which you thought fit to employ
towards a disarmed man, the ground of one of your monstrous accusations
against me, that I deceived you in stating that my relative, Lady Kew,
was in the country, when in fact she was at her house in London.

"To this absurd charge I at once plead guilty. The venerable lady in
question was passing through London, where she desired to be free from
intrusion. At her ladyship's wish I stated that she was out of town; and
would, under the same circumstances, unhesitatingly make the same
statement. Your slight acquaintance with the person in question did not
warrant that you should force yourself on her privacy, as you would
doubtless know were you more familiar with the customs of the society in
which she moves.

"I declare upon my honour as a gentleman, that I gave her the message
which I promised to deliver from you, and also that I transmitted a
letter with which you entrusted me; and repel with scorn and indignation
the charges which you were pleased to bring against me, as I treat with
contempt the language and the threats which you thought fit to employ.

"Our books show the amount of xl. xs. xd. to your credit, which you will
be good enough to withdraw at your earliest convenience; as of course all
intercourse must cease henceforth between you and--Yours, etc.
                                                 B. Newcome Newcome."


"I think, sir, he doesn't make out a bad case," Mr. Pendennis remarked to
the Colonel, who showed him this majestic letter.

"It would be a good case if I believed a single word of it, Arthur,"
replied my friend, placidly twirling the old grey moustache. "If you were
to say so-and-so, and say that I had brought false charges against you, I
should cry mea culpa and apologise with all my heart. But as I have a
perfect conviction that every word this fellow says is a lie, what is the
use of arguing any more about the matter? I would not believe him if he
brought twenty as witnesses, and if he lied till he was black in the
other liars' face. Give me the walnuts. I wonder who Sir Barnes's
military friend was."

Barnes's military friend was our gallant acquaintance General Sir George
Tufto, K.C.B., who a short while afterwards talked over the quarrel with
the Colonel, and manfully told him that (in Sir George's opinion) he was
wrong. "The little beggar behaved very well, I thought, in the first
business. You bullied him so, and in the front of his regiment, too, that
it was almost past bearing; and when he deplored, with tears in his eyes,
almost, the little humbug! that his relationship prevented him calling
you out, ecod, I believed him! It was in the second affair that poor
little Barnes showed he was a cocktail."

"What second affair?" asked Thomas Newcome.

"Don't you know? He! he! this is famous!" cries Sir George. "Why, sir,
two days after your business, he comes to me with another letter and a
face as long as my mare's, by Jove. And that letter, Newcome, was from
your young 'un. Stop, here it is!" and from his padded bosom General Sir
George Tufto drew a pocket-book, and from the pocket-book a copy of a
letter, inscribed, "Clive Newcome, Esq., to Sir B. N. Newcome." "There's
no mistake about your fellow, Colonel. No,----him!" and the man of war
fired a volley of oaths as a salute to Clive.

And the Colonel, on horseback, riding by the other cavalry officer's side
read as follows:--


"George Street, Hanover Square, February 16.

"SIR--Colonel Newcome this morning showed me a letter bearing your
signature, in which you state--1. That Colonel Newcome has uttered
calumnious and insolent charges against you. 2. That Colonel Newcome so
spoke, knowing that you could take no notice of his charges of falsehood
and treachery, on account of the relationship subsisting between you.

"Your statements would evidently imply that Colonel Newcome has been
guilty of ungentlemanlike conduct, and of cowardice towards you.

"As there can be no reason why we should not meet in any manner that you
desire, I here beg leave to state, on my own part, that I fully coincide
with Colonel Newcome in his opinion that you have been guilty of
falsehood and treachery, and that the charge of cowardice which you dare
to make against a gentleman of his tried honour and courage, is another
wilful and cowardly falsehood on your part.

"And I hope you will refer the bearer of this note, my friend, Mr. George
Warrington, of the Upper Temple, to the military gentleman whom you
consulted in respect to the just charges of Colonel Newcome. Waiting a
prompt reply, believe me, sir--Your obedient servant,   Clive Newcome.

"Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., M. P., etc."


"What a blunderhead I am!" cries the Colonel, with delight on his
countenance, spite of his professed repentance. "It never once entered my
head that the youngster would take any part in the affair. I showed him
his cousin's letter casually, just to amuse him, I think, for he has been
deuced low lately, about--about a young man's scrape that he has got
into. And he must have gone off and despatched his challenge straightway.
I recollect he appeared uncommonly brisk at breakfast the next morning.
And so you say, General, the Baronet did not like the poulet?"

"By no means; never saw a fellow show such a confounded white feather. At
first I congratulated him, thinking your boy's offer must please him, as
it would have pleased any fellow in our time to have a shot. Dammy! but I
was mistaken in my man. He entered into some confounded long-winded story
about a marriage you wanted to make with that infernal pretty sister of
his, who is going to marry young Farintosh, and how you were in a rage
because the scheme fell to the ground, and how a family duel might
occasion unpleasantries to Miss Newcome; though I showed him how this
could be most easily avoided, and that the lady's name need never appear
in the transaction. 'Confound it, Sir Barnes,' says I, 'I recollect this
boy, when he was a youngster throwing a glass of wine in your face! We'll
put it upon that, and say it's an old feud between you.' He turned quite
pale, and he said your fellow had apologised for the glass of wine."

"Yes," said the Colonel, sadly, "my boy apologised for the glass of wine.
It is curious how we have disliked that Barnes ever since we set eyes on
him."

"Well, Newcome," Sir George resumed, as his mettled charger suddenly
jumped and curvetted, displaying the padded warrior's cavalry-seat to
perfection. "Quiet, old lady!--easy, my dear! Well, when I found the
little beggar turning tail in this way I said to him, 'Dash me, sir, if
you don't want me, why the dash do you send for me, dash me? Yesterday
you talked as if you would bite the Colonel's head off, and to-day, when
his son offers you every accommodation, by dash, sir, you're afraid to
meet him. It's my belief you had better send for a policeman. A 22 is
your man, Sir Barnes Newcome.' And with that I turned on my heel and left
him. And the fellow went off to Newcome that very night."

"A poor devil can't command courage, General," said the Colonel, quite
peaceably, "any more than he can make himself six feet high."

"Then why the dash did the beggar send for me?" called out General Sir
George Tufto, in a loud and resolute voice; and presently the two
officers parted company.

When the Colonel reached home, Mr. Warrington and Mr. Pendennis happened
to be on a visit to Clive, and all three were in the young fellow's
painting-room. We knew our lad was unhappy, and did our little best to
amuse and console him. The Colonel came in. It was in the dark February
days: we lighted the gas in the studio. Clive had made a sketch from some
favourite verses of mine and George's: those charming lines of Scott's:--

   "He turned his charger as he spake,
      Beside the river shore;
    He gave his bridle-rein a shake,
      With adieu for evermore,
                      My dear!
    Adieu for evermore!"

Thomas Newcome held up a finger at Warrington, and he came up to the
picture and looked at it; and George and I trolled out:

   "Adieu for evermore,
               My dear!
    Adieu for evermore!"

From the picture the brave old Colonel turned to the painter, regarding
his son with a look of beautiful inexpressible affection. And he laid his
hand on his son's shoulder, and smiled, and stroked Clive's yellow
moustache.

"And--and did Barnes send no answer to that letter you wrote him?" he
said, slowly.

Clive broke out into a laugh that was almost a sob. He took both his
father's hands. "My dear, dear old father!" says he, "what a--what an--
old--trump you are!" My eyes were so dim I could hardly see the two men
as they embraced.




CHAPTER LIV

Has a Tragical Ending


Clive presently answered the question which his father put to him in the
last chapter, by producing from the ledge of his easel a crumpled paper,
full of Cavendish now, but on which was written Sir Barnes Newcome's
reply to his cousin's polite invitation. Sir Barnes Newcome wrote, "that
he thought a reference to a friend was quite unnecessary, in the most
disagreeable and painful dispute in which Mr. Clive desired to interfere
as a principal; that the reasons which prevented Sir Barnes from taking
notice of Colonel Newcome's shameful and ungentlemanlike conduct applied
equally, as Mr. Clive Newcome very well knew, to himself; that if further
insult was offered, or outrage attempted, Sir Barnes should resort to the
police for protection; that he was about to quit London, and certainly
should not delay his departure on account of Mr. Clive Newcome's
monstrous proceedings; and that he desired to take leave of an odious
subject, as of an individual whom he had striven to treat with kindness,
but from whom, from youth upwards, Sir Barnes Newcome had received
nothing but insolence, enmity, and ill-will."

"He is an ill man to offend," remarked Mr. Pendennis. "I don't think he
has ever forgiven that claret, Clive."

"Pooh! the feud dates from long before that," said Clive; "Barnes wanted
to lick me when I was a boy, and I declined: in fact, I think he had
rather the worst of it; but then I operated freely on his shins, and that
wasn't fair in war, you know."

"Heaven forgive me," cries the Colonel; "I have always felt the fellow
was my enemy: and my mind is relieved now war is declared. It has been a
kind of hypocrisy with me to shake his hand and eat his dinner. When I
trusted him it was against my better instinct; and I have been struggling
against it these ten years, thinking it was a wicked prejudice, and ought
to be overcome."

"Why should we overcome such instincts?" asks Mr. Warrington. "Why
shouldn't we hate what is hateful in people and scorn what is mean? From
what friend Pen has described to me, and from some other accounts which
have come to my ears, your respectable nephew is about as loathsome a
little villain as crawls on the earth. Good seems to be out of his
sphere, and away from his contemplation. He ill-treats every one he comes
near; or, if, gentle to them, it is that they may serve some base
purpose. Since my attention has been drawn to the creature, I have been
contemplating his ways with wonder and curiosity. How much superior
Nature's rogues are, Pen, to the villains you novelists put into your
books! This man goes about his life business with a natural propensity to
darkness and evil--as a bug crawls, and stings, and stinks. I don't
suppose the fellow feels any more remorse than a cat that runs away with
a mutton-chop. I recognise the Evil Spirit, sir, and do honour to
Ahrimanes, in taking off my hat to this young man. He seduced a poor girl
in his father's country town--is it not natural? Deserted her and her
children--don't you recognise the beast? married for rank--could you
expect otherwise from him? invites my Lord Highgate to his house in
consideration of his balance at the bank;--sir, unless somebody's heel
shall crunch him on the way, there is no height to which this aspiring
vermin mayn't crawl. I look to see Sir Barnes Newcome prosper more and
more. I make no doubt he will die an immense capitalist, and an exalted
Peer of this realm. He will have a marble monument, and a pathetic
funeral sermon. There is a divine in your family, Clive, that shall
preach it. I will weep respectful tears over the grave of Baron Newcome,
Viscount Newcome, Earl Newcome; and the children whom he has deserted,
and who, in the course of time, will be sent by a grateful nation to New
South Wales, will proudly say to their brother convicts,--'Yes, the Earl
was our honoured father.'"

"I fear he is no better than he should be, Mr. Warrington," says the
Colonel, shaking his head. "I never heard the story about the deserted
children."

"How should you, O you guileless man!" cries Warrington.

"I am not in the ways of scandal-hearing myself much: but this tale I had
from Sir Barnes Newcome's own country. Mr. Batters of the Newcome
Independent is my esteemed client. I write leading articles for his
newspaper, and when he was in town last spring he favoured me with the
anecdote; and proposed to amuse the Member for Newcome by publishing it
in his journal. This kind of writing is not much in my line: and, out of
respect to you and your young one, I believe--I strove with Mr. Batters,
and--entreated him and prevailed with him, not to publish the story. That
is how I came to know it."

I sate with the Colonel in the evening, when he commented on Warrington's
story and Sir Barnes's adventures in his simple way. He said his brother
Hobson had been with him the morning after the dispute, reiterating
Barnes's defence of his conduct: and professing on his own part nothing
but goodwill towards his brother. "Between ourselves the young Baronet
carries matters with rather a high hand sometimes, and I am not sorry
that you gave him a little dressing. But you were too hard upon him,
Colonel--really you were." "Had I known that child-deserting story I
would have given it harder still, sir," says Thomas Newcome, twirling his
mustachios: "but my brother had nothing to do with the quarrel, and very
rightly did not wish to engage in it. He has an eye to business, has
Master Hobson too," my friend continued: "for he brought me a cheque for
my private account, which of course, he said, could not remain after my
quarrel with Barnes. But the Indian bank account, which is pretty large,
he supposed need not be taken away? and indeed why should it? So that,
which is little business of mine, remains where it was; and brother
Hobson and I remain perfectly good friends.

"I think Clive is much better since he has been quite put out of his
suspense. He speaks with a great deal more kindness and good-nature about
the marriage than I am disposed to feel regarding it: and depend on it
has too high a spirit to show that he is beaten. But I know he is a good
deal cut up, though he says nothing; and he agreed willingly enough to
take a little journey, Arthur, and be out of the way when this business
takes place. We shall go to Paris: I don't know where else besides. These
misfortunes do good in one way, hard as they are to bear: they unite
people who love each other. It seems to me my boy has been nearer to me,
and likes his old father better than he has done of late." And very soon
after this talk our friends departed.

The Crimean minister having been recalled, and Lady Anne Newcome's house
in park Lane being vacant, her ladyship and her family came to occupy the
mansion for this eventful season, and sate once more in the dismal
dining-room under the picture of the defunct Sir Brian. A little of the
splendour and hospitality of old days was revived in the house:
entertainments were given by Lady Anne: and amongst other festivities a
fine ball took place, when pretty Miss Alice, Miss Ethel's younger
sister, made her first appearance in the world, to which she was
afterwards to be presented by the Marchioness of Farintosh. All the
little sisters were charmed, no doubt, that the beautiful Ethel was to
become a beautiful Marchioness, who, as they came up to womanhood one
after another, would introduce them severally to amiable young earls,
dukes, and marquises, when they would be married off and wear coronets
and diamonds of their own right. At Lady Anne's ball I saw my
acquaintance, young Mumford, who was going to Oxford next October, and
about to leave Rugby, where he was at the head of the school, looking
very dismal as Miss Alice whirled round the room dancing in Viscount
Bustington's arms;--Miss Alice, with whose mamma he used to take tea at
Rugby, and for whose pretty sake Mumford did Alfred Newcome's verses for
him and let him off his thrashings. Poor Mumford! he dismally went about
under the protection of young Alfred, a fourth-form boy--not one soul did
he know in that rattling London ballroom; his young face--as white as the
large white tie, donned two hours since at the Tavistock with such
nervousness and beating of heart!

With these lads, and decorated with a tie equally splendid, moved about
young Sam Newcome, who was shirking from his sister and his mamma. Mrs.
Hobson had actually assumed clean gloves for this festive occasion. Sam
stared at all the "Nobs:" and insisted upon being introduced to
"Farintosh," and congratulated his lordship with much graceful ease:
and then pushed about the rooms perseveringly hanging on to Alfred's
jacket. "I say, I wish you wouldn't call me Al'," I heard Mr. Alfred say
to his cousin. Seeing my face, Mr. Samuel ran up to claim acquaintance.
He was good enough to say he thought Farintosh seemed devilish haughty.
Even my wife could not help saying, that Mr. Sam was an odious little
creature.

So it was for young Alfred, and his brothers and sisters, who would want
help and protection in the world, that Ethel was about to give up her
independence, her inclination perhaps, and to bestow her life on yonder
young nobleman. Looking at her as a girl devoting herself to her family,
her sacrifice gave her a melancholy interest in our eyes. My wife and I
watched her, grave and beautiful, moving through the rooms, receiving and
returning a hundred greetings, bending to compliments, talking with this
friend and that, with my lord's lordly relations, with himself, to whom
she listened deferentially; faintly smiling as he spoke now and again;
doing the honours of her mother's house. Lady after lady of his
lordship's clan and kinsfolk complimented the girl and her pleased
mother. Old Lady Kew was radiant (if one can call radiance the glances of
those darkling old eyes). She sate in a little room apart, and thither
people went to pay their court to her. Unwillingly I came in on this
levee with my wife on my arm: Lady Kew scowled at me over her crutch, but
without a sign of recognition. "What an awful countenance that old woman
has!" Laura whispered as we retreated out of that gloomy presence.

And Doubt (as its wont is) whispered too a question in my ear, "Is it for
her brothers and sisters only that Miss Ethel is sacrificing herself? Is
it not for the coronet, and the triumph, and the fine houses?" "When two
motives may actuate a friend, we surely may try and believe in the good
one," says Laura. "But, but I am glad Clive does not marry her--poor
fellow--he would not have been happy with her. She belongs to this great
world: she has spent all her life in it: Clive would have entered into it
very likely in her train; and you know, sir, it is not good that we
should be our husbands' superiors," adds Mrs. Laura, with a curtsey.

She presently pronounced that the air was very hot in the rooms, and in
fact wanted to go home to see her child. As we passed out, we saw Sir
Barnes Newcome, eagerly smiling, smirking, bowing, and in the fondest
conversation with his sister and Lord Farintosh. By Sir Barnes presently
brushed Lieutenant-General Sir George Tufto, K.C.B., who, when he saw on
whose foot he had trodden, grunted out, "H'm, beg your pardon!" and
turning his back on Barnes, forthwith began complimenting Ethel and the
Marquis. "Served with your lordship's father in Spain; glad to make your
lordship's acquaintance," says Sir George. Ethel bows to us as we pass
out of the rooms, and we hear no more of Sir George's conversation.

In the cloak-room sits Lady Clara Newcome, with a gentleman bending over
her, just in such an attitude as the bride is in Hogarth's "Marriage a la
Mode" as the counsellor talks to her. Lady Clara starts up as a crowd of
blushes come into her wan face, and tries to smile, and rises to greet my
wife, and says something about its being so dreadfully hot in the upper
rooms, and so very tedious waiting for the carriages. The gentleman
advances towards me with a military stride, and says, "How do you do, Mr.
Pendennis? How's our young friend, the painter?" I answer Lord Highgate
civilly enough, whereas my wife will scarce speak a word in reply to Lady
Clara Newcome.

Lady Clara asked us to her ball, which my wife declined altogether to
attend. Sir Barnes published a series of quite splendid entertainments on
the happy occasion of his sister's betrothal. We read the names of all
the clan Farintosh in the Morning Post, as attending these banquets. Mr.
and Mrs. Hobson Newcome, in Bryanstone Square, gave also signs of
rejoicing at their niece's marriage. They had a grand banquet followed by
a tea, to which latter amusement the present biographer was invited. Lady
Anne, and Lady Kew and her granddaughter, and the Baronet and his wife,
and my Lord Highgate and Sir George Tufto attended the dinner; but it was
rather a damp entertainment. "Farintosh," whispers Sam Newcome, "sent
word just before dinner that he had a sore throat, and Barnes was as
sulky as possible. Sir George wouldn't speak to him, and the Dowager
wouldn't speak to Lord Highgate. Scarcely anything was drank," concluded
Mr. Sam, with a slight hiccup. "I say, Pendennis, how sold Clive will
be!" And the amiable youth went off to commune with others of his
parents' guests.

Thus the Newcomes entertained the Farintoshes, and the Farintoshes
entertained the Newcomes. And the Dowager Countess of Kew went from
assembly to assembly every evening, and to jewellers and upholsterers and
dressmakers every morning; and Lord Farintosh's town-house was splendidly
re-decorated in the newest fashion; and he seemed to grow more and more
attentive as the happy day approached, and he gave away all his cigars to
his brother Rob; and his sisters were delighted with Ethel, and
constantly in her company, and his mother was pleased with her, and
thought a girl of her spirit and resolution would make a good wife for
her son: and select crowds flocked to see the service of plate at
Handyman's, and the diamonds which were being set for the lady; and Smee,
R.A., painted her portrait, as a souvenir for mamma when Miss Newcome
should be Miss Newcome no more; and Lady Kew made a will leaving all she
could leave to her beloved granddaughter, Ethel, daughter of the late Sir
Brian Newcome, Baronet; and Lord Kew wrote an affectionate letter to his
cousin, congratulating her, and wishing her happiness with all his heart;
and I was glancing over The Times newspaper at breakfast one morning;
when I laid it down with an exclamation which caused my wife to start
with surprise.

"What is it?" cries Laura, and I read as follows:--

"'Death of the Countess Dowager of Kew.--We regret to have to announce
the awfully sudden death of this venerable lady. Her ladyship, who had
been at several parties of the nobility the night before last, seemingly
in perfect health, was seized with a fit as she was waiting for her
carriage, and about to quit Lady Pallgrave's assembly. Immediate medical
assistance was procured, and her ladyship was carried to her own house,
in Queen Street, Mayfair. But she never rallied, or, we believe, spoke,
after the first fatal seizure, and sank at eleven o'clock last evening,
The deceased, Louisa Joanna Gaunt, widow of Frederic, first Earl of Kew,
was daughter of Charles, Earl of Gaunt, and sister of the late and aunt
of the present Marquis of Steyne. The present Earl of Kew is her
ladyship's grandson, his lordship's father, Lord Walham, having died
before his own father, the first earl. Many noble families are placed in
mourning by this sad event. Society has to deplore the death of a lady
who has been its ornament for more than half a century, and who was
known, we may say, throughout Europe for her remarkable sense,
extraordinary memory, and brilliant wit.'"




CHAPTER LV

Barnes's Skeleton Closet


The demise of Lady Kew of course put a stop for a while to the
matrimonial projects so interesting to the house of Newcome. Hymen blew
his torch out, put it into the cupboard for use on a future day, and
exchanged his garish saffron-coloured robe for decent temporary mourning.
Charles Honeyman improved the occasion at Lady Whittlesea's Chapel hard
by; and "Death at the Festival" was one of his most thrilling sermons;
reprinted at the request of some of the congregation. There were those of
his flock, especially a pair whose quarter of the fold was the
organ-loft, who were always charmed with the piping of that melodious
pastor.

Shall we too, while the coffin yet rests on the earth's outer surface,
enter the chapel whither these void remains of our dear sister departed
are borne by the smug undertaker's gentlemen, and pronounce an elegy over
that bedizened box of corruption? When the young are stricken down, and
their roses nipped in an hour by the destroying blight, even the stranger
can sympathise, who counts the scant years on the gravestone, or reads
the notice in the newspaper corner. The contrast forces itself on you. A
fair young creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing smiles,
levying homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to charm, and
gay with the natural enjoyment of her conquests--who in his walk through
the world has not looked on many such a one; and, at the notion of her
sudden call away from beauty, triumph, pleasure; her helpless outcries
during her short pain; her vain pleas for a little respite; her sentence,
and its execution; has not felt a shock of pity? When the days of a long
life come to its close, and a white head sinks to rise no more, we bow
our own with respect as the mourning train passes, and salute the
heraldry and devices of yonder pomp, as symbols of age, wisdom, deserved
respect and merited honour; long experience of suffering and action. The
wealth he may have achieved is the harvest which he sowed; the titles on
his hearse, fruits of the field he bravely and laboriously wrought in.
But to live to fourscore years, and be found dancing among the idle
virgins! to have had near a century of allotted time, and then be called
away from the giddy notes of a Mayfair fiddle! To have to yield your
roses too, and then drop out of the bony clutch of your old fingers a
wreath that came from a Parisian bandbox! One fancies around some graves
unseen troops of mourners waiting; many and many a poor pensioner
trooping to the place; many weeping charities; many kind actions; many
dear friends beloved and deplored, rising up at the toll of that bell to
follow the honoured hearse; dead parents waiting above, and calling,
"Come, daughter!" lost children, heaven's fondlings, hovering round like
cherubim, and whispering, "Welcome, mother!" Here is one who reposes
after a long feast where no love has been; after girlhood without kindly
maternal nurture; marriage without affection; matronhood without its
precious griefs and joys; after fourscore years of lonely vanity. Let us
take off our hats to that procession too as it passes, admiring the
different lots awarded to the children of men, and the various usages to
which Heaven puts its creatures.

Leave we yonder velvet-palled box, spangled with fantastic heraldry, and
containing within the aged slough and envelope of a soul gone to render
its account. Look rather at the living audience standing round the
shell;--the deep grief on Barnes Newcome's fine countenance; the sadness
depicted in the face of the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh; the
sympathy of her ladyship's medical man (who came in the third mourning
carriage); better than these, the awe, and reverence, and emotion,
exhibited in the kind face of one of the witnesses of this scene, as he
listens to those words which the priest rehearses over our dead. What
magnificent words! what a burning faith, what a glorious triumph; what a
heroic life, death, hope, they record! They are read over all of us
alike; as the sun shines on just and unjust. We have all of us heard
them; and I have fancied, for my part, that they fell and smote like the
sods on the coffin.

The ceremony over, the undertaker's gentlemen clamber on the roof of the
vacant hearse, into which palls, tressels, trays of feathers, are
inserted, and the horses break out into a trot, and the empty carriages,
expressing the deep grief of the deceased lady's friends, depart
homeward. It is remarked that Lord Kew hardly has any communication with
his cousin, Sir Barnes Newcome. His lordship jumps into a cab, and goes
to the railroad. Issuing from the cemetery, the Marquis of Farintosh
hastily orders that thing to be taken off his hat, and returns to town in
his brougham, smoking a cigar. Sir Barnes Newcome rides in the brougham
beside Lord Farintosh as far as Oxford Street, where he gets a cab, and
goes to the City. For business is business, and must be attended to,
though grief be ever so severe.

A very short time previous to her demise, Mr. Rood (that was Mr. Rood--
that other little gentleman in black, who shared the third mourning coach
along with her ladyship's medical man) had executed a will by which
almost all the Countess's property was devised to her granddaughter,
Ethel Newcome. Lady Kew's decease of course delayed the marriage projects
for a while. The young heiress returned to her mother's house in Park
Lane. I dare say the deep mourning habiliments in which the domestics of
that establishment appeared, were purchased out of the funds left in his
hands, which Ethel's banker and brother had at her disposal.

Sir Barnes Newcome, who was one of the trustees of his sister's property,
grumbled no doubt because his grandmother had bequeathed to him but a
paltry recompense of five hundred pounds for his pains and trouble of
trusteeship; but his manner to Ethel was extremely bland and respectful:
an heiress now, and to be a marchioness in a few months, Sir Barnes
treated her with a very different regard to that which he was accustomed
to show to other members of his family. For while this worthy Baronet
would contradict his mother at every word she uttered, and take no pains
to disguise his opinion that Lady Anne's intellect was of the very
poorest order, he would listen deferentially to Ethel's smallest
observations, exert himself to amuse her under her grief, which he chose
to take for granted was very severe, visit her constantly, and show the
most charming solicitude for her general comfort and welfare.

During this time my wife received constant notes from Ethel Newcome, and
the intimacy between the two ladies much increased. Laura was so unlike
the women of Ethel's circle, the young lady was pleased to say, that to
be with her was Ethel's greatest comfort. Miss Newcome was now her own
mistress, had her carriage, and would drive day after day to our cottage
at Richmond. The frigid society of Lord Farintosh's sisters, the
conversation of his mother, did not amuse Ethel, and she escaped from
both with her usual impatience of control. She was at home every day
dutifully to receive my lord's visits; but though she did not open her
mind to Laura as freely regarding the young gentleman as she did when the
character and disposition of her future mother and sisters-in-law was the
subject of their talk, I could see, from the grave look of commiseration
which my wife's face bore after her young friend's visits, that Mrs.
Pendennis augured rather ill of the future happiness of this betrothed
pair. Once, at Miss Newcome's special request, I took my wife to see her
in Park Lane, where the Marquis of Farintosh found us. His lordship and I
had already a half-acquaintance, which was not, however, improved after
my regular presentation to him by Miss Newcome: he scowled at me with a
countenance indicative of anything but welcome, and did not seem in the
least more pleased when Ethel entreated her friend Laura not to take her
bonnet, not to think of going away so soon. She came to see us the very
next day, stayed much longer with us than usual, and returned to town
quite late in the evening, in spite of the entreaties of the inhospitable
Laura, who would have had her leave us long before. "I am sure," says
clear-sighted Mrs. Laura, "she is come out of bravado, and after we went
away yesterday that there were words between her and Lord Farintosh on
our account."

"Confound the young man," breaks out Mr. Pendennis in a fume; "what does
he mean by his insolent airs?"

"He may think we are partisans de l'autre," says Mrs. Pendennis, with a
smile first, and a sigh afterwards, as she said "poor Clive!"

"Do you ever talk about Clive?" asks the husband.

"Never. Once, twice, perhaps, in the most natural manner in the world we
mentioned where he is; but nothing further passes. The subject is a
sealed one between us. She often looks at his drawings in my album (Clive
had drawn our baby there and its mother in a great variety of attitudes),
and gazes at his sketch of his dear old father: but of him she never says
a word."

"So it is best," says Mr. Pendennis.

"Yes--best," echoes Laura, with a sigh.

"You think, Laura," continues the husband, "you think she----"

"She what?" What did Mr. Pendennis mean? Laura his wife certainly
understood him, though upon my conscience the sentence went no further--
for she answered at once:

"Yes--I think she certainly did, poor boy! But that, of course, is over
now: and Ethel, though she cannot help being a worldly woman, has such
firmness and resolution of character, that if she has once determined to
conquer any inclination of that sort I am sure she will master it, and
make Lord Farintosh a very good wife."

"Since the Colonel's quarrel with Sir Barnes," cries Mr. Pendennis,
adverting by a natural transition from Ethel to her amiable brother, "our
banking friend does not invite us any more: Lady Clara sends you no
cards. I have a great mind to withdraw my account."

Laura, who understands nothing about accounts, did not perceive the fine
irony of this remark: but her face straightway put on the severe
expression which it chose to assume whenever Sir Barnes's family was
mentioned, and she said, "My dear, I am very glad indeed that Lady Clara
sends us no more of her invitations. You know very well why I disliked
them."

"Why?"

"I hear baby crying," says Laura. Oh, Laura, Laura! how could you tell
your husband such a fib?--and she quits the room without deigning to give
any answer to that "Why?"

Let us pay a brief visit to Newcome in the north of England, and there we
may get some answer to the question of which Mr. Pendennis had just in
vain asked a reply from his wife. My design does not include a
description of that great and flourishing town of Newcome, and of the
manufactures which caused its prosperity; but only admits of the
introduction of those Newcomites who are concerned in the affairs of the
family which has given its respectable name to these volumes.

Thus in previous pages we have said nothing about the Mayor and
Corporation of Newcome the magnificent bankers and manufacturers who had
their places of business in the town, and their splendid villas outside
its smoky precincts; people who would give their thousand guineas for a
picture or a statue, and write you off a cheque for ten times the amount
any day; people who, if there was a talk of a statue to the Queen or the
Duke, would come down to the Town All and subscribe their one, two, three
undred apiece (especially if in the neighbouring city of SLOWCOME they
were putting up a statue to the Duke or the Queen)--not of such men have
I spoken, the magnates of the place; but of the humble Sarah Mason in
Jubilee Row--of the Reverend Dr. Bulders the Vicar, Mr. Vidler the
apothecary, Mr. Puff the baker--of Tom Potts, the jolly reporter of the
Newcome Independent, and ------ Batters, Esq., the proprietor of that
journal--persons with whom our friends have had already, or will be found
presently to have, some connexion. And it is from these that we shall
arrive at some particulars regarding the Newcome family, which will show
us that they have a skeleton or two in their closets, as well as their
neighbours.

Now, how will you have the story? Worthy mammas of families--if you do
not like to have your daughters told that bad husbands will make bad
wives; that marriages begun in indifference make homes unhappy; that men
whom girls are brought to swear to love and honour are sometimes false,
selfish, and cruel; and that women forget the oaths which they have been
made to swear--if you will not hear of this, ladies, close the book, and
send for some other. Banish the newspaper out of your houses, and shut
your eyes to the truth, the awful truth, of life and sin. Is the world
made of Jennies and Jessamies; and passion the play of schoolboys and
schoolgirls, scribbling valentines and interchanging lollipops? Is life
all over when Jenny and Jessamy are married; and are there no subsequent
trials, griefs, wars, bitter heart-pangs, dreadful temptations, defeats,
remorses, sufferings to bear, and dangers to overcome? As you and I,
friend, kneel with our children round about us, prostrate before the
Father of us all, and asking mercy for miserable sinners, are the young
ones to suppose the words are mere form, and don't apply to us?--to some
outcasts in the free seats probably, or those naughty boys playing in the
churchyard? Are they not to know that we err too, and pray with all our
hearts to be rescued from temptation? If such a knowledge is wrong for
them, send them to church apart. Go you and worship in private; or if not
too proud, kneel humbly in the midst of them, owning your wrong, and
praying Heaven to be merciful to you a sinner.

When Barnes Newcome became the reigning Prince of the Newcome family, and
after the first agonies of grief for his father's death had subsided, he
made strong attempts to conciliate the principal persons in the
neighbourhood, and to render himself popular in the borough. He gave
handsome entertainments to the townsfolk and to the county gentry; he
tried even to bring those two warring classes together. He endeavoured to
be civil to the Newcome Independent, the Opposition paper, as well as to
the Newcome Sentinel that true old Uncompromising Blue. He asked the
Dissenting clergyman to dinner, and the Low Church clergyman, as well as
the orthodox Doctor Bulders and his curates. He gave a lecture at the
Newcome Athenaeum, which everybody said was very amusing, and which
Sentinel and Independent both agreed in praising. Of course he subscribed
to that statue which the Newcomites were raising; to the philanthropic
missions which Reverend Low Church gentlemen were engaged in; to the (for
the young Newcomite manufacturers are as sporting as any gents in the
North), to the hospital, the People's Library, the restoration of the
rood-screen and the great painted window in Newcome Old Church (Rev. J.
Bulders), and he had to pay in fine a most awful price for his privilege
of sitting in Parliament as representative of his native place--as he
called it in his speeches "the cradle of his forefathers, the home of his
race," etc., though Barnes was in fact born at Clapham.

Lady Clara could not in the least help this young statesman in his
designs upon Newcome and the Newcomites. After she came into Barnes's
hands, a dreadful weight fell upon her. She would smile and simper, and
talk kindly and gaily enough at first, during Sir Brian's life; and among
women, when Barnes was not present. But as soon as he joined the company,
it was remarked that his wife became silent, and looked eagerly
towards him whenever he ventured to speak. She blundered, her eyes filled
with tears; the little wit she had left her in her husband's presence: he
grew angry, and tried to hide his anger with a sneer, or broke out with
gibe and an oath, when he lost patience, and Clara, whimpering, would
leave the room. Everybody at Newcome knew that Barnes bullied his wife.

People had worse charges against Barnes than wife-bullying. Do you
suppose that little interruption which occurred at Barnes's marriage was
not known in Newcome? His victim had been a Newcome girl, the man to whom
she was betrothed was in a Newcome factory. When Barnes was a young man,
and in his occasional visits to Newcome, lived along with those dashing
young blades Sam Jollyman (Jollyman Brothers and Bowcher), Bob Homer,
Cross Country Bill, Al Rackner (for whom his father had to pay eighteen
thousand pounds after the Leger, the year Toggery won it) and that wild
lot, all sorts of stories were told of them, and of Barnes especially.
Most of them were settled, and steady business men by this time. Al, it
was known had become very serious, besides making his fortune in cotton.
Bob Homer managed the Bank; and as for S. Jollyman, Mrs. S. J. took
uncommon good care that he didn't break out of bounds any more; why, he
was not even allowed to play a game at billiards; or to dine out without
her----I could go on giving you interesting particulars of a hundred
members of the Newcome aristocracy, were not our attention especially
directed to one respectable family.

All Barnes's endeavours at popularity were vain, partly from his own
fault, and partly from the nature of mankind, and of the Newcome folks
especially, whom no single person could possibly conciliate. Thus,
suppose he gave the advertisements to the Independent; the old Blue paper
the Sentinel was very angry: suppose he asked Mr. Hunch, the Dissenting
minister, to bless the tablecloth after dinner, as he had begged Dr.
Bulders to utter a benediction on the first course, Hunch and Bulders
were both angry. He subscribed to the races--what heathenism! to the
missionaries--what sanctimonious humbug! And the worst was that Barnes
being young at that time, and not able to keep his tongue in order, could
not help saying not to but of such and such a man, that he was an
infernal ass, or a confounded old idiot, and so forth--peevish phrases,
which undid in a moment the work of a dozen dinners, countless
compliments, and months of grinning good-humour.

Now he is wiser. He is very proud of being Newcome of Newcome, and quite
believes that the place is his hereditary principality. But still, he
says, his father was a fool for ever representing the borough. "Dammy,
sir," cries Sir Barnes, "never sit for a place that lies at your
park-gates, and above all never try to conciliate 'em. Curse 'em! Hate
'em well, sir! Take a line, and flog the fellows on the other side. Since
I have sate in Parliament for another place, I have saved myself I don't
know how much a year. I never go to High Church or Low; don't give a
shillin' to the confounded races, or the infernal souptickets, or to the
miserable missionaries; and at last live in quiet."

So, in spite of all his subscriptions, and his coaxing of the various
orders of Newcomites, Sir Barnes Newcome was not popular among them; and
while he had enemies on all sides, had sturdy friends not even on his
own. Scarce a man but felt Barnes was laughing at him; Bulders in his
pulpit, Holder who seconded him in his election, the Newcome society; and
the ladies, even more than the men, were uneasy under his ominous
familiarity, and recovered their good-humour when he left them. People
felt as if it was a truce only, and not an alliance with him, and always
speculated on the possibility of war: when he turned his back on them in
the market, men felt relieved, and, as they passed his gate, looked with
no friendly glances over his park-wall.

What happened within was perfectly familiar to many persons. Our friend
was insolent to all his servants; and of course very well served, but
very much disliked, in consequence. The butler was familiar with Taplow--
the housekeeper had a friend at Newcome; Mrs Taplow, in fact, of the
King's Arms--one of the grooms at Newcome Park kept company with Mrs.
Bulder's maid: the incomings and outgoings, the quarrels and tears, the
company from London, and all the doings of the folks at Newcome Park were
thus known to the neighbourhood round about. The apothecary brought an
awful story back from Newcome. He had been called to Lady Clara in strong
hysterical fits. He found her ladyship with a bruise on her face. When
Sir Barnes approached her (he would not allow the medical man to see her
except in his presence) she screamed and bade him not come near her.
These things did Mr. Vidler weakly impart to Mrs. Vidler: these, under
solemn vows of secrecy, Mrs. Vidler told to one or two friends. Sir
Barnes and Lady Clara were seen shopping together very graciously in
Newcome a short time afterwards; persons who dined at the Park said the
Baronet and his wife seemed on very good terms; but--but that story of
the bruised cheek remained in the minds of certain people, and lay by at
compound interest as such stories will.

Now, say people quarrel and make it up; or don't make it up, but wear a
smirking face to society, and call each other "my dear" and "my love," and
smooth over their countenances before John, who enters with the coals as
they are barking and biting, or who announces the dinner as they are
tearing each other's eyes out? Suppose a woman is ever so miserable, and
yet smiles, and doesn't show her grief? "Quite right," say her prudent
friends, and her husband's relations above all. "My dear, you have too
much propriety to exhibit your grief before the world, or above all,
before the darling children." So to lie is your duty, to lie to your
friends, to yourself if you can, to your children.

Does this discipline of hypocrisy improve any mortal woman? Say she
learns to smile after a blow, do you suppose in this matter alone she
will be a hypocrite? Poor Lady Clara! I fancy a better lot for you than
that to which fate handed you over. I fancy there need have been no
deceit in your fond simple little heart, could it but have been given
into other keeping. But you were consigned to a master, whose scorn and
cruelty terrified you; under whose sardonic glances your scared eyes were
afraid to look up, and before whose gloomy coldness you dared not be
happy. Suppose a little plant, very frail and delicate from the first,
but that might have bloomed sweetly and borne fair flowers, had it
received warm shelter and kindly nurture; suppose a young creature taken
out of her home, and given over to a hard master whose caresses are as
insulting as his neglect; consigned to cruel usage; to weary loneliness;
to bitter, bitter recollections of the past; suppose her schooled into
hypocrisy by tyranny--and then, quick, let us hire an advocate to roar
out to a British jury the wrongs of her injured husband, to paint the
agonies of his bleeding heart (if Mr. Advocate gets plaintiff's brief in
time, and before defendant's attorney has retained him), and to show
Society injured through him. Let us console that martyr, I say, with
thumping damages; and as for the woman--the guilty wretch!--let us lead
her out and stone her.




CHAPTER LVI

Rosa quo locorum sera moratur


Clive Newcome bore his defeat with such a courage and resolution as those
who knew the young fellow's character were sure he would display. It was
whilst he bad a little lingering hope still that the poor lad was in the
worst condition; as a gambler is restless and unhappy whilst his last few
guineas remain with him, and he is venturing them against the
overpowering chances of the bank. His last piece, however, gone, our
friend rises up from that unlucky table beaten at the contest but not
broken in spirit. He goes back into the world again and withdraws from
that dangerous excitement; sometimes when he is alone or wakeful, tossing
in his bed at nights, he may recall the fatal game, and think how he
might have won it--think what a fool he was ever to have played it at
all--but these cogitations Clive kept for himself. He was magnanimous
enough not even to blame Ethel much, and to take her side against his
father, who it must be confessed now exhibited a violent hostility
against that young lady and her belongings. Slow to anger and utterly
beyond deceit himself, when Thomas Newcome was once roused, or at length
believed that he was cheated woe to the offender! From that day forth,
Thomas believed no good of him. Every thought or action of his enemy's
life seemed treason to the worthy Colonel. If Barnes gave a dinner-party,
his uncle was ready to fancy that the banker wanted to poison somebody;
if he made a little speech in the House of Commons (Barnes did make
little speeches in the House of Commons), the Colonel was sure some
infernal conspiracy lay under the villain's words. The whole of that
branch of the Newcomes fared little better at their kinsman's hands--they
were all deceitful, sordid, heartless, worldly;--Ethel herself no better
now than the people who had bred her up. People hate, as they love,
unreasonably. Whether is it the more mortifying to us, to feel that we
are disliked or liked undeservedly?

Clive was not easy until he had the sea between him and his misfortune:
and now Thomas Newcome had the chance of making that tour with his son,
which in early days had been such a favourite project with the good man.
They travelled Rhineland and Switzerland together--they crossed into
Italy--went from Milan to Venice (where Clive saluted the greatest
painting in the world--the glorious 'Assumption' of Titian)--they went to
Trieste and over the beautiful Styrian Alps to Vienna--they beheld
Danube, and the plain where the Turk and Sobieski fought. They travelled
at a prodigious fast pace. They did not speak much to one another. They
were a pattern pair of English travellers: I dare say many persons whom
they met smiled to observe them; and shrugged their shoulders at the
aspect of ces Anglais. They did not know the care in the young
traveller's mind; and the deep tenderness and solicitude of the elder.
Clive wrote to say it was a very pleasant tour, but I think I should not
have liked to join it. Let us dismiss it in this single sentence. Other
gentlemen have taken the same journey, and with sorrow perhaps as their
silent fellow-traveller. How you remember the places afterwards, and the
thoughts which pursued you! If in after days, when your grief is dead and
buried, you revisit the scenes in which it was your companion, how its
ghost rises and shows itself again! Suppose this part of Mr. Clive's life
were to be described at length in several chapters, and not in a single
brief sentence, what dreary pages they would be! In two or three months
our friends saw a number of men, cities, mountains, rivers, and what not.
It was yet early autumn when they were back in France again, and
September found them at Brussels, where James Binnie, Esq., and his
family were established in comfortable quarters, and where we may be sure
Clive and his father were very welcome.

Dragged abroad at first sorely against his will, James Binnie had found
the Continental life pretty much to his liking. He had passed a winter at
Pau, a summer at Vichy, where the waters had done him good. His ladies
had made several charming foreign acquaintances. Mrs. Mackenzie had quite
a list of counts and marchionesses among her friends. The excellent
Captain Goby, wandered about the country with them. Was it to Rosey, was
it to her mother, the Captain was most attached? Rosey received him as a
godpapa; Mrs. Mackenzie as a wicked, odious, good-for-nothing, dangerous,
delightful creature. Is it humiliating, is it consolatory, to remark,
with what small wit some of our friends are amused? The jovial sallies of
Goby appeared exquisite to Rosey's mother, and to the girl probably;
though that young Bahawder of a Clive Newcome chose to wear a grave face
(confound his insolent airs!) at the very best of the Goby jokes.

In Goby's train was his fervent admirer and inseparable young friend,
Clarence Hoby. Captain Hoby and Captain Goby travelled the world
together, visited Hombourg and Baden, Cheltenham and Leamington, Paris
and Brussels, in company, belonged to the same club in London--the centre
of all pleasure, fashion, and joy, for the young officer and the older
campaigner. The jokes at the Flag, the dinners at the Flag, the committee
of the Flag, were the theme of their constant conversation. Goby fifty
years old, unattached, and with dyed moustaches, was the affable comrade
of the youngest member of his club: when absent, a friend wrote him the
last riddle from the smoking-room; when present, his knowledge of horses,
of cookery, wines, and cigars, and military history, rendered him a most
acceptable companion. He knew the history and achievements of every
regiment in the army; of every general and commanding officer. He was
known to have been 'out' more than once himself, and had made up a
hundred quarrels. He was certainly not a man of an ascetic life or a
profound intellectual culture: but though poor he was known to be most
honourable; though more than middle-aged he was cheerful, busy, and
kindly; and though the youngsters called him Old Goby, he bore his years
very gaily and handsomely, and I dare say numbers of ladies besides Mrs.
Mackenzie thought him delightful. Goby's talk and rattle perhaps somewhat
bored James Binnie, but Thomas Newcome found the Captain excellent
company; and Goby did justice to the good qualities of the Colonel.

Clive's father liked Brussels very well. He and his son occupied very
handsome quarters, near the spacious apartments in the Park which James
Binnie's family inhabited. Waterloo was not far off, to which the Indian
officer paid several visits with Captain Goby for a guide; and many of
Marlborough's battlefields were near, in which Goby certainly took but a
minor interest; but on the other hand Clive beheld these with the
greatest pleasure, and painted more than one dashing piece, in which
Churchill and Eugene, Cutts and Cadogan, were the heroes; whose flowing
periwigs, huge boots, and thundering Flemish chargers were, he thought,
more novel and picturesque than the Duke's surtout, and the French
Grenadiers' hairy caps, which so many English and French artists have
portrayed.

Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis were invited by our kind Colonel to pass a month--
six months if they chose--at Brussels, and were most splendidly
entertained by our friends in that city. A suite of handsome rooms was
set apart for us. My study communicated with Clive's atelier. Many an
hour did we pass, and many a ride and walk did we take together. I
observed that Clive never mentioned Miss Newcome's name, and Laura and I
agreed that it was as well not to recall it. Only once, when we read the
death of Lady Glenlivat, Lord Farintosh's mother, in the newspaper, I
remember to have said, "I suppose that marriage will be put off again."

"Qu'est ce que cela me fait?" says Mr. Clive gloomily, over his picture--
a cheerful piece representing Count Egmont going to execution; in which I
have the honour to figure as a halberdier, Captain Hoby as the Count, and
Captain Goby as the Duke of Alva, looking out of window.

Mrs. Mackenzie was in a state of great happiness and glory during this
winter. She had a carriage, and worked that vehicle most indefatigably.
She knew a great deal of good company at Brussels. She had an evening for
receiving. She herself went to countless evening-parties, and had the joy
of being invited to a couple of court balls, at which I am bound to say
her daughter and herself both looked very handsome. The Colonel brushed
up his old uniform and attended these entertainments. M. Newcome fils, as
I should judge, was not the worst-looking man in the room; and, as these
young people waltzed together (in which accomplishment Clive was very
much more skilful than Captain Goby) I dare say many people thought he
and Rosey made a pretty couple.

Most persons, my wife included, difficult as that lady is to please, were
pleased with the pretty little Rosey. She sang charmingly now, and looked
so while singing. If her mother would but have omitted that chorus, which
she cackled perseveringly behind her daughter's pretty back: about
Rosey's angelic temper; about the compliments Signor Polonini paid her;
about Sir Horace Dash, our minister, insisting upon her singing "Batti
Batti" over again, and the Archduke clapping his hands and saying, "Oh,
yes!" about Count Vanderslaapen's attentions to her, etc. etc.; but for
these constant remarks of Mrs. Mack's, I am sure no one would have been
better pleased with Miss Rosey's singing and behaviour than myself. As
for Captain Hoby, it was easy to see how he was affected towards Miss
Rosalind's music and person.

And indeed few things could be pleasanter than to watch the behaviour of
this pretty little maid with her Uncle James and his old chum the
Colonel. The latter was soon as fond of her as James Binnie himself,
whose face used to lighten with pleasure whenever it turned towards hers.
She seemed to divine his wants, as she would trip across the room to
fulfil them. She skipped into the carriage and covered his feet with a
shawl. James was lazy and chilly now, when he took his drive. She sate
opposite to him and smiled on him; and, if he dozed, quick, another
handkerchief was round his neck. I do not know whether she understood his
jokes, but she saluted them always with a sweet kind smile. How she
kissed him, and how delighted she was if he bought her a bouquet for her
ball that night! One day, upon occasion of one of these balls, James and
Thomas, those two old boys, absolutely came into Mrs. Mackenzie's
drawing-room with a bouquet apiece for Miss Rosey; and there was a fine
laughing.

"Oh, you little Susanna!" says James, after taking his usual payment;
"now go and pay t'other elder." Rosey did not quite understand at first,
being, you see, more ready to laugh at jokes than to comprehend them: but
when she did, I promise you she looked uncommonly pretty as she advanced
to Colonel Newcome and put that pretty fresh cheek of hers up to his
grizzled moustache.

"I protest I don't know which of you blushes the most," chuckles James
Binnie--and the truth is, the old man and the young girl had both hung
out those signals of amiable distress.

On this day, and as Miss Rosey was to be overpowered by flowers, who
should come presently to dinner but Captain Hoby, with another bouquet?
on which Uncle James said Rosey should go to the ball like an American
Indian with her scalps at her belt.

"Scalps!" cries Mrs. Mackenzie.

"Scalps! Oh law, uncle!" exclaims Miss Rosey. "What can you mean by
anything so horrid?"

Goby recalls to Mrs. Mack, Hook-ee-ma-goosh the Indian chief, whom she
must have seen when the Hundred and Fiftieth were at Quebec, and who had
his lodge full of them; and who used to lie about the barracks so drunk,
and who used to beat his poor little European wife: and presently Mr.
Clive Newcome joins this company, when the chirping, tittering, joking,
laughing, cease somehow.

Has Clive brought a bouquet too? No. He has never thought about a
bouquet. He is dressed in black, with long hair, a long moustache, and
melancholy imperial. He looks very handsome, but as glum as an
undertaker. And James Binnie says, "Egad, Tom, they used to call you the
knight of the woeful countenance, and Clive has just inherited the
paternal mug." Then James calls out in a cheery voice, "Dinner, dinner!"
and trots off with Mrs. Pendennis under his arm; Rosey nestles up against
the Colonel; Goby and Mrs. Mack walk away arm-in-arm very contentedly;
and I don't know with which of her three nosegays pretty Rosey appears at
the ball.

Our stay with our friends at Brussels could not be prolonged beyond a
month, for at the end of that period we were under an engagement to other
friends in England, who were good enough to desire the presence of Mrs.
Pendennis and her suite of baby, nurse, and husband. So we presently took
leave of Rosey and the Campaigner, of the two stout elders, and our
melancholy young Clive, who bore us company to Antwerp, and who won
Laura's heart by the neat way in which he took her child on board ship.
Poor fellow! how sad he looked as he bowed to us and took off his hat!
His eyes did not seem to be looking at us, though they and his thoughts
were turned another way. He moved off immediately, with his head down,
puffing his eternal cigar, and lost in his own meditations; our going or
our staying was of very little importance to the lugubrious youth.

"I think it was a great pity they came to Brussels," says Laura, as we
sate on the deck, while her unconscious infant was cheerful, and while
the water of the lazy Scheldt as yet was smooth.

"Who? The Colonel and Clive? They are very handsomely lodged. They have a
good maitre d'hotel. Their dinners, I am sure, are excellent; and your
child, madam, is as healthy as it possibly can be."

"Blessed darling! Yes!" (Blessed darling crows, moos, jumps in his
nurse's arms, and holds out a little mottled hand for a biscuit of Savoy,
which mamma supplies.) "I can't help thinking, Arthur, that Rosey would
have been much happier as Mrs. Hoby than she will be as Mrs. Newcome."

"Who thinks of her being Mrs. Newcome?"

"Her mother, her uncle, and Clive's father, Since the Colonel has been so
rich, I think Mrs. Mackenzie sees a great deal of merit in Clive. Rosey
will do anything her mother bids her. If Clive can be brought to the same
obedience, Uncle James and the Colonel will be delighted. Uncle James has
set his heart on this marriage. (He and his sister agree upon this
point.) He told me, last night, that he would sing 'Nunc dimittis,' could
he but see the two children happy; and that he should lie easier in
purgatory if that could be brought about."

"And what did you say, Laura?"

"I laughed, and told Uncle James I was of the Hoby faction. He is very
good-natured, frank, honest, and gentlemanlike, Mr. Hoby. But Uncle James
said he thought Mr. Hoby was so--well, so stupid--that his Rosey would be
thrown away upon the poor Captain. So I did not tell Uncle James that,
before Clive's arrival, Rosey had found Captain Hoby far from stupid. He
used to sing duets with her; he used to ride with her before Clive came.
Last winter, when they were at Pau, I feel certain Miss Rosey thought
Captain Hoby very pleasant indeed. She thinks she was attached to Clive
formerly, and now she admires him, and is dreadfully afraid of him. He is
taller and handsomer, and richer and cleverer than Captain Hoby,
certainly."

"I should think so, indeed," breaks out Mr. Pendennis. "Why, my dear,
Clive is as fine a fellow as one can see on a summer's day. It does one
good to look at him. What a frank pair of bright blue eyes he has, or
used to have, till this mishap overclouded them! What a pleasant laugh he
has! What a well-built, agile figure it is--what pluck, and spirit, and
honour, there is about my young chap! I don't say he is a genius of the
highest order, but he is the staunchest, the bravest, the cheeriest, the
most truth-telling, the kindest heart. Compare him and Hoby! Why, Clive
is an eagle, and yonder little creature a mousing owl!"

"I like to hear you speak so," cries Mrs. Laura, very tenderly. "People
say that you are always sneering, Arthur; but I know my husband better.
We know papa better, don't we, baby?" (Here my wife kisses the infant
Pendennis with great effusion, who has come up dancing on his nurse's
arms.) "But," says she, coming back and snuggling by her husband's side
again--"But suppose your favourite Clive is an eagle, Arthur, don't you
think he had better have an eagle for a mate? If he were to marry little
Rosey, I dare say he would be very good to her; but I think neither he
nor she would be very happy. My dear, she does not care for his pursuits;
she does not understand him when he talks. The two captains, and Rosey
and I, and the campaigner, as you call her, laugh and talk, and prattle,
and have the merriest little jokes with one another, and we all are as
quiet as mice when you and Clive come in."

"What, am I an eagle, too? I have no aquiline pretensions at all, Mrs.
Pendennis."

"No. Well, we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of papa, are we,
darling?" this young woman now calls out to the other member of her
family; who, if you will calculate, has just had time to be walked twice
up and down the deck of the steamer, whilst Laura has been making her
speech about eagles. And soon the mother, child, and attendant descend
into the lower cabins: and then dinner is announced: and Captain Jackson
treats us to champagne from his end of the table and yet a short while,
and we are at sea, and conversation becomes impossible: and morning sees
us under the grey London sky, and amid the million of masts in the
Thames.




CHAPTER LVII

Rosebury and Newcome


The friends to whom we were engaged in England were Florac and his wife,
Madame la Princesse de Moncontour, who were determined to spend the
Christmas holidays at the Princess's country seat. It was for the first
time since their reconciliation, that the Prince and Princess dispensed
their hospitalities at the latter's chateau. It is situated, as the
reader has already been informed, at some five miles from the town of
Newcome; away from the chimneys and smoky atmosphere of that place, in a
sweet country of rural woodlands; over which quiet villages, grey church
spires, and ancient gabled farmhouses are scattered: still wearing the
peaceful aspect which belonged to them when Newcome was as yet but an
antiquated country town, before mills were erected on its river-banks,
and dyes and cinders blackened its stream. Twenty years since Newcome
Park was the only great house in that district; now scores of fine villas
have sprung up in the suburb lying between the town and park. Newcome New
Town, as everybody knows, has grown round the park-gates, and the New
Town Hotel (where the railway station is) is a splendid structure in the
Tudor style, more ancient in appearance than the park itself; surrounded
by little antique villas with spiked gables, stacks of crooked chimneys,
and plate-glass windows looking upon trim lawns; with glistening hedges
of evergreens, spotless gravel walks, and Elizabethan gig-houses. Under
the great railway viaduct of the New Town, goes the old tranquil winding
London highroad, once busy with a score of gay coaches, and ground by
innumerable wheels: but at a few miles from the New Town Station the road
has become so mouldy that the grass actually grows on it; and Rosebury,
Madame de Moncontour's house, stands at one end of a village-green, which
is even more quiet now than it was a hundred years ago.

When first Madame de Florac bought the place, it scarcely ranked amongst
the country-houses; and she, the sister of manufacturers at Newcome and
Manchester, did not of course visit the county families. A homely little
body, married to a Frenchman from whom she was separated, may or may not
have done a great deal of good in her village, have had pretty gardens,
and won prizes at the Newcome flower and fruit shows; but, of course, she
was nobody in such an aristocratic county as we know ------shire is. She
had her friends and relatives from Newcome. Many of them were Quakers--
many were retail shopkeepers. She even frequented the little branch
Ebenezer, on Rosebury Green; and it was only by her charities and
kindness at Christmas-time, that the Rev. Dr. Potter, the rector at
Rosebury, knew her. The old clergy, you see, live with the county
families. Good little Madame de Florac was pitied and patronised by the
Doctor, treated with no little superciliousness by Mrs. Potter, and the
young ladies, who only kept the first society. Even when her rich brother
died, and she got her share of all that money Mrs. Potter said poor
Madame de Florac did well in not trying to move out of her natural sphere
(Mrs. P. was the daughter of a bankrupt hatter in London, and had herself
been governess in a noble family, out of which she married Mr. P., who
was private tutor). Madame de Florac did well, she said, not to endeavour
to leave her natural sphere, and that The County never would receive her.
Tom Potter, the rector's son, with whom I had the good fortune to be a
fellow-student at Saint Boniface College, Oxbridge--a rattling, forward,
and it must be owned, vulgar youth--asked me whether Florac was not a
billiard-marker by profession? and was even so kind as to caution his
sisters not to speak of billiards before the lady of Rosebury. Tom was
surprised to learn that Monsieur Paul de Florac was a gentleman of
lineage incomparably better than that of any, except two or three
families in England (including your own, my dear and respected reader, of
course, if you hold to your pedigree). But the truth is, heraldically
speaking, that union with the Higgs of Manchester was the first
misalliance which the Florac family had made for long long years. Not
that I would wish for a moment to insinuate that any nobleman is equal to
an English nobleman; nay, that an English snob, with a coat-of-arms
bought yesterday, or stolen out of Edmonton, or a pedigree purchased from
a peerage-maker, has not a right to look down upon any of your paltry
foreign nobility.

One day the carriage-and-four came in state from Newcome Park, with the
well-known chaste liveries of the Newcomes, and drove up Rosebury Green,
towards the parsonage gate, when Mrs. and the Miss Potters happened to be
standing, cheapening fish from a donkey-man, with whom they were in the
habit of dealing. The ladies were in their pokiest old head-gear and most
dingy gowns, when they perceived the carriage approaching; and
considering, of course, that the visit of the Park people was intended
for them, dashed into the rectory to change their clothes, leaving
Rowkins, the costermonger, in the very midst of the negotiation about the
three mackerel. Mamma got that new bonnet out of the bandbox; Lizzy and
Liddy skipped up to their bedroom, and brought out those dresses which
they wore at the dejeuner at the Newcome Athenaeum, when Lord Leveret
came down to lecture; into which they no sooner had hooked their lovely
shoulders, than they reflected with terror that mamma had been altering
one of papa's flannel waistcoats and had left it in the drawing-room,
when they were called out by the song of Rowkins, and the appearance of
his donkey's ears over the green gate of the rectory. To think of the
Park people coming, and the drawing-room in that dreadful state!

But when they came downstairs the Park people were not in the room--the
woollen garment was still on the table (how they plunged it into the
chiffonier!)--and the only visitor was Rowkins, the costermonger,
grinning at the open French windows, with the three mackerel, and crying,
"Make it sixpence, miss--don't say fippens, maam, to a pore fellow that
has a wife and family." So that the young ladies had to cry--"Impudence!"
"Get away, you vulgar insolent creature!--Go round, sir, to the back
door!" "How dare you?" and the like; fearing lest Lady Anne Newcome, and
Young Ethel, and Barnes should enter in the midst of this ignoble
controversy.

They never came at all--those Park people. How very odd! They passed the
rectory gate; they drove on to Madame de Florac's lodge. They went in.
They stayed for half an hour; the horses driving round and round the
gravel road before the house; and Mrs. Potter and the girls speedily
going to the upper chambers, and looking out of the room where the maids
slept, saw Lady Anne, Ethel, and Barnes walking with Madame de Florac,
going into the conservatories, issuing thence with MacWhirter, the
gardener, bearing huge bunches of grapes and large fasces of flowers;
they saw Barnes talking in the most respectful manner to Madame de
Florac: and when they went downstairs and had their work before them--
Liddy her gilt music-book, Lizzy her embroidered altar-cloth, mamma her
scarlet cloak for one of the old women--they had the agony of seeing the
barouche over the railings whisk by, with the Park people inside, and
Barnes driving the four horses.

It was on that day when Barnes had determined to take up Madame de
Florac; when he was bent upon reconciling her to her husband. In spite of
all Mrs. Potter's predictions, the county families did come and visit the
manufacturer's daughter; and when Madame de Florac became Madame la
Princesse de Moncontour, when it was announced that she was coming to
stay at Rosebury for Christmas, I leave you to imagine whether the
circumstance was or was not mentioned in the Newcome Sentinel and the
Newcome Independent; and whether Rev. G. Potter, D.D., and Mrs. Potter
did or did not call on the Prince and Princess. I leave you to imagine
whether the lady did or did not inspect all the alterations which
Vineer's people from Newcome were making at Rosebury House--the chaste
yellow satin and gold of the drawing-room--the carved oak for the
dining-room--the chintz for the bedrooms--the Princess's apartment--the
Prince's apartment--the guests' apartments--the smoking-room, gracious
goodness!--the stables (these were under Tom Potter's superintendence),
"and I'm finished," says he one day, "if here doesn't come a
billiard-table!"

The house was most comfortably and snugly appointed from top to bottom;
and thus it will be seen that Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis were likely to be in
very good quarters for Christmas of 184-.

Tom Potter was so kind as to call on me two days after our arrival; and
to greet me in the Princess's pew at church on the previous day. Before
desiring to be introduced to my wife, he requested me to present him to
my friend the Prince. He called him your Highness. His Highness, who had
behaved with exemplary gravity, save once when he shrieked an "ah!" as
Miss Liddy led off the children in the organ-loft in a hymn, and the
whole pack went woefully out of tune, complimented Monsieur Tom on the
sermon of monsieur his father. Tom walked with us to Rosebury lodge-gate.
"Will you not come in, and make a party of billiard with me?" says His
Highness. "Ah Pardon! I forgot, you do not play the billiard the Sunday!"
"Any other day, Prince, I shall be delighted," says Tom; and squeezed His
Highness's hand tenderly at parting. "Your comrade of college was he?"
asks Florac. "My dear, what men are these comrades of college! What men
are you English! My word of honour, there are some of them here--if I
were to say to them wax my boots, they would take them and wax them!
Didst thou see how the Reverend eyed us during the sermon? He regarded us
over his book, my word of honour!"

Madame de Florac said simply, she wished the Prince would go and hear Mr.
Jacob at the Ebenezer. Mr. Potter was not a good preacher, certainly.

"Savez-vows qu'elle est furieusement belle, la fille du Reverend?"
whispered His Highness to me. "I have made eyes at her during the sermon.
They will be of pretty neighbours these meess!" and Paul looked
unutterably roguish and victorious as he spoke. To my wife, I am bound to
say, Monsieur de Moncontour showed a courtesy, a respect and kindness,
that could not be exceeded. He admired her. He paid her compliments
innumerable, and gave me I am sure sincere congratulations at possessing
such a treasure. I do not think he doubted about his power of conquering
her, or any other of the daughters of women. But I was the friend of his
misfortunes--his guest; and he spared me.

I have seen nothing more amusing, odd, and pleasant than Florac at this
time of his prosperity. We arrived, as this veracious chronicle has
already asserted, on a Saturday evening. We were conducted to our most
comfortable apartments; with crackling fires blazing on the hearths, and
every warmth of welcome. Florac expanded and beamed with good-nature. He
shook me many times by the hand; he patted me; he called me his good--his
brave.

He cried to his maitre d'hotel, "Frederic, remember monsieur is master
here! Run before his orders. Prostrate thyself to him. He was good to me
in the days of my misfortune. Hearest thou, Frederic? See that everything
be done for Monsieur Pendennis--for madame sa charmante lady--for her
angelic infant, and the bonne. None of thy garrison tricks with that
young person, Frederic! vieux scelerat! Garde-toi de la, Frederic; si
non, je t'envoie a Botani Bay; je te traduis devant le Lord Mare!"

"En Angleterre je me fais Anglais, vois-tu, mon ami," continued the
Prince. "Demain c'est Sunday, et tu vas voir! I hear the bell, dress
thyself for the dinner--my friend!"; Here there was another squeeze of
both hands from the good-natured fellow. "It do good to my art to ave you
in my ouse! Heuh!" He hugged his guest; he had tears in his eyes as he
performed this droll, this kind embrace. Not less kind in her way, though
less expensive and embracive, was Madame de Moncontour to my wife, as I
found on comparing notes with that young woman, when the day's
hospitalities were ended. The little Princess trotted from bedchamber to
nursery to see that everything was made comfortable for her guests. She
sate and saw the child washed and put to bed. She had never beheld such a
little angel. She brought it a fine toy to play with. She and her grim
old maid frightened the little creature at first, but it was very
speedily reconciled to their countenances. She was in the nursery almost
as early as the child's mother. "Ah!" sighed the poor little woman, "how
happy you must be to have one!" In fine, my wife was quite overcome by
her goodness and welcome.

Sunday morning arrived in the course of time, and then Florac appeared as
a most wonderful Briton indeed! He wore top-boots and buckskins; and
after breakfast, when we went to church, a white great-coat with a little
cape, in which garment he felt that his similarity to an English
gentleman was perfect. In conversation with his grooms and servants he
swore freely,--not that he was accustomed to employ oaths in his own
private talk, but he thought the employment of these expletives necessary
as an English country gentleman. He never dined without a roast-beef, and
insisted that the piece of meat should be bleeding, "as you love it, you
others." He got up boxing-matches: and kept birds for combats of cock. He
assumed the sporting language with admirable enthusiasm--drove over to
cover with a steppere--rode across countri like a good one--was splendid
in the hunting-field in his velvet cap and Napoleon boots, and made the
Hunt welcome at Rosebury where his good-natured little wife was as kind
to the gentlemen in scarlet as she used to be of old to the stout
Dissenting gentlemen in black, who sang hymns and spake sermons on her
lawn. These folks, scared at the change which had taken place in the
little Princess's habits of life, lamented her falling away: but in the
county she and her husband got a great popularity, and in Newcome town
itself they were not less liked, for her benefactions were unceasing, and
Paul's affability the theme of all praise. The Newcome Independent and
the Newcome Sentinel both paid him compliments; the former journal
contrasting his behaviour with that of Sir Barnes, their member. Florac's
pleasure was to drive his Princess with four horses into Newcome. He
called his carriage his "trappe," his "drague." The street-boys cheered
and hurrayed the Prince as he passed through the town. One haberdasher
had a yellow stock called the "Moncontour" displayed in his windows;
another had a pink one marked "The Princely," and as such recommended it
to the young Newcome gents.

The drague conveyed us once to the neighbouring house of Newcome, whither
my wife accompanied Madame de Moncontour at that lady's own request, to
whom Laura very properly did not think fit to confide her antipathy for
Lady Clara Newcome. Coming away from a great house, how often she and I,
egotistical philosophers, thanked our fates that our own home was a small
one! How long will great houses last in this world? Do not their owners
now prefer a lodging at Brighton, or a little entresol on the Boulevard,
to the solitary ancestral palace in a park barred round with snow? We
were as glad to get out of Newcome as out of a prison. My wife and our
hostess skipped into the carriage, and began to talk freely as the
lodge-gates closed after us. Would we be lords of such a place under the
penalty of living in it? We agreed that the little angle of earth called
Fairoaks was dearer to us than the clumsy Newcome-pile of Tudor masonry.
The house had been fitted up in the time of George IV. and the
quasi-Gothic revival. We were made to pass through Gothic dining-rooms,
where there was now no hospitality,--Gothic drawing-rooms shrouded in
brown hollands, to one little room at the end of the dusky suite, where
Lady Clara sate alone, or in the company of the nurses and children. The
blank gloom of the place had fallen upon the poor lady. Even when my wife
talked about children (good-natured Madame de Moncontour vaunting ours as
a prodigy) Lady Clara did not brighten up! Her pair of young ones was
exhibited and withdrawn. A something weighed upon the woman. We talked
about Ethel's marriage. She said it was fixed for the new year, she
believed. She did not know whether Glenlivat had been very handsomely
fitted up. She had not seen Lord Farintosh's house in London. Sir Barnes
came down once--twice--of a Saturday sometimes, for three or four days to
hunt, to amuse himself, as all men do she supposed. She did not know when
he was coming again. She rang languidly when we rose to take leave, and
sank back on her sofa, where lay a heap of French novels. "She has chosen
some pretty books," says Paul, as we drove through the sombre avenues
through the grey park, mists lying about the melancholy ornamental
waters, dingy herds of huddled sheep speckling the grass here and there;
no smoke rising up from the great stacks of chimneys of the building we
were leaving behind us, save one little feeble thread of white which we
knew came from the fire by which the lonely mistress of Newcome was
seated. "Ouf!" cries Florac, playing his whip, as the lodge-gates closed
on us, and his team of horses rattled merrily along the road, "what a
blessing it is to be out of that vault of a place! There is something
fatal in this house--in this woman. One smells misfortune there."

The hotel which our friend Florac patronised on occasion of his visits to
Newcome was the King's Arms, and it happened, one day, as we entered that
place of entertainment in company, that a visitor of the house was
issuing through the hall, to whom Florac seemed as if he would administer
one of his customary embraces, and to whom the Prince called out "Jack,"
with great warmth and kindness as he ran towards the stranger.

Jack did not appear to be particularly well pleased on beholding us; he
rather retreated from before the Frenchman's advances.

"My dear Jack, my good, my brave Ighgate! I am delighted to see you!"
Florac continues, regardless of the stranger's reception, or of the
landlord's looks towards us, who was bowing the Prince into his very best
room.

"How do you do, Monsieur de Florac?" growls the new comer, surlily; and
was for moving on after this brief salutation; but having a second
thought seemingly, turned back and followed Florac into the apartment
where our host conducted us. "A la bonne heure!" Florac renewed his
cordial greetings to Lord Highgate. "I knew not, mon bon, what fly had
stung you," says he to my lord. The landlord, rubbing his hands, smirking
and bowing, was anxious to know whether the Prince would take anything
after his drive. As the Prince's attendant and friend, the lustre of his
reception partially illuminated me. When the chief was not by, I was
treated with great attention (mingled with a certain degree of
familiarity) by my landlord.

Lord Highgate waited until Mr. Taplow was out of the room; and then said
to Florac, "Don't call me by my name here, please, Florac, I am here
incog."

"Plait-il?" asks Florac. "Where is incog.?" He laughed when the word was
interpreted to him. Lord Highgate had turned to me. "There was no
rudeness, you understand, intended, Mr. Pendennis, but I am down here on
some business, and don't care to wear the handle to my name. Fellows work
it so, don't you understand? never leave you at rest in a country town--
that sort of thing. Heard of our friend Clive lately?"

"Whether you ave andle or no andle, Jack, you are always the bien venu to
me. What is thy affair? Old monster! I wager----"

"No, no, no such nonsense," says Jack, rather eagerly. "I give you my
honour, I--I want to--to raise a sum of money--that is, to invest some in
a speculation down here--deuced good the speculations down here; and, by
the way, if the landlord asks you, I'm Mr. Harris--I'm a civil engineer--
I'm waiting for the arrival of the Canada at Liverpool from America, and
very uneasy about my brother who is on board."

"What does he recount to us there? Keep these stories for the landlord,
Jack; to us 'tis not the pain to lie. My good Mr. Harris, why have we not
seen you at Rosebury? The Princess will scold me if you do not come; and
you must bring your dear brother when he arrive too. Do you hear?" The
last part of this sentence was uttered for Mr. Taplow's benefit, who had
re-entered the George bearing a tray of wine and biscuit.

The Master of Rosebury and Mr. Harris went out presently to look at a
horse which was waiting the former's inspection in the stableyard of the
hotel. The landlord took advantage of his business, to hear a bell which
never was rung, and to ask me questions about the guest who had been
staying at his house for a week past. Did I know that party? Mr.
Pendennis said, "Yes, he knew that party."

"Most respectable party, I have no doubt," continues Boniface. "Do you
suppose the Prince of Moncontour knows any but respectable parties?" asks
Mr. Pendennis--a query of which the force was so great as to discomfit
and silence our landlord, who retreated to ask questions concerning Mr.
Harris of Florac's grooms.

What was Highgate's business here? Was it mine to know? I might have
suspicions, but should I entertain them or communicate them, and had I
not best keep them to myself? I exchanged not a word on the subject of
Highgate with Florac, as we drove home: though from the way in which we
looked at one another each saw that the other was acquainted with that
unhappy gentleman's secret. We fell to talking about Madame la Duchesse
d'Ivry as we trotted on; and then of English manners by way of contrast,
of intrigues, elopements, Gretna Grin, etc., etc. "You are a droll
nation!" says Florac. "To make love well, you must absolutely have a
chaise-de-poste, and a scandal afterwards. If our affairs of this kind
made themselves on the grand route, what armies of postillions we should
need!"

I held my peace. In that vision of Jack Belsize I saw misery, guilt,
children dishonoured, homes deserted,--ruin for all the actors and
victims of the wretched conspiracy. Laura marked my disturbance when we
reached home. She even divined the cause of it, and charged me with it at
night, when we sate alone by our dressing-room fire, and had taken leave
of our kind entertainers. Then, under her cross-examination, I own that I
told what I had seen--Lord Highgate, under a feigned name staying at
Newcome. It might be nothing. "Nothing! Gracious heavens! Could not this
crime and misery be stopped?" "It might be too late," Laura's husband
said sadly, bending down his head into the fire.

She was silent too for a while. I could see she was engaged where pious
women ever will betake themselves in moments of doubt, of grief, of pain,
of separation, of joy even, or whatsoever other trial. They have but to
will, and as it were an invisible temple rises round them; their hearts
can kneel down there; and they have an audience of the great, the
merciful untiring Counsellor and Consoler. She would not have been
frightened at Death near at hand. I have known her to tend the poor round
about us, or to bear pain--not her own merely, but even her children's
and mine, with a surprising outward constancy and calm. But the idea of
this crime being enacted close at hand, and no help for it--quite
overcame her. I believe she lay awake all that night; and rose quite
haggard and pale after the bitter thoughts which had deprived her of
rest.

She embraced her own child with extraordinary tenderness that morning,
and even wept over it, calling it by a thousand fond names of maternal
endearment "Would I leave you, my darling--could I ever, ever, ever quit
you, my blessing, and treasure!" The unconscious little thing, hugged to
his mother's bosom, and scared at her tones and tragic face, clung
frightened and weeping round Laura's neck. Would you ask what the
husband's feelings were as he looked at that sweet love, that sublime
tenderness, that pure Saint blessing the life of him unworthy? Of all the
gifts of Heaven to us below, that felicity is the sum and the chief. I
tremble as I hold it lest I should lose it, and be left alone in the
blank world without it: again, I feel humiliated to think that I possess
it; as hastening home to a warm fireside and a plentiful table, I feel
ashamed sometimes before the poor outcast beggar shivering in the street.

Breakfast was scarcely over when Laura asked for a pony carriage, and
said she was bent on a private visit. She took her baby and nurse with
her. She refused our company, and would not even say whither she was
bound until she had passed the lodge-gate. I may have suspected what the
object was of her journey. Florac and I did not talk of it. We rode out
to meet the hounds of a cheery winter morning: on another day I might
have been amused with my host--the, splendour of his raiment, the
neatness of his velvet cap, the gloss of his hunting-boots; the cheers,
shouts, salutations, to dog and man; the oaths and outcries of this
Nimrod, who shouted louder than the whole field and the whole pack too--
but on this morning--I was thinking of the tragedy yonder enacting, and
came away early from the hunting-field, and found my wife already
returned to Rosebury.

Laura had been, as I suspected, to Lady Clara. She did not know why,
indeed. She scarce knew what she should say when she arrived--how she
could say what she had in her mind. "I hoped, Arthur, that I should have
something--something told me to say," whispered Laura, with her head on
my shoulder; and as I lay awake last night thinking of her, prayed--that
is, hoped, I might find a word of consolation for that poor lady. Do you
know, I think she has hardly ever heard a kind word? She said so; she was
very much affected after we had talked together a little.

"At first she was very indifferent; cold and haughty in her manner; asked
what had caused the pleasure of this visit, for I would go in, though at
the lodge they told me her ladyship was unwell, and they thought received
no company. I said I wanted to show our boy to her--that the children
ought to be acquainted--I don't know what I said. She seemed more and
more surprised--then all of a sudden--I don't know how--I said, 'Lady
Clara, I have had a dream about you and your children, and I was so
frightened that I came over to you to speak about it.' And I had the
dream, Pen; it came to me absolutely as I was speaking to her.

"She looked a little scared, and I went on telling her the dream. 'My
dear' I said, 'I dreamed that I saw you happy with those children.'

"'Happy!' says she--the three were playing in the conservatory into which
her sitting-room opens.

"'And that a bad spirit came and tore them from you, and drove you out
into the darkness; and I saw you wandering about quite lonely and
wretched, and looking back into the garden where the children were
playing. And you asked and implored to see them; and the Keeper at the
gate said 'No, never.' And then--then I thought they passed by you, and
they did not know you.'

"'Ah!' said Lady Clara.

"'And then I thought, as we do in dreams, you know, that it was my child
who was separated from me, and who would not know me: and oh, what a pang
that was! Fancy that! Let us pray God it was only a dream. And worse than
that, when you, when I implored to come to the child, and the man said,
'No, never,' I thought there came a spirit--an angel that fetched the
child to heaven, and you said, 'Let me come too; oh, let me come too, I
am so miserable.' And the angel said, 'No, never, never.'

"By this time Lady Clara was looking very pale. 'What do you mean?' she
asked of me," Laura continued.

"'Oh, dear lady, for the sake of the little ones, and Him who calls them
to Him, go you with them. Never, never part from them! Cling to His
knees, and take shelter there.' I took her hands, and I said more to her
in this way, Arthur, that I need not, that I ought not to speak again.
But she was touched at length when I kissed her; and she said I was very
kind to her, and no one had ever been so, and that she was quite alone in
the world and had no friend to fly to; and would I go and stay with her?
and I said 'yes;' and we must go, my dear. I think you should see that
person at Newcome--see him, and warn him," cried Laura, warming as she
spoke, "and pray God to enlighten and strengthen him, and to keep him
from this temptation, and implore him to leave this poor, weak,
frightened, trembling creature; if he has the heart of a gentleman and
the courage of a man, he will, I know he will."

"I think he would, my dearest," I said, "if he but heard the petitioner."
Laura's cheeks were blushing, her eyes brightened, her voice rang with a
sweet pathos of love that vibrates through my whole being sometimes. It
seems to me as if evil must give way, and bad thoughts retire before that
purest creature.

"Why has she not some of her family with her, poor thing!" my wife
continued. "She perishes in that solitude. Her husband prevents her, I
think--and--oh--I know enough of him to know what his life is. I shudder,
Arthur, to see you take the hand of that wicked, selfish man. You must
break with him, do you hear, sir?"

"Before or after going to stay at his house, my love?" asks Mr.
Pendennis.

"Poor thing! she lighted up at the idea of any one coming. She ran and
showed me the rooms we were to have. It will be very stupid; and you
don't like that. But you can write your book, and still hunt and shoot
with our friends here. And Lady Anne Newcome must be made to come back
again. Sir Barnes quarrelled with his mother and drove her out of the
house on her last visit--think of that! The servants here know it. Martha
brought me the whole story from the housekeeper's room. This Sir Barnes
Newcome is a dreadful creature, Arthur. I am so glad I loathed him from
the very first moment I saw him."

"And into this ogre's den you propose to put me and my family, madam!"
says the husband. "Indeed, where won't I go if you order me? Oh, who will
pack my portmanteau?"

Florac and the Princess were both in desolation when, at dinner, we
announced our resolution to go away--and to our neighbours at Newcome!
that was more extraordinary. "Que diable goest thou to do in this
galley?" asks our host as we sat alone over our wine.

But Laura's intended visit to Lady Clara was never to have a fulfilment,
for on this same evening, as we sate at our dessert, comes a messenger
from Newcome, with a note for my wife from the lady there:--


"Dearest, kindest Mrs. Pendennis," Lady Clara wrote, with many italics,
and evidently in much distress of mind. "Your visit is not to be. I spoke
about it to Sir B., who arrived this afternoon, and who has already begun
to treat me in his usual way. Oh, I am so unhappy! Pray, pray do not be
angry at this rudeness--though indeed it is only a kindness to keep you
from this wretched place! I feel as if I cannot bear this much longer.
But, whatever happens, I shall always remember your goodness, your
beautiful goodness and kindness; and shall worship you as an angel
deserves to be worshipped. Oh, why had I not such a friend earlier! But
alas! I have none--only this odious family thrust upon me for companions
to the wretched, lonely, C. N.

"P.S.--He does not know of my writing. Do not be surprised if you get
another note from me in the morning, written in a ceremonious style and
regretting that we cannot have the pleasure of receiving Mr. and Mrs.
Pendennis for the present at Newcome.

"P.S.--The hypocrite!"


This letter was handed to my wife at dinner-time, and she gave it to me
as she passed out of the room with the other ladies.

I told Florac that the Newcomes could not receive us, and that we would
remain, if he willed it, his guests for a little longer. The kind fellow
was only too glad to keep us. "My wife would die without Bebi," he said.
"She becomes quite dangerous about Bebi." It was gratifying that the good
old lady was not to be parted as yet from the innocent object of her
love.

My host knew as well as I the terms upon which Sir Barnes and his wife
were living. Their quarrels were the talk of the whole county; one side
brought forward his treatment of her, and his conduct elsewhere, and said
that he was so bad that honest people should not know him. The other
party laid the blame upon her, and declared that Lady Clara was a
languid, silly, weak, frivolous creature; always crying out of season;
who had notoriously taken Sir Barnes for his money and who as certainly
had had an attachment elsewhere. Yes, the accusations were true on both
sides. A bad, selfish husband had married a woman for her rank: a weak,
thoughtless girl had been sold to a man for his money; and the union,
which might have ended in a complete indifference, had taken an ill turn
and resulted in misery, cruelty, fierce mutual recriminations, bitter
tears shed in private, husband's curses and maledictions, and open scenes
of wrath and violence for servants to witness and the world to sneer at.
We arrange such matches every day; we sell or buy beauty, or rank, or
wealth; we inaugurate the bargain in churches with sacramental services,
in which the parties engaged call upon Heaven to witness their vows--we
know them to be lies, and we seal them with God's name. "I, Barnes,
promise to take you, Clara, to love and honour till death do us part" "I
Clara, promise to take you, Barnes," etc, etc. Who has not heard the
ancient words; and how many of us have uttered them, knowing them to be
untrue: and is there a bishop on the bench that has not amen'd the humbug
in his lawn sleeves and called a blessing over the kneeling perjurers?

"Does Mr. Harris know of Newcome's return?" Florac asked, when I
acquainted him with this intelligence. "Ce scelerat de Highgate--Va!"

"Does Newcome know that Lord Highgate is here?" I thought within myself,
admiring my wife's faithfulness and simplicity, and trying to believe
with that pure and guileless creature that it was not yet too late to
save the unhappy Lady Clara.

"Mr. Harris had best be warned," I said to Florac; "will you write him a
word, and let us send a messenger to Newcome?"

At first Florac said, "Parbleu! No;" the affair was none of his, he
attended himself always to this result of Lady Clara's marriage. He had
even complimented Jack upon it years before at Baden, when scenes enough
tragic, enough comical, ma foi, had taken place apropos of this affair.
Why should he meddle with it now?

"Children dishonoured," said I, "honest families made miserable; for
Heaven's sake, Florac, let us stay this catastrophe if we can." I spoke
with much warmth, eagerly desirous to avert this calamity if possible,
and very strongly moved by the tale which I had heard only just before
dinner from that noble and innocent creature, whose pure heart had
already prompted her to plead the cause of right and truth, and to try
and rescue an unhappy desperate sister trembling on the verge of ruin.

"If you will not write to him," said I, in some heat, "if your grooms
don't like to go out of a night" (this was one of the objections which
Florac had raised), "I will walk." We were talking over the affair rather
late in the evening, the ladies having retreated to their sleeping
apartments, and some guests having taken leave, whom our hospitable host
and hostess had entertained that night, and before whom I naturally did
not care to speak upon a subject so dangerous.

"Parbleu, what virtue, my friend! what a Joseph!" cries Florac, puffing
his cigar. "One sees well that your wife had made you the sermon. My poor
Pendennis! You are henpecked, my pauvre bon! You become the husband
model. It is true my mother writes that thy wife is an angel!"

"I do not object to obey such a woman when she bids me do right," I said;
and would indeed at that woman's request have gone out upon the errand,
but that we here found another messenger. On days when dinner-parties
were held at Rosebury, certain auxiliary waiters used to attend from
Newcome whom the landlord of the King's Arms was accustomed to supply;
indeed, it was to secure these, and make other necessary arrangements
respecting fish, game, etc., that the Prince de Moncontour had ridden
over to Newcome on the day when we met Lord Highgate, alias Mr. Harris,
before the bar of the hotel. Whilst we were engaged in the above
conversation a servant enters, and says, "My lord, Jenkins and the other
man is going back to Newcome in their cart," and is there anything
wanted?"

"It is the Heaven which sends him," says Florac, turning round to me with
a laugh; "make Jenkins to wait five minutes, Robert; I have to write to a
gentleman at the King's Arms." And so saying, Florac wrote a line which
he showed me, and having sealed the note, directed it to Mr. Harris at
the King's Arms. The cart, the note, and the assistant waiters departed
on their way to Newcome. Florac bade me go to rest with a clear
conscience. In truth, the warning was better given in that way than any
other, and a word from Florac was more likely to be effectual than an
expostulation from me. I had never thought of making it, perhaps; except
at the expressed desire of a lady whose counsel in all the difficult
circumstances of life I own I am disposed to take.

Mr. Jenkins's horse no doubt trotted at a very brisk pace, as gentlemen's
horses will of a frosty night, after their masters have been regaled with
plentiful supplies of wine and ale. I remember in my bachelor days that
my horses always trotted quicker after I had had a good dinner; the
champagne used to communicate itself to them somehow, and the claret get
into their heels. Before midnight the letter for Mr. Harris was in Mr.
Harris's hands in the King's Arms.

It has been said that in the Boscawen Room at the Arms, some of the jolly
fellows of Newcome had a club, of which Parrot the auctioneer, Tom Potts
the talented reporter, now editor of the Independent, Vidler the
apothecary, and other gentlemen, were members.

When we first had occasion to mention that society, it was at an early
stage of this history, long before Clive Newcome's fine moustache had
grown. If Vidler the apothecary was old and infirm then, he is near ten
years older now; he has had various assistants, of course, and one of
them of late years had his become his partner, though the firm continues
to be known by Viller's ancient and respectable name. A jovial fellow was
this partner--a capital convivial member of the Jolly Britons, where he
used to sit very late, so as to be in readiness for any night-work that
might come in.

So the Britons were all sitting, smoking, drinking, and making merry, in
the Boscawen Room, when Jenkins enters with a note, which he straightway
delivers to Mr. Vidler's partner. "From Rosebury? The Princess ill again,
I suppose," says the surgeon, not sorry to let the company know that he
attends her. "I wish the old girl would be ill in the daytime. Confound
it," says he, "what's this----" and he reads out, "'Sir Newcome est de
retour. Bon voyage, mon ami.--F.' What does this mean?"

"I thought you knew French, Jack Harris," says Tom Potts; "you're always
bothering us with your French songs."

"Of course I know French," says the other; "but what's the meaning of
this?"

"Screwcome came back by the five o'clock train. I was in it, and his
royal highness would scarcely speak to me. Took Brown's fly from the
station. Brown won't enrich his family much by the operation," says Mr.
Potts.

"But what do I care?" cries Jack Harris; "we don't attend him, and we
don't lose much by that. Howell attends him, ever since Vidler and he had
that row."

"Hulloh! I say, it's a mistake," cries Mr. Taplow, smoking in his chair.
"This letter is for the party in the Benbow. The gent which the Prince
spoke to him, and called him Jack the other day when he was here. Here's
a nice business, and the seal broke, and all. Is the Benbow party gone to
bed? John, you must carry him in this here note." John, quite innocent of
the note and its contents, for he that moment had entered the clubroom
with Mr. Potts's supper, took the note to the Benbow, from which he
presently returned to his master with a very scared countenance. He said
the gent in the Benbow was a most harbitrary gent. He had almost choked
John after reading the letter, and John wouldn't stand it; and when John
said he supposed that Mr. Harris in the Boscawen--that Mr. Jack Harris,
had opened the letter, the other gent cursed and swore awful.

"Potts," said Taplow, who was only too communicative on some occasions
after he had imbibed too much of his own brandy-and-water, "it's my
belief that that party's name is no more Harris than mine is. I have sent
his linen to the wash, and there was two white pocket-handkerchiefs with
H. and a coronet."

On the next day we drove over to Newcome, hoping perhaps to find that
Lord Highgate had taken the warning sent to him and quitted the place.
But we were disappointed. He was walking in front of the hotel, where a
thousand persons might see him as well as ourselves.

We entered into his private apartment with him, and there expostulated
upon his appearance in the public street, where Barnes Newcome or any
passer-by might recognise him. He then told us of the mishap which had
befallen Florac's letter on the previous night.

"I can't go away now, whatever might have happened previously: by this
time that villain knows that I am here. If I go, he will say I was afraid
of him, and ran away. Oh, how I wish he would come and find me!" He broke
out with a savage laugh.

"It is best to run away," one of us interposed sadly.

"Pendennis," he said with a tone of great softness, "your wife is a good
woman. God bless her! God bless her for all she has said and done--would
have done, if that villain had let her! Do you know the poor thing hasn't
a single friend in the world, not one, one--except me, and that girl they
are selling to Farintosh, and who does not count for much. He has driven
away all her friends from her: one and all turn upon her. Her relations,
of course; when did they ever fail to hit a poor fellow or a poor girl
when she was down? The poor angel! The mother who sold her comes and
preaches at her; Kew's wife turns up her little cursed nose and scorns
her; Rooster, forsooth, must ride high the horse, now he is married and
lives at Chanticlere, and give her warning to avoid my company or his! Do
you know the only friend she ever had was that old woman with the stick--
old Kew; the old witch whom they buried four months ago after nobbling
her money for the beauty of the family? She used to protect her--that old
woman; heaven bless her for it, wherever she is now, the old hag--a good
word won't do her any harm. Ha! ha!" His laughter was cruel to hear.

"Why did I come down?" he continued in reply to our sad queries. "Why did
I come down, do you ask? Because she was wretched, and sent for me.
Because if I was at the end of the world, and she was to say, 'Jack,
come!' I'd come."

"And if she bade you go?" asked his friends.

"I would go; and I have gone. If she told me to jump into the sea, do you
think I would not do it? But I go; and when she is alone with him, do you
know what he does? He strikes her. Strikes that poor little thing! He has
owned to it. She fled from him and sheltered with the old woman who's
dead. He may be doing it now. Why did I ever shake hands with him? that's
humiliation sufficient, isn't it? But she wished it; and I'd black his
boots, curse him, if she told me. And because he wanted to keep my money
in his confounded bank; and because he knew he might rely upon my honour
and hers, poor dear child, he chooses to shake hands with me--me, whom he
hates worse than a thousand devils--and quite right too. Why isn't there
a place where we can go and meet, like man to man, and have it over! If I
had a ball through my brains I shouldn't mind, I tell you. I've a mind to
do it for myself, Pendennis. You don't understand me, Viscount."

"Il est vrai," said Florac, with a shrug, "I comprehend neither the
suicide nor the chaise-de-poste. What will you? I am not yet enough
English, my friend. We make marriages of convenance in our country, que
diable, and what follows follows; but no scandal afterwards! Do not adopt
our institutions a demi, my friend. Vous ne me comprenez pas non plus,
men pauvre Jack!"

"There is one way still, I think," said the third of the speakers in this
scene. "Let Lord Highgate come to Rosebury in his own name, leaving that
of Mr. Harris behind him. If Sir Barnes Newcome wants you, he can seek
you there. If you will go, as go you should, and God speed you, you can
go, and in your own name, too."

"Parbleu, c'est ca," cries Florac, "he speaks like a book--the
romancier!" I confess, for my part, I thought that a good woman might
plead with him, and touch that manly not disloyal heart now trembling on
the awful balance between evil and good.

"Allons! let us make to come the drague!" cries Florac. "Jack, thou
returnest with us, my friend! Madame Pendennis, an angel, my friend, a
quakre the most charming, shall roucoule to thee the sweetest sermons. My
wife shall tend thee like a mother--a grandmother. Go make thy packet!"

Lord Highgate was very much pleased and relieved seemingly. He shook our
hands, he said he should never forget our kindness, never! In truth, the
didactic part of our conversation was carried on at much greater length
than as here noted down: and he would come that evening, but not with us,
thank you; he had a particular engagement, some letters he must write.
Those done, he would not fail us, and would be at Rosebury by
dinner-time.




CHAPTER LVIII

"One more Unfortunate"


The Fates did not ordain that the plan should succeed which Lord
Highgate's friends had devised for Lady Clara's rescue or respite. He was
bent upon one more interview with the unfortunate lady; and in that
meeting the future destiny of their luckless lives was decided. On the
morning of his return home, Barnes Newcome had information that Lord
Highgate, under a feigned name, had been staying in the neighbourhood of
his house, and had repeatedly been seen in the company of Lady Clara. She
may have gone out to meet him but for one hour more. She had taken no
leave of her children on the day when she left her home, and, far from
making preparations for her own departure, had been engaged in getting
the house ready for the reception of members of the family, whose arrival
her husband announced as speedily to follow his own. Ethel and Lady Anne
and some of the children were coming. Lord Farintosh's mother and sisters
were to follow. It was to be a reunion previous to the marriage which was
closer to unite the two families. Lady Clara said Yes to her husband's
orders; rose mechanically to obey his wishes and arrange for the
reception of the guests; and spoke tremblingly to the housekeeper as her
husband gibed at her. The little ones had been consigned to bed early and
before Sir Barnes's arrival. He did not think fit to see them in their
sleep; nor did their mother. She did not know, as the poor little
creatures left her room in charge of their nurses, that she looked on
them for the last time. Perhaps, had she gone to their bedsides that
evening, had the wretched panic-stricken soul been allowed leisure to
pause, and to think, and to pray, the fate of the morrow might have been
otherwise, and the trembling balance of the scale have inclined to
right's side. But the pause was not allowed her. Her husband came and
saluted her with his accustomed greetings of scorn, and sarcasm, and
brutal insult. On a future day he never dared to call a servant of his
household to testify to his treatment of her; though many were ready to
attend to prove his cruelty and her terror. On that very last night, Lady
Clara's maid, a country girl from her father's house at Chanticlere, told
Sir Barnes in the midst of a conjugal dispute that her lady might bear
his conduct but she could not, and that she would no longer live under
the roof of such a brute. The girl's interference was not likely to
benefit her mistress much: the wretched Lady Clara passed the last night
under the roof of her husband and children, unattended save by this poor
domestic who was about to leave her, in tears and hysterical outcries,
and then in moaning stupor. Lady Clara put to sleep with laudanum, her
maid carried down the story of her wrongs to the servants' quarters; and
half a dozen of them took in their resignation to Sir Barnes as he sat
over his breakfast the next morning--in his ancestral hall--surrounded by
the portraits of his august forefathers--in his happy home.

Their mutiny of course did not add to their master's good-humour; and his
letters brought him news which increased Barnes's fury. A messenger
arrived with a letter from his man of business at Newcome, upon the
receipt of which be started up with such an execration as frightened the
servant waiting on him, and letter in hand he ran to Lady Clara's
sitting-room. Her ladyship was up. Sir Barnes breakfasted rather late on
the first morning after an arrival at Newcome. He had to look over the
bailiff's books, and to look about him round the park and grounds; to
curse the gardeners; to damn the stable and kennel grooms; to yell at the
woodman for clearing not enough or too much; to rail at the poor old
workpeople brooming away the fallen leaves, etc. So Lady Clara was up and
dressed when her husband went to her room, which lay at the end of the
house as we have said, the last of a suite of ancestral halls.

The mutinous servant heard high voices and curses within; then Lady
Clara's screams; then Sir Barnes Newcome burst out of the room, locking
the door and taking the key with him, and saluting with more curses
James, the mutineer, over whom his master ran.

"Curse your wife, and don't curse me, Sir Barnes Newcome!" said James,
the mutineer; and knocked down a hand which the infuriated Baronet raised
against him, with an arm that was twice as strong as Barnes's own. This
man and maid followed their mistress in the sad journey upon which she
was bent. They treated her with unalterable respect. They never could be
got to see that her conduct was wrong. When Barnes's counsel subsequently
tried to impugn their testimony, they dared him; and hurt the plaintiff's
case very much. For the balance had weighed over; and it was Barnes
himself who caused what now ensued; and what we learned in a very few
hours afterwards from Newcome, where it was the talk of the whole
neighbourhood.

Florac and I, as yet ignorant of all that was occurring, met Barnes near
his own lodge-gate riding in the direction of Newcome, as we were
ourselves returning to Rosebury. The Prince de Moncontour, who was
driving, affably saluted the Baronet, who gave us a scowling recognition,
and rode on, his groom behind him. "The figure of the garcon," says
Florac, as our acquaintance passed, "is not agreeable. Of pale, he has
become livid. I hope these two men will not meet, or evil will come!"
Evil to Barnes there might be, Florac's companion thought, who knew the
previous little affairs between Barnes and his uncle and cousin; and that
Lord Highgate was quite able to take care of himself.

In half an hour after Florac spoke, that meeting between Barnes and
Highgate actually had taken place--in the open square of Newcome, within
four doors of the King's Arms inn, close to which lives Sir Barnes
Newcome's man of business; and before which, Mr. Harris, as he was
called, was walking, and waiting till a carriage which he had ordered
came round from the inn yard. As Sir Barnes Newcome rode into the place
many people touched their hats to him, however little they loved him. He
was bowing and smirking to one of these, when he suddenly saw Belsize.

He started back, causing his horse to back with him on to the pavement,
and it may have been rage and fury, or accident and nervousness merely,
but at this instant Barnes Newcome, looking towards Lord Highgate, shook
his whip.

"You cowardly villain!" said the other, springing forward. "I was going
to your house."

"How dare you, sir," cries Sir Barnes, still holding up that unlucky
cane, "how dare you to--to----"

"Dare, you scoundrel!" said Belsize. "Is that the cane you strike your
wife with, you ruffian!" Belsize seized and tore him out of the saddle,
flinging him screaming down on the pavement. The horse, rearing and
making way for himself, galloped down the clattering street; a hundred
people were round Sir Barnes in a moment.

The carriage which Belsize had ordered came round at this very juncture.
Amidst the crowd, shrinking, bustling, expostulating, threatening, who
pressed about him, he shouldered his way. Mr. Taplow, aghast, was one of
the hundred spectators of the scene.

"I am Lord Highgate," said Barnes's adversary. "If Sir Barnes Newcome
wants me, tell him I will send him word where he may hear of me." And
getting into the carriage, he told the driver to go "to the usual place."

Imagine the hubbub in the town, the conclaves at the inns, the talks in
the counting-houses, the commotion amongst the factory people, the
paragraphs in the Newcome papers, the bustle of surgeons and lawyers,
after this event. Crowds gathered at the King's Arms, and waited round
Mr. Speers the lawyer's house, into which Sir Barnes was carried. In vain
policemen told them to move on; fresh groups gathered after the seceders.
On the next day, when Barnes Newcome, who was not much hurt, had a fly to
go home, a factory man shook his fist in at the carriage window, and,
with a curse, said, "Serve you right, you villain." It was the man whose
sweetheart this Don Juan had seduced and deserted years before; whose
wrongs were well known amongst his mates, a leader in the chorus of
hatred which growled round Barnes Newcome.

Barnes's mother and sister Ethel had reached Newcome shortly before the
return of the master of the house. The people there were in disturbance.
Lady Anne and Miss Newcome came out with pallid looks to greet him. He
laughed and reassured them about his accident: indeed his hurt had been
trifling; he had been bled by the surgeon, a little jarred by the fall
from his horse; but there was no sort of danger. Still their pale and
doubtful looks continued. What caused them? In the open day, with a
servant attending her Lady Clara Newcome had left her husband's house;
and a letter was forwarded to him that same evening from my Lord
Highgate, informing Sir Barnes Newcome that Lady Clara Pulleyn could bear
his tyranny no longer, and had left his roof; that Lord Highgate proposed
to leave England almost immediately, but would remain long enough to
afford Sir Barnes Newcome the opportunity for an interview, in case he
should be disposed to demand one: and a friend (of Lord Highgate's late
regiment) was named who would receive letters and act in any way
necessary for his lordship.

The debates of the House of Lords must tell what followed afterwards in
the dreary history of Lady Clara Pulleyn. The proceedings in the Newcome
Divorce Bill filled the usual number of columns in the papers,--
especially the Sunday papers. The witnesses were examined by learned
peers whose business--nay, pleasure--it seems to be to enter into such
matters; and, for the ends of justice and morality, doubtless, the whole
story of Barnes Newcome's household was told to the British public. In
the previous trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, how grandly Serjeant
Rowland stood up for the rights of British husbands! with what pathos he
depicted the conjugal paradise, the innocent children prattling round
their happy parents, the serpent, the destroyer, entering into that
Belgravian Eden; the wretched and deserted husband alone by his
desecrated hearth, and calling for redress on his country! Rowland wept
freely during his noble harangue. At not a shilling under twenty thousand
pounds would he estimate the cost of his client's injuries. The jury was
very much affected: the evening papers gave Rowland's address in extenso,
with some pretty sharp raps at the aristocracy in general. The Day, the
principal morning journal of that period, came out with a leading article
the next morning, in which every party concerned and every institution
was knocked about. The disgrace of the peerage, the ruin of the monarchy
(with a retrospective view of the well-known case of Gyges and
Candaules), the monstrosity of the crime, and the absurdity of the
tribunal and the punishment, were all set forth in the terrible leading
article of the Day.

But when, on the next day, Serjeant Rowland was requested to call
witnesses to prove that connubial happiness which he had depicted so
pathetically, he had none at hand.

Oliver, Q.C., now had his innings. A man, a husband, and a father, Mr.
Oliver could not attempt to defend the conduct of his unfortunate client;
but if there could be any excuse for such conduct, that excuse he was
free to confess the plaintiff had afforded, whose cruelty and neglect
twenty witnesses in court were ready to prove--neglect so outrageous,
cruelty so systematic, that he wondered the plaintiff had not been better
advised than to bring this trial, with all its degrading particulars, to
a public issue. On the very day when the ill-omened marriage took place,
another victim of cruelty had interposed as vainly--as vainly as Serjeant
Rowland himself interposed in Court to prevent this case being made
known--and with piteous outcries, in the name of outraged neglected
woman, of castaway children pleading in vain for bread, had besought the
bride to pause, and the bridegroom to look upon the wretched beings who
owed him life. Why had not Lady Clara Pulleyn's friends listened to that
appeal? And so on, and so on, between Rowland and Oliver the battle waged
fiercely that day. Many witnesses were mauled and slain. Out of that
combat scarce anybody came well, except the two principal champions,
Rowland, Serjeant, and Oliver, Q.C. The whole country looked on and heard
the wretched story, not only of Barnes's fault and Highgate's fault, but
of the private peccadilloes of their suborned footmen and conspiring
housemaids. Mr. Justice C. Sawyer charged the jury at great length--those
men were respectable men and fathers of families themselves--of course
they dealt full measure to Lord Highgate for his delinquencies; consoled
the injured husband with immense damages, and left him free to pursue the
further steps for releasing himself altogether from the tie which had
been bound with affecting episcopal benediction at St. George's, Hanover
Square.

So Lady Clara flies from the custody of her tyrant, but to what a rescue!
The very man who loves her, and gives her asylum, pities and deplores
her. She scarce dares to look out of the windows of her new home upon the
world, lest it should know and reproach her. All the sisterhood of
friendship is cut off from her. If she dares to go abroad she feels the
sneer of the world as she goes through it; and knows that malice and
scorn whisper behind her. People, as criminal but undiscovered, make room
for her, as if her touch were pollution. She knows she has darkened the
lot and made wretched the home of the man whom she loves best; that his
friends who see her, treat her with but a doubtful respect; and the
domestics who attend her, with a suspicious obedience. In the country
lanes, or the streets of the county town, neighbours look aside as the
carriage passes in which she sits splendid and lonely. Rough hunting
companions of her husband's come to her table: he is driven perforce to
the company of flatterers and men of inferior sort; his equals, at least
in his own home, will not live with him. She would be kind, perhaps, and
charitable to the cottagers round about her, but she fears to visit them
lest they too should scorn her. The clergyman who distributes her
charities, blushes and looks awkward on passing her in the village, if he
should be walking with his wife or one of his children. Shall they go to
the Continent, and set up a grand house at Paris or at Florence? There
they can get society, but of what a sort! Our acquaintances of Baden,--
Madame Schlangenbad, and Madame de Cruchecassee, and Madame d'Ivry, and
Messrs. Loder, and Punter, and Blackball, and Deuceace, will come, and
dance, and flirt, and quarrel, and gamble, and feast round about her; but
what in common with such wild people has this poor, timid, shrinking
soul? Even these scorn her. The leers and laughter on those painted faces
are quite unlike her own sad countenance. She has no reply to their wit.
Their infernal gaiety scares her more than the solitude at home. No
wonder that her husband does not like home, except for a short while in
the hunting season. No wonder that he is away all day; how can he like a
home which she has made so wretched? In the midst of her sorrow, and
doubt, and misery, a child comes to her: how she clings to it! how her
whole being, and hope, and passion centres itself on this feeble infant!
----but she no more belongs to our story; with the new name she has
taken, the poor lady passes out of the history of the Newcomes.

If Barnes Newcome's children meet yonder solitary lady, do they know her?
If her once-husband thinks upon the unhappy young creature whom his
cruelty drove from him, does his conscience affect his sleep at night?
Why should Sir Barnes Newcome's conscience be more squeamish than his
country's, which has put money in his pocket for having trampled on the
poor weak young thing, and scorned her, and driven her to ruin? When the
whole of the accounts of that wretched bankruptcy are brought up for
final Audit, which of the unhappy partners shall be shown to be most
guilty? Does the Right Reverend Prelate who did the benedictory business
for Barnes and Clara his wife repent in secret? Do the parents who
pressed the marriage, and the fine folks who signed the book, and ate the
breakfast, and applauded the bridegroom's speech, feel a little ashamed?
O Hymen Hymenaee! The bishops, beadles, clergy, pew-openers, and other
officers of the temple dedicated to Heaven under the invocation of St.
George, will officiate in the same place at scores and scores more of
such marriages: and St. George of England may behold virgin after virgin
offered up to the devouring monster, Mammon (with many most respectable
female dragons looking on)--may see virgin after virgin given away, just
as in the Soldan of Babylon's time, but with never a champion to come to
the rescue!




CHAPTER LIX

In which Achilles loses Briseis


Although the years of the Marquis of Farintosh were few, he had spent
most of them in the habit of command; and, from his childhood upwards,
had been obeyed by all persons round about him. As an infant he had but
to roar, and his mother and nurses were as much frightened as though he
had been a Libyan lion. What he willed and ordered was law amongst his
clan and family. During the period of his London and Parisian
dissipations his poor mother did not venture to remonstrate with her
young prodigal, but shut her eyes, not daring to open them on his wild
courses. As for the friends of his person and house, many of whom were
portly elderly gentlemen, their affection for the young Marquis was so
extreme that there was no company into which their fidelity would not
lead them to follow him; and you might see him dancing at Mabille with
veteran aides-de-camp looking on, or disporting with opera-dancers at a
Trois Freres banquet, which some old gentleman of his father's age had
taken the pains to order. If his lordship Count Almaviva wants a friend
to carry the lanthorn or to hold the ladder; do you suppose there are not
many most respectable men in society who will act Figaro? When Farintosh
thought fit, in the fulness of time and the blooming pride of manhood, to
select a spouse, and to elevate a marchioness to his throne, no one dared
gainsay him. When he called upon his mother and sisters, and their
ladyships' hangers-on and attendants; upon his own particular kinsmen,
led captains, and toadies; to bow the knee and do homage to the woman
whom he delighted to honour, those duteous subjects trembled and obeyed;
in fact, he thought that the position of a Marchioness of Farintosh was
under heaven, and before men, so splendid, that, had he elevated a
beggar-maid to that sublime rank, the inferior world was bound to worship
her.

So my lord's lady-mother, and my lord's sisters, and his captains, and
his players of billiards, and the toadies of his august person, all
performed obeisance to his bride-elect, and never questioned the will of
the young chieftain. What were the private comments of the ladies of the
family we had no means of knowing; but it may naturally be supposed that
his lordship's gentlemen-in-waiting, Captain Henchman, Jack Todhunter,
and the rest, had many misgivings of their own respecting their patrons
change in life, and could not view without anxiety the advent of a
mistress who might reign over him and them, who might possibly not like
their company, and might exert her influence over her husband to oust
these honest fellows from places in which they were very comfortable. The
jovial rogues had the run of my lord's kitchen, stables, cellars, and
cigar-boxes. A new marchioness might hate hunting, smoking, jolly
parties, and toad-eaters in general, or might bring into the house
favourites of her own. I am sure any kind-hearted man of the world must
feel for the position of these faithful, doubtful, disconsolate vassals,
and have a sympathy for their rueful looks and demeanour as they eye the
splendid preparations for the ensuing marriage, the grand furniture sent
to my lord's castles and houses, the magnificent plate provided for his
tables--tables at which they may never have a knife and fork; castles and
houses of which the poor rogues may never be allowed to pass the doors.

When, then, "the elopement in High Life," which has been described in the
previous pages, burst upon the town in the morning papers, I can fancy
the agitation which the news occasioned in the faithful bosoms of the
generous Todhunter, and the attached Henchman. My lord was not in his own
house as yet. He and his friends still lingered on in the little house in
Mayfair, the dear little bachelor's quarters, where they had enjoyed such
good dinners, such good suppers, such rare doings, such a jolly time. I
fancy Hench coming down to breakfast, and reading the Morning Post. I
imagine Tod dropping in from his bedroom over the way, and Hench handing
the paper over to Tod, and the conversation which ensued between those
worthy men. Elopement in high life--excitement in N--come, and flight of
Lady Cl-- N--come, daughter of the late and sister of the present Earl of
D-rking, with Lord H---gate; personal rencontre between Lord H---gate and
Sir B--nes N---come. Extraordinary disclosures. I say, I can fancy Hench
and Tod over this awful piece of news.

"Pretty news, ain't it, Toddy?" says Henchman, looking up from a
Perigord-pie, which the faithful creature is discussing.

"Always expected it," remarks the other. "Anybody who saw them together
last season must have known it. The Chief himself spoke of it to me."

"It'll cut him up awfully when he reads it. Is it in the Morning Post? He
has the Post in his bedroom. I know he has rung his bell: I heard it.
Bowman, has his lordship read his paper yet?"

Bowman, the, valet, said, "I believe you, he have read his paper. When he
read it, he jumped out of bed and swore most awful. I cut as soon as I
could," continued Mr. Bowman, who was on familiar--nay contemptuous terms
with the other two gentlemen.

"Enough to make any man swear," says Toddy to Henchman; and both were
alarmed in their noble souls, reflecting that their chieftain was now
actually getting up and dressing himself; that he would speedily, and in
course of nature, come downstairs; and, then, most probably, would begin
swearing at them.

The most noble Mungo Malcolm Angus was in an awful state of mind when, at
length, he appeared in the breakfast-room. "Why the dash do you make a
taproom of this?" he cries. The trembling Henchman, who has begun to
smoke--as he has done a hundred times before in this bachelor's hall--
flings his cigar into the fire.

"There you go--nothing like it! Why don't you fling some more in? You can
get 'em at Hudson's for five guineas a pound." bursts out the youthful
peer.

"I understand why you are out of sorts, old boy," says Henchman,
stretching out his manly hand. A tear of compassion twinkled in his
eyelid, and coursed down his mottled cheek. "Cut away at old Frank,
Farintosh,--a fellow who has been attached to you since before you could
speak. It's not when a fellow's down and cut up, and riled--naturally
riled--as you are--I know you are, Marquis; it's not then that I'm going
to be angry with you. Pitch into old Frank Henchman--hit away, my young
one." And Frank put himself into an attitude as of one prepared to
receive a pugilistic assault. He bared his breast, as it were, and showed
his scars, and said, "Strike!" Frank Henchman was a florid toady. My
uncle, Major Pendennis, has often laughed with me about the fellow's
pompous flatteries and ebullient fidelity.

"You have read this confounded paragraph?" says the Marquis. "We have
read it: and were deucedly cut up, too," says Henchman, "for your sake,
my dear boy."

"I remembered what you said, last year, Marquis," cries Todhunter (not
unadroitly). "You, yourself, pointed out, in this very room, I recollect,
at this very table--that night Coralie and the little Spanish dancer and
her mother supped here, and there was a talk about Highgate--you,
yourself, pointed out what was likely to happen. I doubted it; for I have
dined at the Newcomes', and seen Highgate and her together in society
often. But though you are a younger bird, you have better eyes than I
have--and you saw the thing at once--at once, don't you remember I and
Coralie said how glad she was, because Sir Barnes ill-treated her friend.
What was the name of Coralie's friend, Hench?"

"How should I know her confounded name?" Henchman briskly answers. "What
do I care for Sir Barnes Newcome and his private affairs? He is no friend
of mine. I never said he was a friend of mine. I never said I liked him.
Out of respect for the Chief here, I held my tongue about him, and shall
hold my tongue. Have some of this pate, Chief! No? Poor old boy! I know
you haven't got an appetite. I know this news cuts you up. I say nothing,
and make no pretence of condolence; though I feel for you--and you know
you can count on old Frank Henchman--don't you, Malcolm?" And again he
turns away to conceal his gallant sensibility and generous emotion.

"What does it matter to me?" bursts out the Marquis, garnishing his
conversation with the usual expletives which adorned his eloquence when
he was strongly moved. "What do I care for Barnes Newcome, and his
confounded affairs and family? I never want to see him again, but in the
light of a banker, when I go to the City, where he keeps my account. I
say, I have nothing to do with him, or all the Newcomes under the sun.
Why, one of them is a painter, and will paint my dog, Ratcatcher, by
Jove! or my horse, or my groom, if I give him the order. Do you think I
care for any one of the pack? It's not the fault of the Marchioness of
Farintosh that her family is not equal to mine. Besides two others in
England and Scotland, I should like to know what family is? I tell you
what, Hench. I bet you five to two, that before an hour is over my mother
will be here, and down on her knees to me, begging me to break off this
engagement."

"And what will you do, Farintosh?" asks Henchman, slowly, "Will you break
it off?"

"No!" shouts the Marquis. "Why shall I break off with the finest girl in
England--and the best-plucked one, and the cleverest and wittiest, and
the most beautiful creature, by Jove, that ever stepped, for no fault of
hers, and because her sister-in-law leaves her brother, who I know
treated her infernally? We have talked this matter over at home before. I
wouldn't dine with the fellow; though he was always asking me; nor meet,
except just out of civility, any of his confounded family. Lady Anne is
different. She is a lady, she is. She is a good woman: and Kew is a most
respectable man, though he is only a peer of George III.'s creation, and
you should hear how he speaks of Miss Newcome, though she refused him. I
should like to know who is to prevent me marrying Lady Anne Newcome's
daughter?"

"By Jove, you are a good-plucked fellow, Farintosh--give me your hand,
old boy," says Henchman.

"Heh! am I? You would have said, give me your hand, old boy, whichever
way I determined, Hench! I tell you, I ain't intellectual, and that sort
of thing. But I know my rank, and I know my place; and when a man of my
station gives his word, he sticks to it, sir; and my lady, and my
sisters, may go on their knees all round; and, by Jove, I won't flinch."

The justice of Lord Farintosh's views was speedily proved by the
appearance of his lordship's mother, Lady Glenlivat, whose arrival put a
stop to a conversation which Captain Francis Henchman has often
subsequently narrated. She besought to see her son in terms so urgent,
that the young nobleman could not be denied to his parent; and, no doubt,
a long and interesting interview took place, in which Lord Farintosh's
mother passionately implored him to break off a match upon which he was
as resolutely bent.

Was it a sense of honour, a longing desire to possess this young beauty,
and call her his own, or a fierce and profound dislike to being balked in
any object of his wishes, which actuated the young lord? Certainly he had
borne, very philosophically, delay after delay which had taken place in
the devised union; and being quite sure of his mistress, had not cared to
press on the marriage, but lingered over the dregs of his bachelor cup
complacently still. We all know in what an affecting farewell he took
leave of the associates of his vie de garcon: the speeches made (in both
languages), the presents distributed, the tears and hysterics of some of
the guests assembled; the cigar-boxes given over to this friend, the
ecrin of diamonds to that, et caetera, et caetera, et caetera. Don't we
know? If we don't it is not Henchman's fault, who has told the story of
Farintosh's betrothals a thousand and one times at his clubs, at the
houses where he is asked to dine, on account of his intimacy with the
nobility, among the young men of fashion, or no fashion, whom this
two-bottle Mentor, and burly admirer of youth, has since taken upon
himself to form. The farewell at Greenwich was so affecting that all
"traversed the cart," and took another farewell at Richmond, where there
was crying too, but it was Eucharis cried because fair Calypso wanted to
tear her eyes out; and where not only Telemachus (as was natural to his
age), but Mentor likewise, quaffed the wine-cup too freely. You are
virtuous, O reader! but there are still cakes and ale, Ask Henchman if
there be not. You will find him in the Park any afternoon; he will dine
with you if no better man ask him in the interval. He will tell you story
upon story regarding young Lord Farintosh, and his marriage, and what
happened before his marriage, and afterwards; and he will sigh, weep
almost at some moments, as he narrates their subsequent quarrel, and
Farintosh's unworthy conduct, and tells you how he formed that young man.
My uncle and Captain Henchman disliked each other very much, I am sorry
to say--sorry to add that it was very amusing to hear either one of them
speak of the other.

Lady Glenlivat, according to the Captain, then, had no success in the
interview with her son; who, unmoved by the maternal tears, commands, and
entreaties, swore he would marry Miss Newcome, and that no power on earth
should prevent him. "As if trying to thwart that man could ever prevent
his having his way!" ejaculated his quondam friend.

But on the next day, after ten thousand men in clubs and coteries had
talked the news over; after the evening had repeated and improved the
delightful theme of our "morning contemporaries;" after Calypso and
Eucharis driving together in the Park, and reconciled now, had kissed
their hands to Lord Farintosh, and made him their compliments--after a
night of natural doubt, disturbance, defiance, fury--as men whispered to
each other at the club where his lordship dined, and at the theatre where
he took his recreation--after an awful time at breakfast in which Messrs.
Bowman, valet, and Todhunter and Henchman, captains of the Farintosh
bodyguard, all got their share of kicks and growling--behold Lady
Glenlivat came back to the charge again; and this time with such force
that poor Lord Farintosh was shaken indeed.

Her ladyship's ally was no other than Miss Newcome herself; from whom
Lord Farintosh's mother received, by that day's post, a letter, which she
was commissioned to read to her son.


"Dear Madam" (wrote the young lady in her firmest handwriting)--"Mamma is
at this moment in a state of such grief and dismay at the cruel
misfortune and humiliation which has just befallen our family, that she
is really not able to write to you as she ought, and this task, painful
as it is, must be mine. Dear Lady Glenlivat, the kindness and confidence
which I have ever received from you and yours, merit truth, and most
grateful respect and regard from me. And I feel after the late fatal
occurrence, what I have often and often owned to myself though I did not
dare to acknowledge it, that I ought to release Lord F., at once and for
ever, from an engagement which he could never think of maintaining with a
family so unfortunate as ours. I thank him with all my heart for his
goodness in bearing with my humours so long; if I have given him pain, as
I know I have sometimes, I beg his pardon, and would do so on my knees. I
hope and pray he may be happy, as I feared he never could be with me. He
has many good and noble qualities; and, in bidding him farewell, I trust
I may retain his friendship, and that he will believe in the esteem and
gratitude of your most sincere,                  Ethel Newcome."


A copy of this farewell letter was seen by a lady who happened to be a
neighbour of Miss Newcome's when the family misfortune occurred, and to
whom, in her natural dismay and grief, the young lady fled for comfort
and consolation. "Dearest Mrs. Pendennis," wrote Miss Ethel to my wife,
"I hear you are at Rosebury; do, do come to your affectionate E. N." The
next day, it was--"Dearest Laura--If you can, pray, pray come to Newcome
this morning. I want very much to speak to you about the poor children,
to consult you about something most important." Madame de Moncontour's
pony-carriage was constantly trotting between Rosebury and Newcome in
these days of calamity.

And my wife, as in duty bound, gave me full reports of all that happened
in that house of mourning. On the very day of the flight, Lady Anne, her
daughter, and some others of her family arrived at Newcome. The deserted
little girl, Barnes's eldest child, ran, with tears and cries of joy, to
her Aunt Ethel, whom she had always loved better than her mother; and
clung to her and embraced her; and, in her artless little words, told her
that mamma had gone away, and that Ethel should be her mamma now. Very
strongly moved by the misfortune, as by the caresses and affection of the
poor orphaned creature, Ethel took the little girl to her heart, and
promised to be a mother to her, and that she would not leave her; in
which pious resolve I scarcely need say Laura strengthened her, when, at
her young friend's urgent summons, my wife came to her.

The household at Newcome was in a state of disorganisation after the
catastrophe. Two of Lady Clara's servants; it has been stated already,
went away with her. The luckless master of the house was lying wounded in
the neighbouring town. Lady Anne Newcome, his mother, was terribly
agitated by the news, which was abruptly broken to her, of the flight of
her daughter-in-law and her son's danger. Now she thought of flying to
Newcome to nurse him; and then feared lest she should be ill received by
the invalid--indeed, ordered by Sir Barnes to go home, and not to bother
him. So at home Lady Anne remained, where the thoughts of the sufferings
she had already undergone in that house, of Sir Barnes's cruel behaviour
to her at her last visit, which he had abruptly requested her to shorten,
of the happy days which she had passed as mistress of that house and wife
of the defunct Sir Brian; the sight of that departed angel's picture in
the dining-room and wheel-chair in the gallery; the recollection of
little Barnes as a cherub of a child in that very gallery, and pulled out
of the fire by a nurse in the second year of his age, when he was all
that a fond mother could wish--these incidents and reminiscences so
agitated Lady Anne Newcome, that she, for her part, went off in a series
of hysterical fits, and acted as one distraught: her second daughter
screamed in sympathy with her and Miss Newcome had to take the command of
the whole of this demented household, hysterical mamma and sister,
mutineering servants, and shrieking abandoned nursery, and bring young
people and old to peace and quiet.

On the morrow after his little concussion Sir Barnes Newcome came home,
not much hurt in body, but woefully afflicted in temper, and venting his
wrath upon everybody round about him in that strong language which he
employed when displeased; and under which his valet, his housekeeper, his
butler, his farm-bailiff, his lawyer, his doctor, his dishevelled mother
herself--who rose from her couch and her sal-volatile to fling herself
round her dear boy's knees--all had to suffer. Ethel Newcome, the
Baronet's sister, was the only person in his house to whom Sir Barnes did
not utter oaths or proffer rude speeches. He was afraid of offending her
or encountering that resolute spirit, and lapsed into a surly silence in
her presence. Indistinct maledictions growled about Sir Barnes's chair
when he beheld my wife's pony-carriage drive up; and he asked what
brought her here? But Ethel sternly told her brother that Mrs. Pendennis
came at her particular request, and asked him whether he supposed anybody
could come into that house for pleasure now, or for any other motive but
kindness? Upon which, Sir Barnes fairly burst out into tears,
intermingled with execrations against his enemies and his own fate, and
assertions that he was the most miserable beggar alive. He would not see
his children: but with more tears he would implore Ethel never to leave
them, and, anon, would ask what he should do when she married, and he was
left alone in that infernal house?

T. Potts, Esq., of the Newcome Independent, used to say afterwards that
the Baronet was in the direst terror of another meeting with Lord
Highgate, and kept a policeman at the lodge-gate, and a second in the
kitchen, to interpose in event of a collision. But Mr. Potts made this
statement in after days, when the quarrel between his party and paper and
Sir Barnes Newcome was flagrant. Five or six days after the meeting of
the two rivals in Newcome market-place, Sir Barnes received a letter from
the friend of Lord Highgate, informing him that his lordship, having
waited for him according to promise, had now left England, and presumed
that the differences between them were to be settled by their respective
lawyers--infamous behaviour on a par with the rest of Lord Highgate's
villainy, the Baronet said. "When the scoundrel knew I could lift my
pistol arm," Barnes said, "Lord Highgate fled the country;"--thus hinting
that death, and not damages, were what he intended to seek from his
enemy.

After that interview in which Ethel communicated to Laura her farewell
letter to Lord Farintosh, my wife returned to Rosebury with an
extraordinary brightness and gaiety in her face and her demeanour. She
pressed Madame de Moncontour's hands with such warmth, she blushed and
looked so handsome, she sang and talked so gaily, that our host was
struck by her behaviour, and paid her husband more compliments regarding
her beauty, amiability, and other good qualities, than need be set down
here. It may be that I like Paul de Florac so much, in spite of certain
undeniable faults of character, because of his admiration for my wife.
She was in such a hurry to talk to me, that night, that Paul's game and
Nicotian amusements were cut short by her visit to the billiard-room; and
when we were alone by the cosy dressing-room fire, she told me what had
happened during the day. Why should Ethel's refusal of Lord Farintosh
have so much elated my wife?

"Ah!" cries Mrs. Pendennis, "she has a generous nature, and the world has
not had time to spoil it. Do you know there are many points that she
never has thought of--I would say problems that she has to work out for
herself, only you, Pen, do not like us poor ignorant women to use such a
learned word as problems? Life and experience force things upon her mind
which others learn from their parents or those who educate them, but, for
which she has never had any teachers. Nobody has ever told her, Arthur,
that it was wrong to marry without love, or pronounce lightly those awful
vows which we utter before God at the altar. I believe, if she knew that
her life was futile, it is but of late she has thought it could be
otherwise, and that she might mend it. I have read (besides that poem of
Goethe of which you are so fond) in books of Indian travels of Bayaderes,
dancing-girls brought up by troops round about the temples, whose calling
is to dance, and wear jewels, and look beautiful; I believe they are
quite respected in--in Pagoda-land. They perform before the priests in
the pagodas; and the Brahmins and the Indian princes marry them. Can we
cry out against these poor creatures, or against the custom of their
country? It seems to me that young women in our world are bred up in a
way not very different. What they do they scarcely know to be wrong. They
are educated for the world, and taught to display: their mothers will
give them to the richest suitor, as they themselves were given before.
How can these think seriously, Arthur, of souls to be saved, weak hearts
to be kept out of temptation, prayers to be uttered, and a better world
to be held always in view, when the vanities of this one are all their
thought and scheme? Ethel's simple talk made me smile sometimes, do you
know, and her strenuous way of imparting her discoveries. I thought of
the shepherd boy who made a watch, and found on taking it into the town
how very many watches there were, and how much better than his. But the
poor child has had to make hers for herself, such as it is; and, indeed,
is employed now in working on it. She told me very artlessly her little
history, Arthur; it affected me to hear her simple talk, and--and I
blessed God for our mother, my dear, and that my early days had had a
better guide.

"You know that for a long time it was settled that she was to marry her
cousin, Lord Kew. She was bred to that notion from her earliest youth;
about which she spoke as we all can about our early days. They were
spent, she said, in the nursery and schoolroom for the most part. She was
allowed to come to her mother's dressing-room, and sometimes to see more
of her during the winter at Newcome. She describes her mother as always
the kindest of the kind: but from very early times the daughter must have
felt her own superiority, I think, though she does not speak of it. You
should see her at home now in their dreadful calamity. She seems the only
person of the house who keeps her head.

"She told very nicely and modestly how it was Lord Kew who parted from
her, not she who had dismissed him, as you know the Newcomes used to say.
I have heard that--oh--that man Sir Barnes say so myself. She says humbly
that her cousin Kew was a great deal too good for her; and so is every
one almost, she adds, poor thing!"

"Poor every one! Did you ask about him, Laura?" said Mr. Pendennis.

"No; I did not venture. She looked at me out of her downright eyes, and
went on with her little tale. 'I was scarcely more than a child then,'
she continued, 'and though I liked Kew very much--who would not like such
a generous honest creature? I felt somehow that I was taller than my
cousin, and as if I ought not to marry him, or should make him unhappy if
I did. When poor papa used to talk, we children remarked that mamma
hardly listened to him; and so we did not respect him as we should, and
Barnes was especially scoffing and odious with him. Why, when he was a
boy, he used to sneer at papa openly before us younger ones. Now Harriet
admires everything that Kew says, and that makes her a great deal happier
at being with him.' And then," added Mrs. Pendennis, "Ethel said, 'I hope
you respect your husband, Laura: depend on it, you will be happier if you
do.' Was not that a fine discovery of Ethel's, Mr. Pen?

"'Clara's terror of Barnes frightened me when I stayed in the house,'
Ethel went on. 'I am sure I would not tremble before any man in the world
as she did. I saw early that she used to deceive him, and tell him lies,
Laura. I do not mean lies of words alone, but lies of looks and actions.
Oh! I do not wonder at her flying from him. He was dreadful to be with:
cruel, and selfish, and cold. He was made worse by marrying a woman he
did not love; as she was, by that unfortunate union with him. Suppose he
had found a clever woman who could have controlled him, and amused him,
and whom he and his friends could have admired, instead of poor Clara,
who made his home wearisome, and trembled when he entered it? Suppose she
could have married that unhappy man to whom she was attached early? I was
frightened, Laura, to think how ill this worldly marriage had prospered.

"'My poor grandmother, whenever I spoke upon such a subject, would break
out into a thousand gibes and sarcasms, and point to many of our friends
who had made love-matches, and were quarrelling now as fiercely as though
they had never loved each other. You remember that dreadful case in
France Duc de ----, who murdered his duchess? That was a love-match, and
I can remember the sort of screech with which Lady Kew used to speak
about it; and of the journal which the poor duchess kept, and in which
she noted down all her husband's ill-behaviour.'"

"Hush, Laura! Do you remember where we are? If the Princess were to put
down all Florac's culpabilities in an album, what a ledger it would be--
as big as Dr. Portman's Chrysostom!" But this was parenthetical: and
after a smile, and a little respite, the young woman proceeded in her
narration of her friend's history.

"'I was willing enough to listen,' Ethel said, 'to grandmamma then: for
we are glad of an excuse to do what we like; and I liked admiration, and
rank, and great wealth, Laura; and Lord Farintosh offered me these. I
liked to surpass my companions, and I saw them so eager in pursuing him!
You cannot think, Laura, what meannesses women in the world will commit--
mothers and daughters too, in the pursuit of a person of his great rank.
Those Miss Burrs, you should have seen them at the country-houses where
we visited together, and how they followed him; how they would meet him
in the parks and shrubberies; how they liked smoking though I knew it
made them ill; how they were always finding pretexts for getting near
him! Oh, it was odious!'"

I would not willingly interrupt the narrative, but let the reporter be
allowed here to state that at this point of Miss Newcome's story (which
my wife gave with a very pretty imitation of the girl's manner), we both
burst out laughing so loud that little Madame de Moncontour put her head
into the drawing-room and asked what we was a-laughing at? We did not
tell our hostess that poor Ethel and her grandmother had been accused of
doing the very same thing for which she found fault with the Misses Burr.
Miss Newcome thought herself quite innocent, or how should she have cried
out at the naughty behaviour of other people?

"'Wherever we went, however,' resumed my wife's young penitent, 'it was
easy to see, I think I may say so without vanity, who was the object of
Lord Farintosh's attention. He followed us everywhere; and we could not
go upon any visit in England or Scotland but he was in the same house.
Grandmamma's whole heart was bent upon that marriage, and when he
proposed for me I do not disown that I was very pleased and vain.

"'It is in these last months that I have heard about him more, and
learned to know him better--him and myself too, Laura. Some one--some one
you know, and whom I shall always love as a brother--reproached me in
former days for a worldliness about which you talk too sometimes. But it
is not worldly to give yourself up for your family, is it? One cannot
help the rank in which one is born, and surely it is but natural and
proper to marry in it. Not that Lord Farintosh thinks me or any one of
his rank.' (Here Miss Ethel laughed.) 'He is the Sultan, and we, every
unmarried girl in society, is his humblest slave. His Majesty's opinions
upon this subject did not suit me, I can assure you: I have no notion of
such pride!

"'But I do not disguise from you, dear Laura, that after accepting him,
as I came to know him better, and heard him, and heard of him, and talked
with him daily, and understood Lord Farintosh's character, I looked
forward with more and more doubt to the day when I was to become his
wife. I have not learned to respect him in these months that I have known
him, and during which there has been mourning in our families. I will not
talk to you about him; I have no right, have I?--to hear him speak out
his heart, and tell it to any friend. He said he liked me because I
did not flatter him. Poor Malcolm! they all do. What was my acceptance of
him, Laura, but flattery? Yes, flattery, and servility to rank, and a
desire to possess it. Would I have accepted plain Malcolm Roy? I sent
away a better than him, Laura.

"'These things have been brooding in my mind for some months past. I must
have been but an ill companion for him, and indeed he bore with my
waywardness much more kindly than I ever thought possible; and when four
days since we came to this sad house, where he was to have joined us, and
I found only dismay and wretchedness, and these poor children deprived of
a mother, whom I pity, God help her, for she has been made so miserable--
and is now and must be to the end of her days; as I lay awake, thinking
of my own future life, and that I was going to marry, as poor Clara had
married, but for an establishment and a position in life; I, my own
mistress, and not obedient by nature, or a slave to others as that poor
creature was--I thought to myself, why shall I do this? Now Clara has
left us, and is, as it were, dead to us who made her so unhappy, let me
be the mother to her orphans. I love the little girl, and she has always
loved me, and came crying to me that day when we arrived, and put her
dear little arms round my neck, and said, 'You won't go away, will you,
Aunt Ethel?' in her sweet voice. And I will stay with her; and will try
and learn myself that I may teach her; and learn to be good too--better
than I have been. Will praying help me, Laura? I did. I am sure I was
right, and that it is my duty to stay here.'"

Laura was greatly moved as she told her friend's confession; and when the
next day at church the clergyman read the opening words of the service I
thought a peculiar radiance and happiness beamed from her bright face.

         *     *     *     *     *     *

Some subsequent occurrences in the history of this branch of the Newcome
family I am enabled to report from the testimony of the same informant
who has just given us an account of her own feelings and life. Miss Ethel
and my wife were now in daily communication, and "my-dearesting" each
other with that female fervour, which, cold men of the world as we are--
not only chary of warm expressions of friendship, but averse to
entertaining warm feelings at all--we surely must admire in persons of
the inferior sex, whose loves grow up and reach the skies in a night; who
kiss, embrace, console, call each other by Christian names, in that
sweet, kindly sisterhood of Misfortune and Compassion who are always
entering into partnership here in life. I say the world is full of Miss
Nightingales; and we, sick and wounded in our private Scutaris, have
countless nurse-tenders. I did not see my wife ministering to the
afflicted family at Newcome Park; but I can fancy her there amongst the
women and children, her prudent counsel, her thousand gentle offices, her
apt pity and cheerfulness, the love and truth glowing in her face, and
inspiring her words, movements, demeanour.

Mrs. Pendennis's husband for his part did not attempt to console Sir
Barnes Newcome Newcome, Baronet. I never professed to have a
halfpennyworth of pity at that gentleman's command. Florac, who owed
Barnes his principality and his present comforts in life, did make some
futile efforts at condolence, but was received by the Baronet with such
fierceness, and evident ill-humour, that he did not care to repeat his
visits, and allowed him to vent his curses and peevishness on his own
immediate dependents. We used to ask Laura on her return to Rosebury from
her charity visits to Newcome about the poor suffering master of the
house. She faltered and stammered in describing him and what she heard of
him; she smiled, I grieve to say, for this unfortunate lady cannot help
having a sense of humour; and we could not help laughing outright
sometimes at the idea of that discomfited wretch, that overbearing
creature overborne in his turn--which laughter Mrs. Laura used to chide
as very naughty and unfeeling. When we went into Newcome the landlord of
the King's Arms looked knowing and quizzical: Tom Potts grinned at me and
rubbed his hands. "This business serves the paper better than Mr.
Warrington's articles," says Mr. Potts. "We have sold no end of
Independents; and if you polled the whole borough, I bet that five to one
would say Sir Screwcome Screwcome was served right. By the way, what's up
about the Marquis of Farintosh, Mr. Pendennis? He arrived at the Arms
last night; went over to the Park this morning, and is gone back to town
by the afternoon train."

What had happened between the Marquis of Farintosh and Miss Newcome I am
enabled to know from the report of Miss Newcome's confidante. On the
receipt of that letter of conge which has been mentioned in a former
chapter, his lordship must have been very much excited, for he left town
straightway by that evening's mail, and on the next morning, after a few
hours of rest at his inn, was at Newcome lodge-gate demanding to see the
Baronet.

On that morning it chanced that Sir Barnes had left home with Mr Speer,
his legal adviser; and hereupon the Marquis asked to see Miss Newcome;
nor could the lodge-keeper venture to exclude so distinguished a person
from the Park. His lordship drove up to the house, and his name was taken
to Miss Ethel. She turned very pale when she heard it; and my wife
divined at once who was her visitor. Lady Anne had not left her room as
yet. Laura Pendennis remained in command of the little conclave of
children, with whom the two ladies were sitting when Lord Farintosh
arrived. Little Clara wanted to go with her aunt as she rose to leave the
room--the child could scarcely be got to part from her now.

At the end of an hour the carriage was seen driving away, and Ethel
returned looking as pale as before, and red about the eyes. Miss Clara's
mutton-chop for dinner coming in at the same time, the child was not so
presently eager for her aunt's company. Aunt Ethel cut up the mutton-chop
very neatly, and then, having seen the child comfortably seated at her
meal, went with her friend into a neighbouring apartment (of course, with
some pretext of showing Laura a picture, or a piece of china, or a new
child's frock, or with some other hypocritical pretence by which the
ingenuous female attendants pretended to be utterly blinded), and there,
I have no doubt, before beginning her story, dearest Laura embraced
dearest Ethel, and vice versa.

"He is gone!" at length gasps dearest Ethel.

"Pour toujours? poor young man!" sighs dearest Laura. "Was he very
unhappy, Ethel?"

"He was more angry," Ethel answers. "He had a right to be hurt, but not
to speak as he did. He lost his temper quite at last, and broke out in
the most frantic reproaches. He forgot all respect and even gentlemanlike
behaviour. Do you know he used words--words such as Barnes uses sometimes
when he is angry! and dared this language to me! I was sorry till then,
very sorry, and very much moved; but I know more than ever, now, that I
was right in refusing Lord Farintosh."

Dearest Laura now pressed for an account of all that had happened, which
may be briefly told as follows. Feeling very deeply upon the subject
which brought him to Miss Newcome, it was no wonder that Lord Farintosh
spoke at first in a way which moved her. He said he thought her letter to
his mother was very rightly written under the circumstances, and thanked
her for her generosity in offering to release him from his engagement.
But the affair--the painful circumstance of Highgate, and that--which had
happened in the Newcome family, was no fault of Miss Newcome's, and Lord
Farintosh could not think of holding her accountable. His friends had
long urged him to marry, and it was by his mother's own wish that the
engagement was formed, which he was determined to maintain. In his course
through the world (of which he was getting very tired), he had never seen
a woman, a lady who was so--you understand, Ethel--whom he admired so
much, who was likely to make so good a wife for him as you are. "You
allude," he continued, "to differences we have had--and we have had them
--but many of them, I own, have been from my fault. I have been bred up
in a way different to most young men. I cannot help it if I have had
temptations to which other men are not exposed; and have been placed by--
by Providence--in a high rank of life; I am sure if you share it with me
you will adorn it, and be in every way worthy of it, and make me much
better than I have been. If you knew what a night of agony I passed after
my mother read that letter to me--I know you'd pity me, Ethel,--I know
you would. The idea of losing you makes me wild. My mother was dreadfully
alarmed when she saw the state I was in; so was the doctor--I assure you
he was. And I had no rest at all, and no peace of mind, until I
determined to come down to you; and say that I adored you, and you only;
and that I would hold to my engagement in spite of everything--and prove
to you that--that no man in the world could love you more sincerely than
I do." Here the young gentleman was so overcome that he paused in his
speech, and gave way to an emotion, for which, surely no man who has been
in the same condition with Lord Farintosh will blame him.

Miss Newcome was also much touched by this exhibition of natural feeling;
and, I dare say, it was at this time that her eyes showed the first
symptoms of that malady of which the traces were visible an hour after.

"You are very generous and kind to me, Lord Farintosh," she said. "Your
constancy honours me very much, and proves how good and loyal you are;
but--but do not think hardly of me for saying that the more I have
thought of what has happened here,--of the wretched consequences of
interested marriages; the long union growing each day so miserable, that
at last it becomes intolerable and is burst asunder, as in poor Clara's
case;--the more I am resolved not to commit that first fatal step of
entering into a marriage without--without the degree of affection which
people who take that vow ought to feel for one another."

"Affection! Can you doubt it? Gracious heavens, I adore you! Isn't my
being here a proof that I do?" cries the young lady's lover.

"But I?" answered the girl. "I have asked my own heart that question
before now. I have thought to myself,--If he comes after all,--if his
affection for me survives this disgrace of our family, as it has, and
every one of us should be thankful to you--ought I not to show at least
gratitude for so much kindness and honour, and devote myself to one who
makes such sacrifices for me? But, before all things I owe you the truth,
Lord Farintosh. I never could make you happy; I know I could not: nor
obey you as you are accustomed to be obeyed; nor give you such a devotion
as you have a right to expect from your wife. I thought I might once. I
can't now! I know that I took you because you were rich, and had a great
name; not because you were honest, and attached to me as you show
yourself to be. I ask your pardon for the deceit I practised on you.--
Look at Clara, poor child, and her misery! My pride, I know, would never
have let me fall as far as she has done; but oh! I am humiliated to think
that I could have been made to say I would take the first step in that
awful career."

"What career, in God's name?" cries the astonished suitor. "Humiliated,
Ethel? Who's going to humiliate you? I suppose there is no woman in
England who need be humiliated by becoming my wife. I should like to see
the one that I can't pretend to--or to royal blood if I like: it's not
better than mine. Humiliated, indeed! That is news. Ha! ha! You don't
suppose that your pedigree, which I know all about, and the Newcome
family, with your barber-surgeon to Edward the Confessor, are equal
to----"

"To yours? No. It is not very long that I have learned to disbelieve in
that story altogether. I fancy it was an odd whim of my poor father's,
and that our family were quite poor people.

"I knew it," said Lord Farintosh. "Do you suppose there was not plenty of
women to tell it me?"

"It was not because we were poor that I am ashamed," Ethel went on. That
cannot be our fault, though some of us seem think it is, as they hide the
truth so. One of my uncles used to tell me that my grandfather's father
was a labourer in Newcome: but I was a child then, and liked to believe
the prettiest story best."

"As if it matters!" cries Lord Farintosh.

"As if it matters in your wife? n'est-ce pas? I never thought that it
would. I should have told you, as it was my duty to tell you all. It was
not my ancestors you cared for; and it is you yourself that your wife
must swear before heaven to love."

"Of course it's me," answers the young man, not quite understanding the
train of ideas in his companion's mind. "And I've given up everything--
everything--and have broken off with my old habits and--and things, you
know--and intend to lead a regular life--and will never go to
Tattersall's again; nor bet a shilling; nor touch another cigar if you
like--that is, if you don't like; for I love you so, Ethel--I do, with
all my heart I do!"

"You are very generous and kind, Lord Farintosh," Ethel said. "It is
myself, not you, I doubt. Oh, I am humiliated to make such a confession!"

"How humiliated?" Ethel withdrew the hand which the young nobleman
endeavoured to seize.

"If," she continued, "if I found it was your birth, and your name, and
your wealth that I coveted, and had nearly taken, ought I not to feel
humiliated, and ask pardon of you and of God? Oh, what perjuries poor
Clara was made to speak,--and see what has befallen her! We stood by and
heard her without being shocked. We applauded even. And to what shame and
misery we brought her! Why did her parents and mine consign her to such
ruin! She might have lived pure and happy but for us. With her example
before me--not her flight, poor child--I am not afraid of that happening
to me--but her long solitude, the misery of her wasted years,--my
brother's own wretchedness and faults aggravated a hundredfold by his
unhappy union with her--I must pause while it is yet time, and recall a
promise which I know I should make you unhappy if I fulfilled. I ask your
pardon that I deceived you, Lord Farintosh, and feel ashamed for myself
that I could have consented to do so."

"Do you mean," cried the young Marquis, "that after my conduct to you--
after my loving you, so that even this--this disgrace in your family
don't prevent my going on--after my mother has been down on her knees to
me to break off, and I wouldn't--no, I wouldn't--after all White's
sneering at me and laughing at me, and all my friends, friends of my
family, who would go to--go anywhere for me, advising me, and saying,
'Farintosh, what a fool you are! break off this match,'--and I wouldn't
back out, because I loved you so, by Heaven, and because, as a man and a
gentleman, when I give my word I keep it--do you mean that you throw me
over? It's a shame--it's a shame!" And again there were tears of rage and
anguish in Farintosh's eyes.

"What I did was a shame, my lord," Ethel said, humbly; "and again I ask
your pardon for it. What I do now is only to tell you the truth, and to
grieve with all my soul for the falsehood--yes the falsehood--which I
told you, and which has given your kind heart such cruel pain."

"Yes, it was a falsehood!" the poor lad cried out. "You follow a fellow,
and you make a fool of him, and you make him frantic in love with you,
and then you fling him over! I wonder you can look me in the face after
such an infernal treason. You've done it to twenty fellows before, I know
you have. Everybody said so, and warned me. You draw them on, and get
them to be in love, and then you fling them away. Am I to go back to
London and be made the laughing-stock of the whole town--I, who might
marry any woman in Europe, and who am at the head of the nobility of
England?"

"Upon my word, if you will believe me after deceiving you once," Ethel
interposed, still very humbly, "I will never say that it was I who
withdrew from you, and that it was not you who refused me. What has
happened here fully authorises you. Let the rupture of the engagement
come from you, my lord. Indeed, indeed, I would spare you all the pain I
can. I have done you wrong enough already, Lord Farintosh."

And now the Marquis burst forth with tears and imprecations, wild cries
of anger, love, and disappointment, so fierce and incoherent that the
lady to whom they were addressed did not repeat them to her confidante.
Only she generously charged Laura to remember, if ever she heard the
matter talked of in the world, that it was Lord Farintosh's family which
broke off the marriage; but that his lordship had acted most kindly and
generously throughout the whole affair.

He went back to London in such a state of fury, and raved so wildly
amongst his friends against the whole Newcome family, that many men knew
what the case really was. But all women averred that that intriguing
worldly Ethel Newcome, the apt pupil of her wicked old grandmother, had
met with a deserved rebuff; that, after doing everything in her power to
catch the great parti, Lord Farintosh, who had long been tired of her,
flung her over, not liking the connexion; and that she was living out of
the world now at Newcome, under the pretence of taking care of that
unfortunate Lady Clara's children, but really because she was pining away
for Lord Farintosh, who, as we all know, married six months afterwards.




CHAPTER LX

In which we write to the Colonel


Deeming that her brother Barnes had cares enough of his own presently at
hand, Ethel did not think fit to confide to him the particulars of her
interview with Lord Farintosh; nor even was poor Lady Anne informed that
she had lost a noble son-in-law. The news would come to both of them soon
enough, Ethel thought; and indeed, before many hours were over, it
reached Sir Barnes Newcome in a very abrupt and unpleasant way. He had
dismal occasion now to see his lawyers every day; and on the day after
Lord Farintosh's abrupt visit and departure, Sir Barnes, going into
Newcome upon his own unfortunate affairs, was told by his attorney, Mr.
Speers, how the Marquis of Farintosh had slept for a few hours at the
King's Arms, and returned to town the same evening by the train. We may
add, that his lordship had occupied the very room in which Lord Highgate
had previously slept; and Mr. Taplow recommends the bed accordingly, and
shows pride it with to this very day.

Much disturbed by this intelligence, Sir Barnes was making his way to his
cheerless home in the evening, when near his own gate he overtook another
messenger. This was the railway porter, who daily brought telegraphic
messages from his uncle and the London bank. The message of that day
was,--"Consols, so-and-so. French Rentes, so much. Highgate's and
Farintosh's accounts withdrawn." The wretched keeper of the lodge owned,
with trembling, in reply to the curses and queries of his employer, that
a gentleman, calling himself the Marquis of Farintosh, had gone up to the
house the day before, and come away an hour afterwards,--did not like to
speak to Sir Barnes when he came home, Sir Barnes looked so bad like.

Now, of course, there could be no concealment from her brother, and Ethel
and Barnes had a conversation, in which the latter expressed himself with
that freedom of language which characterised the head of the house of
Newcome. Madame de Moncontour's pony-chaise was in waiting at the hall
door, when the owner of the house entered it; and my wife was just taking
leave of Ethel and her little people when Sir Barnes Newcome entered the
lady's sitting-room.

The livid scowl with which Barnes greeted my wife surprised that lady,
though it did not induce her to prolong her visit to her friend. As Laura
took leave, she heard Sir Barnes screaming to the nurses to "take those
little beggars away," and she rightly conjectured that some more
unpleasantries had occurred to disturb this luckless gentleman's temper.

On the morrow, dearest Ethel's usual courier, one of the boys from the
lodge, trotted over on his donkey to dearest Laura at Rosebury, with one
of those missives which were daily passing between the ladies. This
letter said:--


"Barnes m'a fait une scene terrible hier. I was obliged to tell him
everything about Lord F., and to use the plainest language. At first, he
forbade you the house. He thinks that you have been the cause of F.'s
dismissal, and charged me, most unjustly, with a desire to bring back
poor C. N. I replied as became me, and told him fairly I would leave the
house if odious insulting charges were made against me, if my friends
were not received. He stormed, he cried, he employed his usual language,
--he was in a dreadful state. He relented and asked pardon. He goes to
town to-night by the mail-train. Of course you come as usual, dear, dear
Laura. I am miserable without you; and you know I cannot leave poor
mamma. Clarykin sends a thousand kisses to little Arty; and I am his
mother's always affectionate--E. N.

"Will the gentlemen like to shoot our pheasants? Please ask the Prince to
let Warren know when. I sent a brace to poor dear old Mrs. Mason, and had
such a nice letter from her!"


"And who is poor dear Mrs. Mason" asks Mr. Pendennis, as yet but
imperfectly acquainted with the history of the Newcomes.

And Laura told me--perhaps I had heard before, and forgotten--that Mrs.
Mason was an old nurse and pensioner of the Colonel's, and how he had
been to see her for the sake of old times; and how she was a great
favourite with Ethel; and Laura kissed her little son, and was
exceedingly bright, cheerful, and hilarious that evening, in spite of the
affliction under which her dear friends at Newcome were labouring.

People in country-houses should be exceedingly careful about their
blotting-paper. They should bring their own portfolios with them. If any
kind readers will bear this simple little hint in mind, how much mischief
may they save themselves,--nay, enjoy possibly, by looking at the pages
of the next portfolio in the next friend's bedroom in which they sleep.
From such a book I once cut out, in Charles Slyboots' well-known and
perfectly clear handwriting, the words, "Miss Emily Hartington, James
Street, Backingham Gate, London," and produced as legibly on the
blotting-paper as on the envelope which the postman delivered. After
showing the paper round to the company, I enclosed it in a note and sent
it to Mr. Slyboots, who married Miss Hartington three months afterwards.
In such a book at the club I read, as plainly as you may read this page,
a holograph page of the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres, which
informed the whole club of a painful and private circumstance, and said,
"My dear Green,--I am truly sorry that I shall not be able to take up the
bill for eight hundred and fifty-six pounds, which becomes due next
Tu----" and upon such a book, going to write a note in Madame de
Moncontour's drawing-room at Rosebury, what should I find but proofs that
my own wife was engaged in a clandestine correspondence with a gentleman
residing abroad!

"Colonel Newcome, C.B., Montagne de la Cour, Brussels," I read, in this
young woman's handwriting; and asked, turning round upon Laura, who
entered the room just as I discovered her guilt: "What have you been
writing to Colonel Newcome about, miss?"

"I wanted him to get me some lace," she said.

"To lace some nightcaps for me, didn't you, my dear? He is such a fine
judge of lace! If I had known you had been writing, I would have asked
you to send him a message. I want something from Brussels. Is the letter
--ahem--gone?" (In this artful way, you see, I just hinted that I should
like to see letter.).

"The letter is--ahem--gone," says Laura. "What do you want from Brussels,
Pen?"

"I want some Brussels sprouts, my love--they are so fine in their native
country."

"Shall I write to him to send the letter back?" palpitates poor little
Laura; for she thought her husband was offended, by using the ironic
method.

"No, you dear little woman! You need not send for letter the back: and
you need not tell me what was in it: and I will bet you a hundred yards
of lace to a cotton nightcap--and you know whether I, madam, am a man a
bonnet-de-coton--I will let you that I know what you have been writing
about, under pretence of a message about lace, to our Colonel."

"He promised to send it me. He really did. Lady Rockminster gave me
twenty pounds----" gasps Laura.

"Under pretence of lace, you have been sending over a love-message. You
want to see whether Clive is still of his old mind. You think the coast
is now clear, and that dearest Ethel may like him. You think Mrs. Mason
is growing very old and infirm, and the sight of her dear boy would----"

"Pen! Pen! did you open my letter?" cries Laura; and a laugh which could
afford to be good-humoured (followed by yet another expression of the
lips) ended this colloquy. No; Mr Pendennis did not see the letter--but
he knew the writer;--flattered himself that he knew women in general.

"Where did you get your experience of them, sir?" asks Mrs. Laura.
Question answered in the same manner as the previous demand.

"Well, my dear; and why should not the poor boy be made happy?" Laura
continues, standing very close up to her husband. "It is evident to me
that Ethel is fond of him. I would rather see her married to a good young
man whom she loves, than the mistress of a thousand palaces and coronets.
Suppose--suppose you had married Miss Amory, sir, what a wretched worldly
creature you would have been by this time; whereas now----"

"Now that I am the humble slave of a good woman there is some chance for
me," cries this model of husbands. "And all good women are match-makers,
as we know very well; and you have had this match in your heart ever
since you saw the two young people together. Now; madam, since I did not
see your letter to the Colonel--though I have guessed part of it--tell
me, what have you said in it? Have you by any chance told the Colonel
that the Farintosh alliance was broken off?"

Laura owned that she had hinted as much.

"You have not ventured to say that Ethel is well inclined to Clive?"

"Oh, no--oh dear, no!" But after much cross-examining and a little
blushing on Laura's part, she is brought to confess that she has asked
the Colonel whether he will not come and see Mrs. Mason, who is pining to
see him, and is growing very old. And I find out that she has been to see
this Mrs. Mason; that she and Miss Newcome visited the old lady the day
before yesterday; and Laura thought from the manner in which Ethel looked
at Clive's picture, hanging up in the parlour of his father's old friend,
that she really was very much, etc. etc. So, the letter being gone, Mrs.
Pendennis is most eager about the answer to it, and day after day
examines the bag, and is provoked that it brings no letter bearing the
Brussels post-mark.

Madame de Moncontour seems perfectly well to know what Mrs. Laura has
been doing and is hoping. "What, no letters again to-day? Ain't it
provoking?" she cries. She is in the conspiracy too; and presently Florac
is one of the initiated. "These women wish to bacler a marriage between
the belle miss and le petit Claive," Florac announces to me. He pays the
highest compliments to Miss Newcome's person, as he speaks regarding the
marriage. "I continue to adore your Anglaises," he is pleased to say.
"What of freshness, what of beauty, what roses! And then they are so
adorably good! Go, Pendennis, thou art a happy coquin!" Mr. Pendennis
does not say No. He has won the twenty-thousand-pound prize; and we know
there are worse blanks in that lottery.




CHAPTER LXI

In which we are introduced to a New Newcome


No answer came to Mrs. Pendennis's letter to Colonel Newcome at Brussels,
for the Colonel was absent from that city, and at the time when Laura
wrote was actually in London, whither affairs of his own had called him.
A note from George Warrington acquainted me with this circumstance; he
mentioned that he and the Colonel had dined together at Bays's on the day
previous, and that the Colonel seemed to be in the highest spirits. High
spirits about what? This news put Laura in a sad perplexity. Should she
write and tell him to get his letters from Brussels? She would in five
minutes have found some other pretext for writing to Colonel Newcome, had
not her husband sternly cautioned the young woman to leave the matter
alone.

The more readily perhaps because he had quarrelled with his nephew Sir
Barnes, Thomas Newcome went to visit his brother Hobson and his
sister-in-law; bent on showing that there was no division between him and
this branch of his family. And you may suppose that the admirable woman
just named had a fine occasion for her virtuous conversational powers in
discoursing upon the painful event which had just happened to Sir Barnes.
When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson's homilies must
have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have groaned and lamented,
gathered its children about its knees, wept over them and washed them;
gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the knocker; confabulated with
its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces to its husband; and bored the
whole house! The punishment of worldliness and vanity, the evil of
marrying out of one's station, how these points must have been explained
and enlarged on! Surely the Peerage was taken off the drawing-room table
and removed to papa's study, where it could not open, as it used
naturally once, to Highgate, Baron, or Farintosh, Marquis of, being shut
behind wires and closely jammed in on an upper shelf between Blackstone's
Commentaries and the Farmer's Magazine! The breaking of the engagement
with the Marquis of Farintosh was known in Bryanstone Square; and you may
be sure interpreted by Mrs. Hobson in the light the most disadvantageous
to Ethel Newcome. A young nobleman--with grief and pain Ethel's aunt must
own the fact--a young man of notoriously dissipated habits but of great
wealth and rank, had been pursued by the unhappy Lady Kew--Mrs. Hobson
would not say by her niece, that were too dreadful--had been pursued, and
followed, and hunted down in the most notorious manner, and finally made
to propose! Let Ethel's conduct and punishment be a warning to my dearest
girls, and let them bless Heaven they have parents who are not worldly!
After all the trouble and pains, Mrs. Hobson did not say disgrace, the
Marquis takes the very first pretext to break off the match, and leaves
the unfortunate girl for ever!

And now we have to tell of the hardest blow which fell upon poor Ethel,
and this was that her good uncle Thomas Newcome believed the charges
against her. He was willing enough to listen now to anything which was
said against that branch of the family. With such a traitor,
double-dealer, dastard as Barnes at its head, what could the rest of the
race be? When the Colonel offered to endow Ethel and Clive with every
shilling he had in the world, had not Barnes, the arch-traitor,
temporised and told him falsehoods, and hesitated about throwing him off
until the Marquis had declared himself? Yes. The girl he and poor Clive
loved so was ruined by her artful relatives, was unworthy of his
affection and his boy's, was to be banished, like her worthless brother,
out of his regard for ever. And the man she had chosen in preference to
his Clive!--a roue, a libertine, whose extravagances and dissipations
were the talk of every club, who had no wit, nor talents, not even
constancy (for had he not taken the first opportunity to throw her off?)
to recommend him--only a great title and a fortune wherewith to bribe
her! For shame, for shame! Her engagement to this man was a blot upon
her--the rupture only a just punishment and humiliation. Poor unhappy
girl! let her take care of her wretched brother's abandoned children,
give up the world, and amend her life.

This was the sentence Thomas Newcome delivered: a righteous and
tender-hearted man, as we know, but judging in this case wrongly, and
bearing much too hardly, as we who know her betters must think, upon one
who had her faults certainly, but whose  errors were not all of her own
making. Who set her on the path she walked in? It was her parents' hands
which led her, and her parents' voices which commanded her to accept the
temptation set before her. What did she know of the character of the man
selected to be her husband? Those who should have known better brought
him to her, and vouched for him. Noble, unhappy young creature! are you
the first of your sisterhood who has been bidden to traffic your beauty,
to crush and slay your honest natural affections, to sell your truth and
your life for rank and title? But the Judge who sees not the outward acts
merely, but their causes, and views not the wrong alone, but the
temptations, struggles, ignorance of erring creatures, we know has a
different code to ours--to ours, who fall upon the fallen, who fawn upon
the prosperous so, who administer our praises and punishments so
prematurely, who now strike so hard, and, anon, spare so shamelessly.

Our stay with our hospitable friends at Rosebury was perforce coming to a
close, for indeed weeks after weeks had passed since we had been under
their pleasant roof; and in spite of dearest Ethel's remonstrances it was
clear that dearest Laura must take her farewell. In these last days,
besides the visits which daily took place between one and other, the
young messenger was put in ceaseless requisition, and his donkey must
have been worn off his little legs with trotting to and fro between the
two houses, Laura was quite anxious and hurt at not hearing from the
Colonel; it was a shame that he did not have over his letters from
Belgium and answer that one which she had honoured him by writing. By
some information, received who knows how? our host was aware of the
intrigue which Mrs. Pendennis was carrying on; and his little wife almost
as much interested in it as my own. She whispered to me in her kind way
that she would give a guinea, that she would, to see a certain couple
made happy together; that they were born for one another, that they were;
she was for having me go off to fetch Clive: but who was I to act as
Hymen's messenger, or to interpose in such delicate family affairs?

All this while Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., remained absent in London,
attending to his banking duties there, and pursuing the dismal inquiries
which ended, in the ensuing Michaelmas term, in the famous suit of
Newcome v. Lord Highgate. Ethel, pursuing the plan which she had laid
down for herself from the first, took entire charge of his children and
house: Lady Anne returned to her own family: never indeed having been of
much use in her son's dismal household. My wife talked to me of course
about her pursuits and amusements at Newcome, in the ancestral hall which
we have mentioned. The children played and ate their dinner (mine often
partook of his infantine mutton, in company with little Clara and the
poor young heir of Newcome) in the room which had been called my lady's
own, and in which her husband had locked her, forgetting that the
conservatories were open, through which the hapless woman had fled. Next
to this was the baronial library, a side of which was fitted with the
gloomy books from Clapham, which old Mrs. Newcome had amassed; rows of
tracts, and missionary magazines, and dingy quarto volumes of worldly
travel and history which that lady had admitted into her collection.

Almost on the last day of our stay at Rosebury, the two young ladies
bethought them of paying a visit to the neighbouring town of Newcome, to
that old Mrs. Mason who has been mentioned in a foregoing page in some
yet earlier chapter of our history. She was very old now, very faithful
to the recollections of her own early time, and oblivious of yesterday.
Thanks to Colonel Newcome's bounty, she had lived in comfort for many a
long year past; and he was as much her boy now as in those early days of
which we have given but an outline. There were Clive's pictures of
himself and his father over her little mantelpiece, near which she sat in
comfort and warmth by the winter fire which his bounty supplied.

Mrs. Mason remembered Miss Newcome, prompted thereto by the hints of her
little maid, who was much younger, and had a more faithful memory than
her mistress. Why, Sarah Mason would have forgotten the pheasants whose
very tails decorated the chimney-glass, had not Keziah, the maid,
reminded her that the young lady was the donor. Then she recollected her
benefactor, and asked after her father, the Baronet; and wondered, for
her part, why her boy, the Colonel, was not made baronet, and why his
brother had the property? Her father was a very good man; though Mrs.
Mason had heard he was not much liked in those parts. "Dead and gone, was
he, poor man?" (This came in reply to a hint from Keziah, the attendant,
bawled in the old lady's ears, who was very deaf.) "Well, well, we must
all go; and if we were all good, like the Colonel, what was the use of
staying? I hope his wife will be good. I am sure such a good man deserves
one," added Mrs. Mason.

The ladies thought the old woman doting, led thereto by the remark of
Keziah, the maid, that Mrs. Mason have a lost her memory. And she asked
who the other bonny lady was, and Ethel told her that Mrs. Pendennis was
a friend of the Colonel's and Clive's.

"Oh, Clive's friend! Well, she was a pretty lady, and he was a dear
pretty boy. He drew those pictures; and he took off me in my cap, with my
old cat and all--my poor old cat that's buried this ever so long ago."

"She has had a letter from the Colonel, miss," cries out Keziah. "Haven't
you had a letter from the Colonel, mum? It came only yesterday." And
Keziah takes out the letter and shows it to the ladies. They read as
follows:--


"London, Feb. 12, 184-.

"My Dear Old Mason--I have just heard from a friend of mine who has been
staying in your neighbourhood, that you are well and happy, and that you
have been making inquiries after your young scapegrace, Tom Newcome, who
is well and happy too, and who proposes to be happier still before any
very long time is over.

"The letter which was written to me about you was sent to me in Belgium,
at Brussels, where I have been living--a town near the place where the
famous Battle of Waterloo was fought; and as I had run away from Waterloo
it followed me to England.

"I cannot come to Newcome just now to shake my dear old friend and nurse
by the hand. I have business in London; and there are those of my name
living in Newcome who would not be very happy to see me and mine.

"But I promise you a visit before very long, and Clive will come with me;
and when we come I shall introduce a new friend to you, a very pretty
little daughter-in-law, whom you must promise to love very much. She is a
Scotch lassie, niece of my oldest friend, James Binnie, Esquire, of the
Bengal Civil Service, who will give her a pretty bit of siller, and her
present name is Miss Rosa Mackenzie.

"We shall send you a wedding cake soon, and a new gown for Keziah (to
whom remember me), and when I am gone, my grandchildren after me will
hear what a dear friend you were to your affectionate   Thomas Newcome."


Keziah must have thought that there was something between Clive and my
wife, for when Laura had read the letter she laid it down on the table,
and sitting down by it, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into
tears.

Ethel looked steadily at the two pictures of Clive and his father. Then
she put her hand on her friend's shoulder. "Come, my dear," she said, "it
is growing late, and I must go back to my children." And she saluted Mrs.
Mason and her maid in a very stately manner, and left them, leading my
wife away, who was still exceedingly overcome.

We could not stay long at Rosebury after that. When Madame de Moncontour
heard the news, the good lady cried too. Mrs. Pendennis's emotion was
renewed as we passed the gates of Newcome Park on our way to the
railroad.




CHAPTER LXII

Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome


The friendship between Ethel and Laura, which the last narrated
sentimental occurrences had so much increased, subsists very little
impaired up to the present day. A lady with many domestic interests and
increasing family, etc. etc., cannot be supposed to cultivate female
intimacies out of doors with that ardour and eagerness which young
spinsters exhibit in their intercourse; but Laura, whose kind heart first
led her to sympathise with her young friend in the latter's days of
distress and misfortune, has professed ever since a growing esteem for
Ethel Newcome, and says, that the trials and perhaps grief which the
young lady now had to undergo have brought out the noblest qualities of
her disposition. She is a very different person from the giddy and
worldly girl who compelled our admiration of late in the days of her
triumphant youthful beauty, of her wayward generous humour, of her
frivolities and her flirtations.

Did Ethel shed tears in secret over the marriage which had caused Laura's
gentle eyes to overflow? We might divine the girl's grief, but we
respected it. The subject was never mentioned by the ladies between
themselves, and even in her most intimate communications with her husband
that gentleman is bound to say his wife maintained a tender reserve upon
the point, nor cared to speculate upon a subject which her friend held
sacred. I could not for my part but acquiesce in this reticence; and, if
Ethel felt regret and remorse, admire the dignity of her silence, and the
sweet composure of her now changed and saddened demeanour.

The interchange of letters between the two friends was constant, and in
these the younger lady described at length the duties, occupations, and
pleasures of her new life. She had quite broken with the world, and
devoted herself entirely to the nurture and education of her brother's
orphan children. She educated herself in order to teach them. Her letters
contain droll yet touching confessions of her own ignorance and her
determination to overcome it. There was no lack of masters of all kinds
in Newcome. She set herself to work like a schoolgirl. The little piano
in the room near the conservatory was thumped by Aunt Ethel until it
became quite obedient to her, and yielded the sweetest music under her
fingers. When she came to pay us a visit at Fairoaks some two years
afterwards she played for our dancing children (our third is named Ethel,
our second Helen, after one still more dear), and we were in admiration
of her skill. There must have been the labour of many lonely nights when
her little charges were at rest, and she and her sad thoughts sat up
together, before she overcame the difficulties of the instrument so as to
be able to soothe herself and to charm and delight her children.

When the divorce was pronounced, which came in due form, though we know
that Lady Highgate was not much happier than the luckless Lady Clara
Newcome had been, Ethel's dread was lest Sir Barnes should marry again,
and by introducing a new mistress into his house should deprive her of
the care of her children.

Miss Newcome judged her brother rightly in that he would try to marry,
but a noble young lady to whom he offered himself rejected him, to his
surprise and indignation, for a beggarly clergyman with a small living,
on which she elected to starve; and the wealthy daughter of a
neighbouring manufacturer whom he next proposed to honour with his
gracious hand, fled from him with horror to the arms of her father,
wondering how such a man as that should ever dare to propose marriage to
an honest girl. Sir Barnes Newcome was much surprised at this outbreak of
anger; he thought himself a very ill-used and unfortunate man, a victim
of most cruel persecutions, which we may be sure did not improve his
temper or tend to the happiness of his circle at home. Peevishness, and
selfish rage, quarrels with servants and governesses, and other domestic
disquiet, Ethel had of course to bear from her brother, but not actual
personal ill-usage. The fiery temper of former days was subdued in her,
but the haughty resolution remained, which was more than a match for her
brother's cowardly tyranny: besides, she was the mistress of sixty
thousand pounds, and by many wily hints and piteous appeals to his sister
Sir Barnes sought to secure this desirable sum of money for his poor dear
unfortunate children.

He professed to think that she was ruining herself for her younger
brothers, whose expenses the young lady was defraying, this one at
college, that in the army, and whose maintenance he thought might be
amply defrayed out of their own little fortunes and his mother's
jointure: and, by ingeniously proving that a vast number of his household
expenses were personal to Miss Newcome and would never have been incurred
but for her residence in his house, he subtracted for his own benefit no
inconsiderable portion of her income. Thus the carriage-horses were hers,
for what need had he, a miserable bachelor, of anything more than a
riding-horse and a brougham? A certain number of the domestics were hers,
and as he could get no scoundrel of his own to stay with him, he took
Miss Newcome's servants. He would have had her pay the coals which burned
in his grate, and the taxes due to our sovereign lady the Queen; but in
truth, at the end of the year, with her domestic bounties and her
charities round about Newcome, which daily increased as she became
acquainted with her indigent neighbours, Miss Ethel, the heiress, was as
poor as many poorer persons.

Her charities increased daily with her means of knowing the people round
about her. She gave much time to them and thought; visited from house to
house, without ostentation; was awestricken by that spectacle of the
poverty which we have with us always, of which the sight rebukes our
selfish griefs into silence, the thought compels us to charity, humility,
and devotion. The priests of our various creeds, who elsewhere are doing
battle together continually, lay down their arms in its presence and
kneel before it; subjugated by that overpowering master. Death, never
dying out; hunger always crying; and children born to it day after day,--
our young London lady, flying from the splendours and follies in which
her life had been past, found herself in the presence of these; threading
darkling alleys which swarmed with wretched life; sitting by naked beds,
whither by God's blessing she was sometimes enabled to carry a little
comfort and consolation; or whence she came heart-stricken by the
overpowering misery, or touched by the patient resignation of the new
friends to whom fate had directed her. And here she met the priest upon
his shrift, the homely missionary bearing his words of consolation, the
quiet curate pacing his round; and was known to all these, and enabled
now and again to help their people in trouble. "Oh! what good there is in
this woman!" my wife would say to me, as she laid one of Miss Ethel's
letters aside; "who would have thought this was the girl of your glaring
London ballroom? If she has had grief to bear, how it has chastened and
improved her!"

And now I have to confess that all this time, whilst Ethel Newcome has
been growing in grace with my wife, poor Clive has been lapsing sadly out
of favour. She has no patience with Clive. She drubs her little foot when
his name is mentioned and turns the subject. Whither are all the tears
and pities fled now? Mrs. Laura has transferred all her regard to Ethel,
and when that lady's ex-suitor writes to his old friend, or other news is
had of him, Laura flies out in her usual tirades against the world, the
horrid wicked selfish world, which spoils everybody who comes near it.
What has Clive done, in vain his apologist asks, that an old friend
should be so angry with him?

She is not angry with him--not she. She only does not care about him. She
wishes him no manner of harm--not the least, only she has lost all
interest in him. And the Colonel too, the poor good old Colonel, was
actually in Mrs. Pendennis' black books, and when he sent her the
Brussels veil which we have heard of, she did not think it was a bargain
at all--not particularly pretty, in fact, rather dear at the money. When
we met Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome in London, whither they came a few
months after their marriage, and where Rosey appeared as pretty, happy,
good-humoured a little blushing bride as eyes need behold, Mrs.
Pendennis's reception of her was quite a curiosity of decorum. "I, not
receive her well?" cried Laura. "How on earth would you have me receive
her? I talked to her about everything, and she only answered yes or no. I
showed her the children, and she did not seem to care. Her only
conversation was about millinery and Brussels balls, and about her dress
at the drawing-room. The drawing-room! What business has she with such
follies?"

The fact is, that the drawing-room was Tom Newcome's affair, not his
son's, who was heartily ashamed of the figure he cut in that astounding
costume, which English private gentlemen are made to sport when they bend
the knee before their gracious Sovereign.

Warrington roasted poor Clive upon the occasion, and complimented him
with his usual gravity, until the young fellow blushed and his father
somewhat testily signified to our friend that his irony was not
agreeable. "I suppose," says the Colonel, with great hauteur, "that there
is nothing ridiculous in an English gentleman entertaining feelings of
loyalty and testifying his respect to his Queen: and I presume that Her
Majesty knows best, and has a right to order in what dress her subjects
shall appear before her and I don't think it's kind of you, George, I
say, I don't think it's kind of you to quiz my boy for doing his duty to
his Queen and to his father too, sir,--for it was at my request that
Clive went, and we went together, sir--to the levee and then to the
drawing-room afterwards with Rosey, who was presented by the lady of my
old friend, Sir George Tufto, a lady of rank herself, and the wife of as
brave an officer as ever drew a sword."

Warrington stammered an apology for his levity, but no explanations were
satisfactory, and it was clear George had wounded the feelings of our
dear simple old friend.

After Clive's marriage, which was performed at Brussels, Uncle James and
the lady, his sister, whom we have sometimes flippantly ventured to call
the Campaigner, went off to perform that journey to Scotland which James
had meditated for ten years past; and, now little Rosey was made happy
for life, to renew acquaintance with little Josey. The Colonel and his
son and daughter-in-law came to London, not to the bachelor quarters,
where we have seen them, but to an hotel, which they occupied until their
new house could be provided for them, a sumptuous mansion in the
Tyburnian district, and one which became people of their station.

We have been informed already what the Colonel's income was, and have the
gratification of knowing that it was very considerable. The simple
gentleman who would dine off a crust, and wear a coat for ten years,
desired that his children should have the best of everything: ordered
about upholsterers, painters, carriage-makers, in his splendid Indian
way; presented pretty Rosey with brilliant jewels for her introduction at
Court, and was made happy by the sight of the blooming young creature
decked in these magnificences, and admired by all his little circle. The
old boys, the old generals, the old colonels, the old qui-his from the
club, came and paid her their homage; the directors' ladies, and the
generals' ladies, called upon her, and feasted her at vast banquets
served on sumptuous plate. Newcome purchased plate and gave banquets in
return for these hospitalities. Mrs. Clive had a neat close carriage for
evenings, and a splendid barouche to drive in the Park. It was pleasant
to see this equipage at four o'clock of an afternoon, driving up to
Bays's, with Rosey most gorgeously attired reclining within; and to
behold the stately grace of the old gentleman as he stepped out to
welcome his daughter-in-law, and the bow he made before he entered her
carriage. Then they would drive round the Park; round and round and
round; and the old generals, and the old colonels, and old fogies, and
their ladies and daughters, would nod and smile out of their carriages as
they crossed each other upon this charming career of pleasure.

I confess that a dinner at the Colonel's, now he appeared in all his
magnificence, was awfully slow. No peaches could look fresher than
Rosey's cheeks,--no damask was fairer than her pretty little shoulders.
No one, I am sure, could be happier than she, but she did not impart her
happiness to her friends; and replied chiefly by smiles to the
conversation of the gentlemen at her side. It is true that these were for
the most part elderly dignitaries, distinguished military officers with
blue-black whiskers, retired old Indian judges, and the like, occupied
with their victuals, and generally careless to please. But that solemn
happiness of the Colonel, who shall depict it:--that look of affection
with which he greeted his daughter as she entered, flounced to the waist,
twinkling with innumerable jewels, holding a dainty pocket-handkerchief,
with smiling eyes, dimpled cheeks, and golden ringlets! He would take her
hand, or follow her about from group to group, exchanging precious
observations about the weather, the Park, the exhibition, nay, the opera,
for the old man actually went to the opera with his little girl, and
solemnly snoozed by her side in a white waistcoat.

Very likely this was the happiest period of Thomas Newcome's life. No
woman (save one perhaps fifty years ago) had ever seemed so fond of him
as that little girl. What pride he had in her, and what care he took of
her! If she was a little ailing, what anxiety and hurrying for doctors!
What droll letters came from James Binnie, and how they laughed over
them: with what respectful attention he acquainted Mrs. Mack with
everything that took place: with what enthusiasm that Campaigner replied!
Josey's husband called a special blessing upon his head in the church at
Musselburgh; and little Jo herself sent a tinful of Scotch bun to her
darling sister, with a request from her husband that he might have a few
shares in the famous Indian Company.

The Company was in a highly flourishing condition, as you may suppose,
when one of its directors, who at the same time was one of the honestest
men alive, thought it was his duty to live in the splendour in which we
now behold him. Many wealthy City men did homage to him. His brother
Hobson, though the Colonel had quarrelled with the chief of the firm, yet
remained on amiable terms with Thomas Newcome, and shared and returned
his banquets for a while. Charles Honeyman we may be sure was present at
many of them, and smirked a blessing over the plenteous meal. The
Colonel's influence was such with Mr. Sherrick that he pleaded Charles's
cause with that gentleman, and actually brought to a successful
termination that little love-affair in which we have seen Miss Sherrick
and Charles engaged. Mr. Sherrick was not disposed to part with much
money during his lifetime--indeed, he proved to Colonel Newcome that he
was not so rich as the world supposed him. But, by the Colonel's
interest, the chaplaincy of Boggley Wollah was procured for the Rev. C.
Honeyman, who now forms the delight of that flourishing station.

All this while we have said little about Clive, who in truth was somehow
in the background in this flourishing Newcome group. To please the best
father in the world; the kindest old friend who endowed his niece with
the best part of his savings; to settle that question about marriage and
have an end of it;--Clive Newcome had taken a pretty and fond young girl,
who respected and admired him beyond all men, and who heartily desired to
make him happy. To do as much would not his father have stripped his coat
from his back,--have put his head under Juggernaut's chariot-wheel, have
sacrificed any ease, comfort, or pleasure for the youngster's benefit?
One great passion he had had and closed the account of it: a worldly
ambitious girl--how foolishly worshipped and passionately beloved no
matter--had played with him for years; had flung him away when a
dissolute suitor with a great fortune and title had offered himself. Was
he to whine and despair because a jilt had fooled him? He had too much
pride and courage for any such submission; he would accept the lot in
life which was offered to him, no undesirable one surely; he would fulfil
the wish of his father's heart, and cheer his kind declining years. In
this way the marriage was brought about. It was but a whisper to Rosey in
the drawing-room, a start and a blush from the little girl as he took the
little willing hand, a kiss for her from her delighted old father-in-law,
a twinkle in good old James's eyes, and double embrace from the
Campaigner as she stood over them in a benedictory attitude;--expressing
her surprise at an event for which she had been jockeying ever since she
set eyes on young Newcome; and calling upon Heaven to bless her children.
So, as a good thing when it is to be done had best be done quickly, these
worthy folks went off almost straightway to a clergyman, and were married
out of hand--to the astonishment of Captains Hoby and Goby when they came
to hear of the event. Well, my gallant young painter and friend of my
boyhood! if my wife chooses to be angry at your marriage, shall her
husband not wish you happy?

Suppose we had married our first loves, others of us, were we the happier
now? Ask Mr. Pendennis, who sulked in his tents when his Costigan, his
Briseis, was ravished from him. Ask poor George Warrington, who had his
own way, Heaven help him! There was no need why Clive should turn monk
because number one refused him; and, that charmer removed, why he should
not take to his heart number two. I am bound to say, that when I
expressed these opinions to Mrs. Laura, she was more angry and provoked
than ever.

It is in the nature of such a simple soul as Thomas Newcome, to see but
one side of a question, and having once fixed Ethel's worldliness in his
mind, and her brother's treason, to allow no argument of advocates of the
other side to shake his displeasure. Hence the one or two appeals which
Laura ventured to make on behalf of her friend, were checked by the good
Colonel with a stern negation. If Ethel was not guiltless, she could not
make him see at least that she was not guilty. He dashed away all excuses
and palliations. Exasperated as he was, he persisted in regarding the
poor girl's conduct in its most unfavourable light. "She was rejected,
and deservedly rejected, by the Marquis of Farintosh," he broke out to me
once, who was not indeed authorised to tell all I knew regarding the
story; "the whole town knows it; all the clubs ring with it. I blush,
sir, to think that my brother's child should have brought such a stain
upon our name." In vain, I told him that my wife, who knew all the
circumstances much better, judged Miss Newcome far more favourably, and
indeed greatly esteemed and loved her. "Pshaw! sir," breaks out the
indignant Colonel, "your wife is an innocent creature, who does not know
the world as we men of experience do,--as I do, sir;" and would have no
more of the discussion. There is no doubt about it, there was a coolness
between my old friend's father and us.

As for Barnes Newcome, we gave up that worthy, and the Colonel showed him
no mercy. He recalled words used by Warrington, which I have recorded in
a former page, and vowed that he only watched for an opportunity to crush
the miserable reptile. He hated Barnes as a loathsome traitor, coward, and
criminal; he made no secret of his opinion; and Clive, with the
remembrance of former injuries, of dreadful heart-pangs; the inheritor of
his father's blood, his honesty of nature, and his impetuous enmity
against wrong; shared to the full his sire's antipathy against his
cousin, and publicly expressed his scorn and contempt for him. About
Ethel he would not speak. "Perhaps what you say, Pen, is true," he said.
"I hope it is. Pray God it is." But his quivering lips and fierce
countenance, when her name was mentioned or her defence attempted, showed
that he too had come to think ill of her. "As for her brother, as for
that scoundrel," he would say, clenching his fist, "if ever I can punish
him I will. I shouldn't have the soul of a dog, if ever I forgot the
wrongs that have been done me by that vagabond. Forgiveness? Pshaw! Are
you dangling to sermons, Pen, at your wife's leading-strings? Are you
preaching that cant? There are some injuries that no honest man should
forgive, and I shall be a rogue on the day I shake hands with that
villain."

"Clive has adopted the Iroquois ethics," says George Warrington, smoking
his pipe sententiously, "rather than those which are at present received
among us. I am not sure that something is not to be said, as against the
Eastern, upon the Western, or Tomahawk, or Ojibbeway side of the
question. I should not like," he added, "to be in a vendetta or feud, and
to have you, Clive, and the old Colonel engaged against me."

"I would rather," I said, "for my part, have half a dozen such enemies as
Clive and the Colonel, than one like Barnes. You never know where or when
that villain may hit you." And before a very short period was over, Sir
Barnes Newcome, Bart., hit his two hostile kinsmen such a blow, as one
might expect from such a quarter.




CHAPTER LXIII

Mrs. Clive at Home


Clive and his father did not think fit to conceal their opinions
regarding their kinsman, Barnes Newcome, and uttered them in many public
places when Sir Barnes's conduct was brought into question, we may be
sure that their talk came to the Baronet's ears, and did not improve his
already angry feeling towards those gentlemen. For a while they had the
best of the attack. The Colonel routed Barnes out of his accustomed club
at Bays's; where also the gallant Sir George Tufto expressed himself
pretty openly with respect to the poor Baronet's want of courage: the
Colonel had bullied and browbeaten Barnes in the parlour of his own bank,
and the story was naturally well known in the City; where it certainly
was not pleasant for Sir Barnes, as he walked to 'Change, to meet
sometimes the scowls of the angry man of war, his uncle, striding down to
the offices of the Bundelcund Bank, and armed with that terrible bamboo
cane.

But though his wife had undeniably run away after notorious ill-treatment
from her husband; though he had shown two white feathers in those
unpleasant little affairs with his uncle and cousin; though Sir Barnes
Newcome was certainly neither amiable nor popular in the City of London,
his reputation as a most intelligent man of business still stood; the
credit of his house was deservedly high, and people banked with him, and
traded with him, in spite of faithless wives and hostile colonels.

When the outbreak between Colonel Newcome and his nephew took place, it
may be remembered that Mr. Hobson Newcome, the other partner of the firm
of Hobson Brothers, waited upon Colonel Newcome, as one of the principal
English directors of the B. B. C., and hoped that although private
differences would, of course, oblige Thomas Newcome to cease all personal
dealings with the bank of Hobson, the affairs of the Company in which he
was interested ought not to suffer on this account; and that the Indian
firm should continue dealing with Hobsons on the same footing as before.
Mr. Hobson Newcome represented to the Colonel, in his jolly frank way,
that whatever happened between the latter and his nephew Barnes, Thomas
Newcome had still one friend in the house; that the transactions between
it and the Indian Company were mutually advantageous; finally, that the
manager of the Indian bank might continue to do business with Hobsons as
before. So the B. B. C. sent its consignments to Hobson Brothers, and
drew its bills, which were duly honoured by that firm.

More than one of Colonel Newcome's City acquaintances, among them his
agent, Mr. Jolly, and his ingenuous friend, Mr. Sherrick, especially,
hinted to Thomas Newcome to be very cautious in his dealings with Hobson
Brothers, and keep a special care lest that house should play him an evil
turn. They both told him that Barnes Newcome had said more than once, in
answer to reports of the Colonel's own speeches against Barnes. "I know
that hot-headed, blundering Indian uncle of mine is furious against me,
on account of an absurd private affair and misunderstanding, which he is
too obstinate to see in the proper light. What is my return for the abuse
and rant which he lavishes against me? I cannot forget that he is my
grandfather's son, an old man, utterly ignorant both of society and
business here; and as he is interested in this Indian Banking Company,
which must be preciously conducted when it appointed him as the guardian
and overseer of its affairs in England, I do my very best to serve the
Company, and I can tell you, its blundering, muddleheaded managers, black
and white, owe no little to the assistance which they have had from our
house. If they don't like us, why do they go on dealing with us? We don't
want them and their bills. We were a leading house fifty years before
they were born, and shall continue to be so long after they come to an
end." Such was Barnes's case, as stated by himself. It was not a very bad
one, or very unfairly stated, considering the advocate. I believe he has
always persisted in thinking that he never did his uncle any wrong.

Mr. Jolly and Mr. Sherrick, then, both entreated Thomas Newcome to use
his best endeavours, and bring the connexion of the B. B. C. and Hobson
Brothers to a speedy end. But Jolly was an interested party; he and his
friends would have had the agency of the B. B. C., and the profits
thereof, which Hobsons had taken from them. Mr. Sherrick was an outside
practitioner, a guerilla amongst regular merchants. The opinions of one
and the other, though submitted by Thomas Newcome duly to his
co-partners, the managers and London board of directors of the Bundelcund
Banking Company, were overruled by that assembly.

They had their establishment and apartments in the City; they had their
clerks and messengers, their managers' room and board-room, their
meetings, where no doubt great quantities of letters were read, vast
ledgers produced; where Tom Newcome was voted into the chair, and voted
out with thanks; where speeches were made, and the affairs of the
B. B. C. properly discussed. These subjects are mysterious, terrifying,
unknown to me. I cannot pretend to describe them. Fred Bayham, I
remember, used to be great in his knowledge of the affairs of the
Bundelcund Banking Company. He talked of cotton, wool, copper, opium,
indigo, Singapore, Manilla, China, Calcutta, Australia, with prodigious
eloquence and fluency. His conversation was about millions. The most
astounding paragraphs used to appear in the Pall Mall Gazette, regarding
the annual dinner at Blackwall, which the directors gave, and to which
he, and George, and I, as friends of the court, were invited. What
orations were uttered, what flowing bumpers emptied in the praise of this
great Company; what quantities of turtle and punch did Fred devour at its
expense! Colonel Newcome was the kindly old chairman at these banquets;
the prince, his son, taking but a modest part in the ceremonies, and
sitting with us, his old cronies.

All the gentlemen connected with the board, all those with whom the
B. B. C. traded in London, paid Thomas Newcome extraordinary respect. His
character for wealth was deservedly great, and of course multiplied by
the tongue of Rumour. F. B. knew to a few millions of rupees, more or
less, what the Colonel possessed, and what Clive would inherit. Thomas
Newcome's distinguished military services, his high bearing, lofty
courtesy, simple but touching garrulity;--for the honest man talked much
more now than he had been accustomed to do in former days, and was not
insensible to the flattery which his wealth brought him,--his reputation
as a keen man of business, who had made his own fortune by operations
equally prudent and spirited, and who might make the fortunes of hundreds
of other people, brought the worthy Colonel a number of friends, and I
promise you that the loudest huzzahs greeted his health when it was
proposed at the Blackwall dinners. At the second annual dinner after
Clive's marriage some friends presented Mrs. Clive Newcome with a fine
testimonial. There was a superb silver cocoa-nut tree, whereof the leaves
were dexterously arranged for holding candle and pickles; under the
cocoa-nut was an Indian prince on a camel, giving his hand to a cavalry
officer on horseback--a howitzer, a plough, a loom, a bale of cotton, on
which were the East India Company's arms, a Brahmin, Britannia, and
Commerce with a cornucopia were grouped round the principal figures: and
if you would see a noble account of this chaste and elegant specimen of
British art, you are referred to the pages of the Pall Mall Gazette of
that year, as well as to Fred Bayham's noble speech in the course of the
evening, when it was exhibited. The East and its wars, and its heroes,
Assaye and Seringapatam ("and Lord Lake and Laswaree too," calls out the
Colonel greatly elated), tiger-hunting, palanquins, Juggernaut,
elephants, the burning of widows--all passed before us in F. B.'s
splendid oration. He spoke of the product of the Indian forest, the
palm-tree, the cocoa-nut tree, the banyan-tree. Palms the Colonel had
already brought back with him, the palms of valour, won in the field of
war (cheers). Cocoa-nut trees he had never seen, though he had heard
wonders related regarding the milky contents of their fruit.  Here at any
rate was one tree of the kind, under the branches of which he humbly
trusted often to repose--and, if he might be so bold as to carry on the
Eastern metaphor, he would say, knowing the excellence of the Colonel's
claret and the splendour of his hospitality, that he would prefer a
cocoa-nut day at the Colonel's to a banyan day anywhere else. Whilst
F. B.'s speech went on, I remember J. J. eyeing the trophy, and the queer
expression of his shrewd face. The health of British Artists was drunk a
propos of this splendid specimen of their skill, and poor J. J. Ridley,
Esq., A.R.A., had scarce a word to say in return. He and Clive sat by one
another, the latter very silent and gloomy. When J. J. and I met in the
world, we talked about our friend, and it was easy for both of us to see
that neither was satisfied with Clive's condition.

The fine house in Tyburnia was completed by this time, as gorgeous as
money could make it. How different it was from the old Fitzroy Square
mansion with its ramshackle furniture, and spoils of brokers' shops, and
Tottenham Court Road odds and ends! An Oxford Street upholsterer had been
let loose in the yet virgin chambers; and that inventive genius had
decorated them with all the wonders his fancy could devise. Roses and
cupids quivered on the ceilings, up to which golden arabesques crawled
from the walls; your face (handsome or otherwise) was reflected by
countless looking-glasses, so multiplied and arranged as, as it were, to
carry you into the next street. You trod on velvet, pausing with respect
in the centre of the carpet, where Rosey's cypher was worked in the sweet
flowers which bear her name. What delightful crooked legs the chairs had!
What corner cupboards there were filled with Dresden gimcracks, which it
was a part of this little woman's business in life to purchase! What
etageres, and bonbonnieres, and chiffonnieres! What awfully bad pastels
there were on the walls! What frightful Boucher and Lancret shepherds and
shepherdesses leered over the portieres! What velvet-bound volumes,
mother-of-pearl albums, inkstands representing beasts of the field,
prie-dieu chairs, and wonderful knick-knacks I can recollect! There was
the most magnificent piano, though Rosey seldom sang any of her six songs
now; and when she kept her couch at a certain most interesting period,
the good Colonel, ever anxious to procure amusement for his darling,
asked whether she would not like a barrel-organ grinding fifty or sixty
favourite pieces, which a bearer could turn? And he mentioned how Windus,
of their regiment, who loved music exceedingly, had a very fine
instrument of this kind out to Barrackpore in the year 1810, and relays
of barrels by each ship with all the new tunes from Europe. The
Testimonial took its place in the centre of Mrs. Clive's table,
surrounded by satellites of plate. The delectable parties were constantly
gathered together, the grand barouche rolling in the Park, or stopping at
the principal shops. Little Rosey bloomed in millinery, and was still the
smiling little pet of her father-in-law, and poor Clive, in the midst of
all these splendours, was gaunt, and sad, and silent; listless at most
times, bitter and savage at others, pleased only when he was out of the
society which bored him, and in the company of George and J. J., the
simple friends of his youth.

His careworn look and altered appearance mollified my wife towards him--
who had almost taken him again into favour. But she did not care for Mrs.
Clive, and the Colonel, somehow, grew cool towards us, and to look
askance upon the little band of Clive's friends. It seemed as if there
were two parties in the house. There was Clive's set--J. J., the shrewd,
silent little painter; Warrington, the cynic; and the author of the
present biography, who was, I believe, supposed to give himself
contemptuous airs; and to have become very high and mighty since his
marriage. Then there was the great, numerous, and eminently respectable
set, whose names were all registered in little Rosey's little
visiting-book, and to whose houses she drove round, duly delivering the
cards of Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome, and Colonel Newcome;--the generals
and colonels, the judges and the fogies. The only man who kept well with
both sides of the house was F. Bayham, Esq., who, having got into clover,
remained in the enjoyment of that welcome pasture; who really loved Clive
and the Colonel too, and had a hundred pleasant things and funny stories
(the droll old creature!) to tell to the little lady for whom we others
could scarcely find a word. The old friends of the student-days were not
forgotten, but they did not seem to get on in the new house. The Miss
Gandishes came to one of Mrs. Clive's balls, still in blue crape, still
with ringlets on their wizened old foreheads, accompanying papa, with his
shirt-collars turned down--who gazed in mute wonder on the splendid
scene. Warrington actually asked Miss Gandish to dance, making woeful
blunders, however, in the quadrille, while Clive, with something like one
of his old smiles on his face, took out Miss Zoe Gandish, her sister. We
made Gandish overeat and overdrink himself in the supper-room, and Clive
cheered him by ordering a full length of Mrs. Clive Newcome from his
distinguished pencil. Never was seen a grander exhibition of white satin
and jewels. Smee, R.A., was furious at the preference shown to his rival.

We had Sandy M'Collop, too, at the party, who had returned from Rome,
with his red beard, and his picture of the murder of the Red Comyn, which
made but a dim effect in the Octagon Room of the Royal Academy, where the
bleeding agonies of the dying warrior were veiled in an unkind twilight.
On Sandy and his brethren little Rosey looked rather coldly. She tossed
up her little head in conversation with me, and gave me to understand
that this party was only an omnium gatherum, not one of the select
parties, from which Heaven defend us. "We are Poins, and Nym, and
Pistol," growled out George Warrington, as he strode away to finish the
evening in Clive's painting- and smoking-room. "Now Prince Hal is
married, and shares the paternal throne, his Princess is ashamed of his
brigand associates of former days." She came and looked at us with a
feeble little smile, as we sat smoking, and let the daylight in on us
from the open door, and hinted to Mr. Clive that it was time to go to
bed.

So Clive Newcome lay in a bed of down and tossed and tumbled there. He
went to fine dinners, and sat silent over them; rode fine horses, and
black Care jumped up behind the moody horseman. He was cut off in a great
measure from the friends of his youth, or saw them by a kind of stealth
and sufferance; was a very lonely, poor fellow, I am afraid, now that
people were testimonialising his wife, and many an old comrade growling
at his haughtiness and prosperity.

In former days, when his good father recognised the difference which
fate, and time, and temper, had set between him and his son, we have seen
with what a gentle acquiescence the old man submitted to his inevitable
fortune, and how humbly he bore that stroke of separation which afflicted
the boy lightly enough, but caused the loving sire so much pain. Then
there was no bitterness between them, in spite of the fatal division; but
now, it seemed as if there was anger on Thomas Newcome's part, because,
though come together again, they were not united, though with every
outward appliance of happiness Clive was not happy. What young man on
earth could look for more? a sweet young wife, a handsome home, of which
the only encumbrance was an old father, who would give his last drop of
blood in his son's behalf. And it was to bring about this end that Thomas
Newcome had toiled and had amassed a fortune. Could not Clive, with his
talents and education, go down once or twice a week to the City and take
a decent part in the business by which his wealth was secured? He
appeared at the various board-rooms and City conclaves, yawned at the
meetings, and drew figures on the blotting-paper of the Company; had no
interest in its transactions, no heart in its affairs; went away and
galloped his horse alone; or returned to his painting-room, put on his
old velvet jacket, and worked with his palettes and brushes. Palettes and
brushes! Could he not give up these toys when he was called to a much
higher station in the world? Could he not go talk with Rosey;--drive with
Rosey, kind little soul, whose whole desire was to make him happy? Such
thoughts as these, no doubt, darkened the Colonel's mind, and deepened
the furrows round his old eyes. So it is, we judge men by our own
standards; judge our nearest and dearest often wrong.

Many and many a time did Clive try and talk with the little Rosey, who
chirped and prattled so gaily to his father. Many a time would she come
and sit by his easel, and try her little powers to charm him, bring him
little tales about their acquaintances, stories about this ball and that
concert, practise artless smiles upon him, gentle little bouderies,
tears, perhaps, followed by caresses and reconciliation. At the end of
which he would return to his cigar; and she, with a sigh and a heavy
heart, to the good old man who had bidden her to go and talk with him. He
used to feel that his father had sent her; the thought came across him in
their conversations, and straightway his heart would shut up and his face
grew gloomy. They were not made to mate with one another. This was the
truth; the shoe was a very pretty little shoe, but Clive's foot was too
big for it.

Just before the testimonial, Mr. Clive was in constant attendance at
home, and very careful and kind and happy with his wife, and the whole
family party went very agreeably. Doctors were in constant attendance at
Mrs. Clive Newcome's door; prodigious care was taken by the good Colonel
in wrapping her and in putting her little feet on sofas, and in leading
her to her carriage. The Campaigner came over in immense flurry from
Edinburgh (where Uncle James was now very comfortably lodged in Picardy
Place with the most agreeable society round about him), and all this
circle was in a word very close and happy and intimate; but woe is me,
Thomas Newcome's fondest hopes were disappointed this time: his little
grandson lived but to see the light and leave it: and sadly, sadly, those
preparations were put away, those poor little robes and caps, those
delicate muslins and cambrics over which many a care had been forgotten,
many a fond prayer thought, if not uttered. Poor little Rosey! she felt
the grief very keenly; but she rallied from it very soon. In a very few
months, her cheeks were blooming and dimpling with smiles again, and she
was telling us how her party was an omnium gatherum.

The Campaigner had ere this returned to the scene of her northern
exploits; not, I believe, entirely of the worthy woman's own free will.
Assuming the command of the household, whilst her daughter kept her sofa,
Mrs. Mackenzie had set that establishment into uproar and mutiny. She had
offended the butler, outraged the housekeeper, wounded the sensibilities
of the footmen, insulted the doctor, and trampled on the inmost corns of
the nurse. It was surprising what a change appeared in the Campaigner's
conduct, and how little, in former days, Colonel Newcome had known her.
What the Emperor Napoleon the First said respecting our Russian enemies,
might be applied to this lady, Grattez-la, and she appeared a Tartar.
Clive and his father had a little comfort and conversation in conspiring
against her. The old man never dared to try, but was pleased with the
younger's spirit and gallantry in the series of final actions which,
commencing over poor little Rosey's prostrate body in the dressing-room,
were continued in the drawing-room, resumed with terrible vigour on the
enemy's part in the dining-room, and ended, to the triumph of the whole
establishment, at the outside of the hall-door.

When the routed Tartar force had fled back to its native north, Rosey
made a confession, which Clive told me afterwards, bursting with bitter
laughter. "You and papa seem to be very much agitated," she said. (Rosey
called the Colonel papa in the absence of the Campaigner.) "I do not mind
it a bit, except just at first, when it made me a little nervous. Mamma
used always to be so; she used to scold and scold all day, both me and
Josey, in Scotland, till grandmamma sent her away; and then in Fitzroy
Square, and then in Brussels, she used to box my ears, and go into such
tantrums; and I think," adds Rosey, with one of her sweetest smiles, "she
had quarrelled with Uncle James before she came to us."

"She used to box Rosey's ears," roars out poor Clive, "and go into such
tantrums, in Fitzroy Square and Brussels afterwards, and the pair would
come down with their arms round each other's waists, smirking and smiling
as if they had done nothing but kiss each other all their mortal lives!
This is what we know about women--this is what we get, and find years
afterwards, when we think we have married a smiling, artless young
creature! Are you all such hypocrites, Mrs. Pendennis?" and he pulled his
mustachios in his wrath.

"Poor Clive!" says Laura, very kindly. "You would not have had her tell
tales of her mother, would you?"

"Oh, of course not," breaks out Clive; "that is what you all say, and so
you are hypocrites out of sheer virtue."

It was the first time Laura had called him Clive for many a day. She was
becoming reconciled to him. We had our own opinion about the young
fellow's marriage.

And, to sum up all, upon a casual rencontre with the young gentleman in
question, whom we saw descending from a hansom at the steps of the Flag,
Pall Mall, I opined that dark thoughts of Hoby had entered into Clive
Newcome's mind. Othello-like, he scowled after that unconscious Cassio as
the other passed into the club in his lacquered boots.




CHAPTER LXIV

Absit Omen


At the first of the Blackwall festivals, Hobson Newcome was present, in
spite of the quarrel which had taken place between his elder brother and
the chief of the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. But it was the
individual Barnes and the individual Thomas who had had a difference
together; the Bundelcund Bank was not at variance with its chief house of
commission in London; no man drank prosperity to the B. B. C., upon
occasion of this festival, with greater fervour than Hobson Newcome, and
the manner in which he just slightly alluded, in his own little speech of
thanks, to the notorious differences between Colonel Newcome and his
nephew, praying that these might cease some day, and, meanwhile, that the
confidence between the great Indian establishment and its London agents
might never diminish, was appreciated and admired by six-and-thirty
gentlemen, all brimful of claret and enthusiasm, and in that happy state
of mind in which men appreciate and admire everything.

At the second dinner, when the testimonial was presented, Hobson was not
present. Nor did his name figure amongst those engraven on the trunk of
Mr. Newcome's allegorical silver cocoa-nut tree. As we travelled
homewards in the omnibus, Fred Bayham noticed the circumstance to me. "I
have looked over the list of names," says he, "not merely that on the
trunk, sir, but the printed list; it was rolled up and placed in one of
the nests on the top of the tree. Why is Hobson's name not there?--Ha! it
mislikes me, Pendennis."

F. B., who was now very great about City affairs, discoursed about stocks
and companies with immense learning, and gave me to understand that he
had transacted one or two little operations in Capel Court on his own
account, with great present, and still larger prospective, advantages to
himself. It is a fact that Mr. Ridley was paid, and that F. B.'s costume,
though still eccentric, was comfortable, cleanly, and variegated. He
occupied the apartments once tenanted by the amiable Honeyman. He lived
in ease and comfort there. "You don't suppose," says he, "that the
wretched stipend I draw from the Pall Mall Gazette enables me to maintain
this kind of thing? F. B., sir, has a station in the world; F. B. moves
among moneyers and City nobs, and eats cabobs with wealthy nabobs. He may
marry, sir, and settle in life." We cordially wished every worldly
prosperity to the brave F. B.

Happening to descry him one day in the Park, I remarked that his
countenance wore an ominous and tragic appearance, which seemed to deepen
as he neared me. I thought he had been toying affably with a nursery-maid
the moment before, who stood with some of her little charges watching the
yachts upon the Serpentine. Howbeit, espying my approach, F. B. strode
away from the maiden and her innocent companions, and advanced to greet
his old acquaintance, enveloping his face with shades of funereal gloom.

"Yon were the children of my good friend Colonel Huckaback of the Bombay
Marines! Alas! unconscious of their doom, the little infants play. I was
watching them at their sports. There is a pleasing young woman in
attendance upon the poor children. They were sailing their little boats
upon the Serpentine; racing and laughing, and making merry; and as I
looked on, Master Hastings Huckaback's boat went down! Absit omen,
Pendennis! I was moved by the circumstance. F. B. hopes that the child's
father's argosy may not meet with shipwreck!"

"You mean the little yellow-faced man whom we met at Colonel Newcome's?"
says Mr. Pendennis.

"I do, sir," growled F. B. "You know that he is a brother director with
our Colonel in the Bundelcund Bank?"

"Gracious Heavens!" I cried, in sincere anxiety, "nothin has happened, I
hope, to the Bundelcund Bank?"

"No," answers the other, "nothing has happened, the good ship is safe,
sir, as yet. But she has narrowly escaped a great danger, Pendennis,"
cries F. B., gripping my arm with great energy, "there was a traitor in
her crew--she has weathered the storm nobly--who would have sent her on
the rocks, sir, who would have scuttled her at midnight."

"Pray drop your nautical metaphors, and tell me what you mean," cries
F. B.'s companion, and Bayham continued his narration.

"Were you in the least conversant with City affairs," he said, "or did
you deign to visit the spot where merchants mostly congregate, you would
have heard the story, which was over the whole City yesterday, and spread
dismay from Threadneedle Street to Leadenhall. The story is, that the
firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, yesterday refused acceptance of
thirty thousand pounds' worth of bills of the Bundelcund Banking Company
of India.

"The news came like a thunderclap upon the London Board of Directors, who
had received no notice of the intentions of Hobson Brothers, and caused a
dreadful panic amongst the shareholders of the concern. The board-room
was besieged by colonels and captains, widows and orphans; within an hour
after protest of bills were taken up, and you will see, in the City
article of the Globe this very evening, an announcement that henceforward
the house of Baines and Jolly, of Job Court, will meet engagements of the
Bundelcund Banking Company of India, being provided with ample funds to
do honour to every possible liability of that Company. But the shares
fell, sir, in consequence of the panic. I hope they will rally. I trust
and believe they will rally. For our good Colonel's sake and that of his
friends, for the sake of the innocent children sporting by the Serpentine
yonder.

"I had my suspicions when they gave that testimonial," said F. B. "In my
experience of life, sir, I always feel rather shy about testimonials, and
when a party gets one, somehow look out to hear of his smashing the next
month. Absit omen! I will say again. I like not the going down of yonder
little yacht."

The Globe sure enough contained a paragraph that evening announcing the
occurrence which Mr. Bayham had described, and the temporary panic which
it had occasioned, and containing an advertisement stating that Messrs.
Baines and Jolly would henceforth act as agents of the Indian Company.
Legal proceedings were presently threatened by the solicitors of the
Company against the banking firm which had caused so much mischief. Mr.
Hobson Newcome was absent abroad when the circumstance took place, and it
was known that the protest of the bills was solely attributable to his
nephew and partner. But after the break between the two firms, there was
a rupture between Hobson's family and Colonel Newcome. The exasperated
Colonel vowed that his brother and his nephew were traitors alike, and
would have no further dealings with one or the other. Even poor innocent
Sam Newcome, coming up to London from Oxford, where he had been plucked,
and offering a hand to Clive, was frowned away by our Colonel, who spoke
in terms of great displeasure to his son for taking the least notice of
the young traitor.

Our Colonel was changed, changed in his heart, changed in his whole
demeanour towards the world, and above all towards his son, for whom he
had made so many kind sacrifices in his old days. We have said how, ever
since Clive's marriage, a tacit strife had been growing up between father
and son. The boy's evident unhappiness was like a reproach to his father.
His very silence angered the old man. His want of confidence daily chafed
and annoyed him. At the head of a large fortune, which he rightly
persisted in spending, he felt angry with himself because he could not
enjoy it, angry with his son, who should have helped him in the
administration of his new estate, and who was but a listless, useless
member of the little confederacy, a living protest against all the
schemes of the good man's past life. The catastrophe in the City again
brought father and son together somewhat, and the vindictiveness of both
was roused by Barnes's treason. Time was when the Colonel himself would
have viewed his kinsman more charitably, but fate and circumstance had
angered that originally friendly and gentle disposition; hate and
suspicion had mastered him, and if it cannot be said that his new life
had changed him, at least it had brought out faults for which there had
hitherto been no occasion, and qualities latent before. Do we know
ourselves, or what good or evil circumstance may bring from us? Did Cain
know, as he and his younger brother played round their mother's knee,
that the little hand which caressed Abel should one day grow larger, and
seize a brand to slay him? Thrice fortunate he, to whom circumstance is
made easy: whom fate visits with gentle trial, and kindly Heaven keeps
out of temptation.

In the stage which the family feud now reached, and which the biographer
of the Newcomes is bound to describe, there is one gentle moralist who
gives her sentence decidedly against Clive's father; whilst on the other
hand a rough philosopher and friend of mine, whose opinions used to have
some weight with me, stoutly declares that they were right. "War and
justice are good things," says George Warrington, rattling his clenched
fist on the table. "I maintain them, and the common sense of the world
maintains them, against the preaching of all the Honeymans that ever
puled from the pulpit. I have not the least objection in life to a rogue
being hung. When a scoundrel is whipped I am pleased, and say, serve him
right. If any gentleman will horsewhip Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet, I
shall not be shocked, but, on the contrary, go home and order an extra
mutton-chop for dinner."

"Ah! revenge is wrong, Pen," pleads the other counsellor.

"Let alone that the wisest and best of all Judges has condemned it. It
blackens the hearts of men. It distorts their views of right. It sets
them to devise evil. It causes them to think unjustly of others. It is
not the noblest return for injury, not even the bravest way of meeting
it. The greatest courage is to bear persecution, not to answer when you
are reviled, and when wrong has been done you to forgive. I am sorry for
what you call the Colonel's triumph and his enemy's humiliation. Let
Barnes be as odious as you will, he ought never to have humiliated
Ethel's brother; but he is weak. Other gentlemen as well are weak, Mr.
Pen, although you are so much cleverer than women. I have no patience
with the Colonel, and I beg you to tell him, whether he asks you or not
that he has lost my good graces, and that I for one will not huzzah at
what his friends and flatterers call his triumphs, and that I don't think
in this instance he has acted like the dear Colonel, and the good
Colonel, and the good Christian that I once thought him."

We must now tell what the Colonel and Clive had been doing, and what
caused two such different opinions respecting their conduct from the two
critics just named. The refusal of the London Banking House to accept the
bills of the Great Indian Company of course affected very much the credit
of that Company in this country. Sedative announcements were issued by
the Directors in London; brilliant accounts of the Company's affairs
abroad were published; proof incontrovertible was given that the B. B. C.
was never in so flourishing a state as at that time when Hobson Brothers
had refused its drafts; there could be no question that the Company had
received a severe wound and was deeply if not vitally injured by the
conduct of the London firm.

The propensity to sell out became quite epidemic amongst the
shareholders. Everybody was anxious to realise. Why, out of the thirty
names inscribed on poor Mrs. Clive's cocoa-nut tree no less than twenty
deserters might be mentioned, or at least who would desert could they
find an opportunity of doing so with arms and baggage. Wrathfully the
good Colonel scratched the names of those faithless ones out of his
daughter's visiting-book: haughtily he met them in the street; to desert
the B. B. C. at the hour of peril was, in his idea, like applying for
leave of absence on the eve of an action. He would not see that the
question was not one of sentiment at all, but of chances and arithmetic;
he would not hear with patience of men quitting the ship, as he called
it. "They may go, sir," says he, "but let them never more be officers of
mine." With scorn and indignation he paid off one or two timid friends,
who were anxious to fly, and purchased their shares out of his own
pocket. But his purse was not long enough for this kind of amusement.
What money he had was invested in the Company already, and his name
further pledged for meeting the engagements from which their late London
bankers had withdrawn.

Those gentlemen, in the meanwhile, spoke of their differences with the
Indian Bank as quite natural, and laughed at the absurd charges of
personal hostility which poor Thomas Newcome publicly preferred. "Here is
a hot-headed old Indian dragoon," says Sir Barnes, "who knows no more
about business than I do about cavalry tactics or Hindostanee; who gets
into a partnership along with other dragoons and Indian wiseacres, with
some uncommonly wily old native practitioners; and they pay great
dividends, and they set up a bank. Of course we will do these people's
business as long as we are covered, but I have always told their manager
that we would run no risks whatever, and close the account the very
moment it did not suit us to keep it: and so we parted company six weeks
ago, since when there has been a panic in the Company, a panic which has
been increased by Colonel Newcome's absurd swagger and folly. He says I
am his enemy; enemy indeed! So I am in private life, but what has that to
do with business? In business, begad, there are no friends and no enemies
at all. I leave all my sentiment on the other side of Temple Bar."

So Thomas Newcome, and Clive the son of Thomas, had wrath in their hearts
against Barnes, their kinsman, and desired to be revenged upon him, and
were eager after his undoing, and longed for an opportunity when they
might meet him and overcome him, and put him to shame.

When men are in this frame of mind, a certain personage is said always to
be at hand to help them and give them occasion for indulging in their
pretty little passion. What is sheer hate seems to the individual
entertaining the sentiment so like indignant virtue, that he often
indulges in the propensity to the full, nay, lauds himself for the
exercise of it. I am sure if Thomas Newcome in his present desire for
retaliation against Barnes, had known the real nature of his sentiments
towards that worthy, his conduct would have been different, and we should
have heard of no such active hostilities as ensued.



CHAPTER LXV

In which Mrs. Clive comes into her Fortune


Speaking of the affairs of B. B. C., Sir Barnes Newcome always took care
to maintain his candid surprise relating to the proceedings of that
Company. He set about evil reports against it! He endeavour to do it a
wrong--absurd! If a friend were to ask him (and it was quite curious what
a number did manage to ask him) whether he thought the Company was an
advantageous investment, of course he would give an answer. He could not
say conscientiously he thought so--never once had said so--in the time of
their connexion, which had been formed solely with a view of obliging his
amiable uncle. It was a quarrelsome Company; a dragoon Company; a Company
of gentlemen accustomed to gunpowder, and fed on mulligatawny. He,
forsooth, be hostile to it! There were some Companies that required no
enemies at all, and would be pretty sure to go to the deuce their own
way.

Thus, and with this amiable candour, spake Barnes, about a commercial
speculation, the merits of which he had a right to canvass as well as any
other citizen. As for Uncle Hobson, his conduct was characterised by a
timidity which one would scarcely have expected from a gentleman of his
florid, jolly countenance, active habits, and generally manly demeanour.
He kept away from the cocoa-nut feast, as we have seen: he protested
privily to the Colonel that his private goodwill continued undiminished
but he was deeply grieved at the B. B. C. affair, which took place while
he was on the Continent--confound the Continent, my wife would go--and
which was entirely without his cognisance. The Colonel received his
brother's excuses, first with awful bows and ceremony, and finally with
laughter. "My good Hobson," said he, with the most insufferable kindness,
"of course you intended to be friendly; of course the affair was done
without your knowledge. We understand that sort of thing. London bankers
have no hearts--for these last fifty years past that I have known you and
your brother, and my amiable nephew, the present commanding officer, has
there been anything in your conduct that has led me to suppose you had?"
and herewith Colonel Newcome burst out into a laugh. It was not a
pleasant laugh to hear. Worthy Hobson took his hat, and walked away,
brushing it round and round, and looking very confused. The Colonel
strode after him downstairs, and made him an awful bow at the hall door.
Never again did Hobson Newcome set foot in that Tyburnian mansion.

During the whole of that season of the testimonial the cocoa-nut figured
in an extraordinary number of banquets. The Colonel's hospitalities were
more profuse than ever, and Mrs. Clive's toilettes more brilliant. Clive,
in his confidential conversations with his friends, was very dismal and
gloomy. When I asked City news of our well-informed friend F. B., I am
sorry to say, his countenance became funereal. The B. B. C. shares, which
had been at an immense premium twelve months since, were now slowly
falling, falling.

"I wish," said Mr. Sherrick to me, "the Colonel would realise, even now,
like that Mr. Ratray who has just come out of the ship, and brought a
hundred thousand pounds with him."

"Come out of the ship! You little know the Colonel, Mr. Sherrick, if you
think he will ever do that."

Mr. Ratray, though he had returned to Europe, gave the most cheering
accounts of the B. B. C. It was in the most flourishing state. Shares
sure to get up again. He had sold out entirely on account of his liver.
Must come home--the doctor said so.

Some months afterwards, another director, Mr. Hedges, came home. Both of
these gentlemen, as we know, entertained the fashionable world, got seats
in Parliament, purchased places in the country, and were greatly
respected. Mr. Hedges came out, but his wealthy partner, Mr. M'Gaspey,
entered into the B. B. C. The entry of Mr. M'Gaspey into the affairs of
the Companyt did not seem to produce very great excitement in England.
The shares slowly fell. However, there was a prodigious indigo crop. The
London manager was in perfect good-humour. In spite of this and that, of
defections, of unpleasantries, of unfavourable whispers, and doubtful
friends--Thomas Newcome kept his head high, and his face was always kind
and smiling, except when certain family enemies were mentioned, and he
frowned like Jove in anger.

We have seen how very fond little Rosey was of her mamma, of her uncle,
James Binnie, and now of her papa, as she affectionately styled Thomas
Newcome. This affection, I am sure, the two gentlemen returned with all
their hearts, and but that they were much too generous and simple-minded
to entertain such a feeling. It may be wondered that the two good old
boys were not a little jealous of one another. Howbeit it does not appear
that they entertained such a feeling; at least it never interrupted the
kindly friendship between them, and Clive was regarded in the light of a
son by both of them, and each contented himself with his moiety of the
smiling little girl's affection.

As long as they were with her, the truth is, little Mrs. Clive was very
fond of people, very docile, obedient, easily pleased, brisk, kind, and
good-humoured. She charmed her two old friends with little songs, little
smiles,--little kind offices, little caresses; and having administered
Thomas Newcome's cigar to him in the daintiest, prettiest way, she would
trip off to drive with James Binnie, or sit at his dinner, if he was
indisposed, and be as gay, neat-handed, watchful, and attentive a child
as any old gentleman could desire.

She did not seem to be very sorry to part with mamma, a want of feeling
which that lady bitterly deplored in her subsequent conversation with her
friends about Mrs. Clive Newcome. Possibly there were reasons why Rosey
should not be very much vexed at quitting mamma; but surely she might
have dropped a little tear as she took leave of kind, good old James
Binnie. Not she. The gentleman's voice faltered, but hers did not in the
least. She kissed him on the face, all smiles, blushes, and happiness,
and tripped into the railway carriage with her husband and
father-in-law, leaving the poor old uncle very sad. Our women said, I
know not why, that little Rosey had no heart at all. Women are accustomed
to give such opinions respecting the wives of their newly married
friends. I am bound to add (and I do so during Mr. Clive Newcome's
absence from England, otherwise I should not like to venture upon the
statement), that some men concur with the ladies' opinion of Mrs. Clive.
For instance, Captains Goby and Hoby declare that her treatment of the
latter, her encouragement, and desertion of him when Clive made his
proposals, were shameful.

At this time Rosey was in a pupillary state. A good, obedient little
girl, her duty was to obey the wishes of her dear mamma. How show her
sense of virtue and obedience better than by promptly and cheerfully
obeying mamma, and at the orders of that experienced Campaigner, giving
up Bobby Hoby, and going to England to a fine house, to be presented at
Court, to have all sorts of pleasure with a handsome young husband and a
kind father-in-law by her side? No wonder Rosey was not in a very active
state of grief at parting from Uncle James. He strove to console himself
with these considerations when he had returned to the empty house, where
she had danced, and smiled, and warbled; and he looked at the chair she
sat in; and at the great mirror which had so often reflected her fresh
pretty face;--the great callous mirror, which now only framed upon its
shining sheet the turban, and the ringlets, and the plump person, and the
resolute smile of the old Campaigner.

After that parting with her uncle at the Brussels railway, Rosey never
again beheld him. He passed into the Campaigner's keeping, from which
alone he was rescued by the summons of pallid death. He met that summons
like a philosopher; rejected rather testily all the mortuary consolations
which his nephew-in-law, Josey's husband, thought proper to bring to his
bedside; and uttered opinions which scandalised that divine. But as he
left Mrs. M'Craw only 500 pounds, thrice that sum to his sister, and the
remainder of his property to his beloved niece, Rosa Mackenzie, now Rosa
Newcome, let us trust that Mr. M'Craw, hurt and angry at the ill-favour
shown to his wife, his third young wife, his best-beloved Josey, at the
impatience with which the deceased had always received his, Mr. M'Craw's,
own sermons;--let us hope, I say, that the reverend gentleman was
mistaken in his views respecting the present position of Mr. James
Binnie's soul; and that Heaven may have some regions yet accessible to
James, which Mr. M'Craw's intellect has not yet explored. Look,
gentlemen! Does a week pass without the announcement of the discovery of
a new comet in the sky, a new star in the heaven, twinkling dimly out of
a yet farther distance, and only now becoming visible to human ken though
existent for ever and ever? So let us hope divine truths may be shining,
and regions of light and love extant, which Geneva glasses cannot yet
perceive, and are beyond the focus of Roman telescopes.

I think Clive and the Colonel were more affected by the news of James's
death than Rosey, concerning whose wonderful strength of mind good Thomas
Newcome discoursed to my Laura and me, when, fancying that my friend's
wife needed comfort and consolation, Mrs. Pendennis went to visit her.
"Of course we shall have no more parties this year," sighed Rosey. She
looked very pretty in her black dress. Clive, in his hearty way, said a
hundred kind feeling things about the departed friend. Thomas Newcome's
recollections of him, and regret, were no less tender and sincere. "See,"
says he, "how that dear child's sense of duty makes her hide her
feelings! Her grief is most deep, but she wears a calm countenance. I see
her looking sad in private, but I no sooner speak than she smiles." "I
think," said Laura, as we came away, "that Colonel Newcome performs all
the courtship part in the marriage, and Clive, poor Clive, though he
spoke very nobly and generously about Mr. Binnie, I am sure it is not his
old friend's death merely, which makes him so unhappy."

Poor Clive, by right of his wife, was now rich Clive; the little lady
having inherited from her kind relative no inconsiderable sum of money.
In a very early part of this story, mention has been made of a small sum
producing one hundred pounds a year, which Clive's father had made over
to the lad when he sent him from India. This little sum Mr. Clive had
settled upon his wife before his marriage, being indeed all he had of his
own; for the famous bank shares which his father presented to him, were
only made over formally when the young man came to London after his
marriage, and at the paternal request and order appeared as a most
inefficient director of the B. B. C. Now Mrs. Newcome, of her
inheritance, possessed not only B. B. C. shares, but moneys in bank, and
shares in East India Stock, so that Clive in the right of his wife had a
seat in the assembly of East India shareholders, and a voice in the
election of directors of that famous company. I promise you Mrs. Clive
was a personage of no little importance. She carried her little head with
an aplomb and gravity which amused some of us. F. B. bent his most
respectfully down before her; she sent him on messages, and deigned to
ask him to dinner. He once more wore a cheerful countenance; the clouds
which gathered o'er the sun of Newcome were in the bosom of the ocean
buried, Bayham said, by James Binnie's brilliant behaviour to his niece.

Clive was a proprietor of East India Stock, and had a vote in electing
the directors of that Company; and who so fit to be a director of his
affairs as Thomas Newcome, Esq., Companion of the Bath, and so long a
distinguished officer in its army? To hold this position of director,
used, up to very late days, to be the natural ambition of many East
Indian gentlemen. Colonel Newcome had often thought of offering himself
as a candidate, and now openly placed himself on the lists, and publicly
announced his intention. His interest was rather powerful through the
Indian bank, of which he was a director, and many of the shareholders of
which were proprietors of the East India Company. To have a director of
the B. B. C. also a member of the parliament in Leadenhall Street, would
naturally be beneficial to the former institution. Thomas Newcome's
prospectuses were issued accordingly, and his canvass received with
tolerable favour.

Within a very short time another candidate appeared in the field--a
retired Bombay lawyer, of considerable repute and large means--and at the
head of this gentleman's committee appeared the names of Hobson Brothers
and Newcome, very formidable personages at the East India House, with
which the bank of Hobson Brothers have had dealings for half a century
past, and where the old lady, who founded or consolidated that family,
had had three stars before her own venerable name, which had descended
upon her son Sir Brian, and her grandson, Sir Barnes.

War was thus openly declared between Thomas Newcome and his nephew. The
canvass on both sides was very hot and eager. The number of promises was
pretty equal. The election was not to come off yet for a while; for
aspirants to the honourable office of director used to announce their
wishes years before they could be fulfilled, and returned again and again
to the contest before they finally won it. Howbeit, the Colonel's
prospects were very fair, and a prodigious indigo crop came in to favour
the B. B. C., with the most brilliant report from the board at Calcutta.
The shares, still somewhat sluggish, rose again, the Colonel's hopes with
them, and the courage of gentlemen at home who had invested their money
in the transaction.

We were sitting one day round the Colonel's dinner-table; it was not one
of the cocoa-nut-tree days; that emblem was locked up in the butler's
pantry, and only beheld the lamps on occasions of state. It was a snug
family party in the early part of the year, When scarcely anybody was in
town; only George Warrington, and F. B., and Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis; and
the ladies having retired, We were having such a talk as we used to enjoy
in quiet old days, before marriages and cares and divisions had separated
us.

F. B. led the conversation. The Colonel received his remarks with great
gravity, and thought him an instructive personage. Others considered him
rather as amusing than instructive, and so his eloquence was generally
welcome. The canvass for the directorship was talked over. The improved
affairs of a certain great Banking Company, which shall be nameless, but
one which F. B. would take the liberty to state, would, in his opinion,
for ever unite the mother country to our great Indian possessions;--the
prosperity of this great Company was enthusiastically drunk by Mr. Bayham
in some of the very best claret. The conduct of the enemies of that
Company was characterised in terms of bitter, but not undeserved, satire.
F. B. rather liked to air his oratory, and neglected few opportunities
for making speeches after dinners.

The Colonel admired his voice and sentiments not the less, perhaps,
because the latter were highly laudatory of the good man. And not from
interest, at least, as far as he himself knew--not from any mean or
selfish motives, did F. B. speak. He called Colonel Newcome his friend,
his benefactor: kissed the hem of his garment: he wished fervently that
he could have been the Colonel's son: he expressed, repeatedly, a desire
that some one would speak ill of the Colonel, so that he, F. B., might
have the opportunity of polishing that individual off in about two
seconds. He covered the Colonel with all his heart; nor is any gentleman
proof altogether against this constant regard and devotion from another.

The Colonel used to wag his head wisely, and say Mr. Bayham's suggestions
were often exceedingly valuable, as indeed the fact was, though his
conduct was no more of a piece with his opinions than those of some other
folks occasionally are.

"What the Colonel ought to do, sir, to help him in the direction," says
F. B., "is to get into Parliament. The House of Commons would aid him
into the Court of Directors, and the Court of Directors would help him in
the House of Commons."

"Most wisely said," says Warrington.

The Colonel declined. "I have long had the House of Commons in my eye,"
he said; "but not for me. I wanted my boy to go there. It would be a
proud day for me if I could see him there."

"I can't speak," says Clive, from his end of the table. "I don't
understand about parties, like F. B. here."

"I believe I do know a thing or two," Mr. Bayham here interposes.

"And politics do not interest me in the least," Clive sighs out, drawing
pictures with his fork on his napkin, and not heeding the other's
interruption.

"I wish I knew what would interest him," his father whispers to me,
who happened to be at his side. "He never cares to be out of his
painting-room; and he doesn't seem to be very happy even in there. I wish
to God, Pen, I knew what had come over the boy." I thought I knew; but
what was the use of telling, now there was no remedy?

"A dissolution is expected every day," continued F. B. "The papers are
full of it. Ministers cannot go on with this majority--cannot possibly go
on, sir. I have it on the best authority; and men who are anxious about
their seats are writing to their constituents, or are subscribing at
missionary meetings, or are gone down to lecturing at Athenaeums, and
that sort of thing."

Here Warrington burst out into a laughter much louder than the occasion
of the speech of F. B. seemed to warrant; and the Colonel, turning round
with some dignity, asked the cause of George's amusement.

"What do you think your darling, Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, has been
doing during the recess?" cries Warrington. "I had a letter this morning,
from my liberal and punctual employer, Thomas Potts, Esquire, of the
Newcome Independent, who states, in language scarcely respectful, that
Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome is trying to come the religious dodge, as Mr.
Potts calls it. He professes to be stricken down by grief on account of
late family circumstances; wears black, and puts on the most piteous
aspect, and asks ministers of various denominations to tea with him; and
the last announcement is the most stupendous of all. Stop, I have it in
my greatcoat;" and, ringing the bell, George orders a servant to bring
him a newspaper from his great-coat pocket. "Here it is, actually in
print," Warrington continues, and reads to us:--"'Newcome Athenaeum. 1,
for the benefit of the Newcome Orphan Children's Home, and 2, for the
benefit of the Newcome Soup Association, without distinction of
denomination. Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., proposes to give two
lectures, on Friday the 23rd, and Friday the 30th, instant. No. 1, The
Poetry of Childhood: Doctor Watts, Mrs. Barbauld, Jane Taylor, No. 2, The
Poetry of Womanhood, and the Affections: Mrs. Hemans, L. E. L. Threepence
will be charged at the doors, which will go to the use of the above two
admirable Societies.' Potts wants me to go down and hear him. He has an
eye to business. He has had a quarrel with Sir Barnes, and wants me to go
down and hear him, and smash him, he kindly says. Let us go down, Clive.
You shall draw your cousin as you have drawn his villainous little mug a
hundred times before; and I will do the smashing part, and we will have
some fun out of the transaction."

"Besides, Florac will be in the country; going to Rosebury is a journey
worth the taking, I can tell you; and we have old Mrs. Mason to go and
see, who sighs after you, Colonel. My wife went to see her," remarks Mr.
Pendennis, "and----"

"And Miss Newcome, I know," says the Colonel.

"She is away at Brighton, with her little charges, for sea air. My wife
heard from her to-day."

"Oh, indeed. Mrs. Pendennis corresponds with her?" says our host,
darkling under his eyebrows; and, at this moment, my neighbour, F. B., is
kind enough to scrunch my foot under the table with the weight of his
heel, as much as to warn me, by an appeal to my own corns, to avoid
treading on so delicate a subject in that house. "Yes," said I, in spite,
perhaps in consequence, of this interruption. "My wife does correspond
with Miss Ethel, who is a noble creature, and whom those who know her
know how to love and admire. She is very much changed since you knew her,
Colonel Newcome; since the misfortunes in Sir Barnes's family, and the
differences between you and him. Very much changed and very much
improved. Ask my wife about her, who knows her most intimately, and hears
from her constantly."

"Very likely, very likely," cried the Colonel, hurriedly, "I hope she is
improved, with all my heart. I am sure there was room for it. Gentlemen,
shall we go up to the ladies and have some coffee?" And herewith the
colloquy ended, and the party ascended to the drawing-room.

The party ascended to the drawing-room, where no doubt both the ladies
were pleased by the invasion which ended their talk. My wife and the
Colonel talked apart, and I saw the latter looking gloomy, and the former
pleading very eagerly, and using a great deal of action, as the little
hands are wont to do, when the mistress's heart is very much moved. I was
sure she was pleading Ethel's cause with her uncle.

So indeed she was. And Mr. George, too, knew what her thoughts were.
"Look at her!" he said to me. "Don't you see what she is doing? She
believes in that girl whom you all said Clive took a fancy to before he
married his present little placid wife; a nice little simple creature,
who is worth a dozen Ethels."

"Simple certainly," says Mr. P., with a shrug of the shoulders.

"A simpleton of twenty is better than a roue of twenty. It is better not
to have thought at all, than to have thought such things as must go
through a girl's mind whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted;
whose eyes, as soon as they are opened, are turned to the main chance,
and are taught to leer at earl, to languish at a marquis, and to grow
blind before a commoner. I don't know much about fashionable life. Heaven
help us (you young Brummell! I see the reproach in your face!) Why, sir,
it absolutely appears to me as if this little hop-o'-my-thumb of a
creature has begun to give herself airs since her marriage and her
carriage. Do you know, I rather thought she patronised me? Are all women
spoiled by their contact with the world, and their bloom rubbed off in
the market? I know one who seems to me to remain pure! to be sure, I only
know her, and this little person, and Mrs. Flanagan our laundress, and my
sisters at home, who don't count. But that Miss Newcome to whom once you
introduced me? Oh, the cockatrice! only that poison don't affect your
wife, the other would kill her. I hope the Colonel will not believe a
word which Laura says." And my wife's tete-a-tete with our host coming to
an end about this time, Mr. Warrington in high spirits goes up to the
ladies, recapitulates the news of Barnes's lecture, recites "How doth the
little busy bee," and gives a quasi-satirical comment upon that
well-known poem, which bewilders Mrs. Clive, until, set on by the
laughter of the rest of the audience, she laughs very freely at that odd
man, and calls him "you droll satirical creature you!" and says "she
never was so much amused in her life. Were you, Mrs. Pendennis?"

Meanwhile Clive, who has been sitting apart moodily biting his nails, not
listening to F. B.'s remarks, has broken into a laugh once or twice, and
gone to a writing-book, on which, whilst George is still disserting,
Clive is drawing.

At the end of the other's speech, F. B. goes up to the draughtsman, looks
over his shoulder, makes one or two violent efforts as of inward
convulsion, and finally explodes in an enormous guffaw. "It's capital! By
Jove, it's capital! Sir Barnes would never dare to face his constituents
with that picture of him hung up in Newcome!"

And F. B. holds up the drawing, at which we all laugh except Laura. As
for the Colonel, he paces up and down the room, holding the sketch close
to his eyes, holding it away from him, patting it, clapping his son
delightedly on the shoulder. "Capital! capital! We'll have the picture
printed, by Jove, sir; show vice it's own image; and shame the viper in
his own nest, sir. That's what we will."

Mrs. Pendennis came away with rather a heavy heart from this party. She
chose to interest herself about the right or wrong of her friends; and
her mind was disturbed by the Colonel's vindictive spirit. On the
subsequent day we had occasion to visit our friend J. J. (who was
completing the sweetest little picture, No. 263 in the Exhibition,
"Portrait of a Lady and Child"), and we found that Clive had been with the
painter that morning likewise; and that J. J. was acquainted with his
scheme. That he did not approve of it we could read in the artist's grave
countenance. "Nor does Clive approve of it either!" cried Ridley, with
greater eagerness than he usually displayed, and more openness than he
was accustomed to exhibit in judging unfavourably of his friends.

"Among them they have taken him away from his art," Ridley said. "They
don't understand him when he talks about it; they despise him for
pursuing it. Why should I wonder at that? my parents despised it too, and
my father was not a grand gentleman like the Colonel, Mrs. Pendennis. Ah!
why did the Colonel ever grow rich? Why had not Clive to work for his
bread as have? He would have done something that was worthy of him then;
now his time must be spent in dancing attendance at balls land operas,
and yawning at City board-rooms. They call that business: they think he
is idling when he comes here, poor fellow! As if life was long enough for
our art; and the best labour we can give, good enough for it! He went
away groaning this morning, and quite saddened in spirits. The Colonel
wants to set up himself for Parliament, or to set Clive up; but he says
he won't. I hope he won't; do not you, Mrs. Pendennis?"

The painter turned as he spoke; and the bright northern light which fell
upon the sitter's head was intercepted, and lighted up his own as he
addressed us. Out of that bright light looked his pale thoughtful face,
and long locks and eager brown eyes. The palette on his arm was a great
shield painted of many colours: he carried his mall-stick and a sheaf of
brushes along with the weapons of his glorious but harmless war. With
these he achieves conquests, wherein none are wounded save the envious:
with that he shelters him against how much idleness, ambition,
temptations! Occupied over that consoling work, idle thoughts cannot gain
mastery over him: selfish wishes or desires are kept at bay. Art is
truth: and truth is religion: and its study and practice a daily work of
pious duty. What are the world's struggles, brawls, successes, to that
calm recluse pursuing his calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round
his chamber, numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories
which he has won:--sweet flowers of fancy reared by him:--kind shapes of
beauty which he has devised and moulded. The world enters into the
artist's studio, and scornfully bids him a price for his genius, or makes
dull pretence to admire it. What know you of his art? You cannot read the
alphabet of that sacred book, good old Thomas Newcome! What can you tell
of its glories, joys, secrets, consolations? Between his two best-beloved
mistresses, poor Clive's luckless father somehow interposes; and with
sorrowful, even angry protests. In place of Art the Colonel brings him a
ledger; and in lieu of first love, shows him Rosey.

No wonder that Clive hangs his head; rebels sometimes, desponds always:
he has positively determined to refuse to stand for Newcome, Ridley says.
Laura is glad of his refusal, and begins to think of him once more as of
the Clive of old days.




CHAPTER LXVI

In which the Colonel and the Newcome Athenaeum are both lectured


At breakfast with his family, on the morning after the little
entertainment to which we were bidden, in the last chapter, Colonel
Newcome was full of the projected invasion of Barnes's territories, and
delighted to think that there was an opportunity of at last humiliating
that rascal.

"Clive does not think he is a rascal at all, papa," cries Rosey, from
behind her tea-urn; "that is, you said you thought papa judged him too
harshly; you know you did, this morning!" And from her husband's angry
glances, she flies to his father's for protection. Those were even
fiercer than Clive's. Revenge flashed from beneath Thomas Newcome's
grizzled eyebrows, and glanced in the direction where Clive sat. Then the
Colonel's face flushed up, and he cast his eyes down towards his tea-cup,
which he lifted with a trembling hand. The father and son loved each
other so, that each was afraid of the other. A war between two such men
is dreadful; pretty little pink-faced Rosey, in a sweet little morning
cap and ribbons, her pretty little fingers twinkling with a score of
rings, sat simpering before her silver tea-urn, which reflected her
pretty little pink baby face. Little artless creature! what did she know
of the dreadful wounds which her little words inflicted in the one
generous breast and the other?

"My boy's heart is gone from me," thinks poor Thomas Newcome; "our family
is insulted, our enterprises ruined, by that traitor, and my son is not
even angry! he does not care for the success of our plans--for the honour
of our name even; I make him a position of which any young man in England
might be proud, and Clive scarcely deigns to accept it."

"My wife appeals to my father," thinks poor Clive; "it is from him she
asks counsel, and not from me. Be it about the ribbon in her cap, or any
other transaction in our lives, she takes her colour from his opinion,
and goes to him for advice, and I have to wait till it is given, and
conform myself to it. If I differ from the dear old father, I wound him;
if I yield up my opinion, as I do always, it is with a bad grace, and I
wound him still. With the best intentions in the world, what a slave's
life it is that he has made for me!"

"How interested you are in your papers!" resumes the sprightly nosey.
"What can you find in those horrid politics?" Both gentlemen are looking
at their papers with all their might, and no doubt cannot see one single
word which those brilliant and witty leading articles contain.

"Clive is like you, Rosey," says the Colonel, laying his paper down, "and
does not care for politics."

"He only cares for pictures, papa," says Mrs. Clive. "He would not drive
with me yesterday in the Park, but spent hours in his room, while you
were toiling in the City, poor papa!--spent hours painting a horrid
beggar-man dressed up as a monk. And this morning, he got up quite early,
quite early, and has been out ever so long, and only came in for
breakfast just now! just before the bell rung."

"I like a ride before breakfast," says Clive.

"A ride! I know where you have been, sir! He goes away morning after
morning, to that little Mr. Ridley's--his chums, papa, and he comes back
with his hands all over horrid paint. He did this morning; you know you
did, Clive."

"I did not keep any one waiting, Rosa," says Clive. "I like to have two
or three hours at my painting when I can spare time." Indeed, the poor
fellow used so to run away of summer meetings for Ridley's instructions,
and gallop home again, so as to be in time for the family meal.

"Yes," cries Rosey, tossing up the cap and ribbons, "he gets up so early
in the morning, that at night he falls asleep after dinner; very pleasant
and polite, isn't he, papa?"

"I am up betimes too, my dear," says the Colonel (many and many a time he
must have heard Clive as he left the house); "I have a great many letters
to write, affairs of the greatest importance to examine and conduct. Mr.
Betts from the City is often with me for hours before I come down to your
breakfast-table. A man who has the affairs of such a great bank as ours
to look to, must be up with the lark. We are all early risers in India."

"You dear kind papa!" says little Rosey, with unfeigned admiration; and
she puts out one of the plump white little jewelled hands, and pats the
lean brown paw of the Colonel which is nearest to her.

"Is Ridley's picture getting on well, Clive?" asks the Colonel, trying to
interest himself about Ridley and his picture.

"Very well; it is beautiful; he has sold it for a great price; they must
make him an Academician next year," replies Clive.

"A most industrious and meritorious young man; he deserves every honour
that may happen to him," says the old soldier. "Rosa, my dear, it is time
that you should ask Mr. Ridley to dinner, and Mr. Smee, and some of those
gentlemen. We will drive this afternoon and see your portrait."

"Clive does not go to sleep after dinner when Mr. Ridley comes here,"
cries Rosa.

"No; I think it is my turn then," says the Colonel, with a glance of
kindness. The anger has disappeared from under his brows; at that moment
the menaced battle is postponed.

"And yet I know that it must come," says poor Clive, telling me the story
as he hangs on my arm, and we pace through the Park. "The Colonel and I
are walking on a mine, and that poor little wife of mine is perpetually
flinging little shells to fire it. I sometimes wish it were blown up, and
I were done for, Pen. I don't think my widow would break her heart about
me. No; I have no right to say that; it's a shame to say that; she tries
her very best to please me, poor little dear. It's the fault of my
temper, perhaps, that she can't. But they neither understand me, don't
you see? the Colonel can't help thinking I am a degraded being, because I
am fond of painting. Still, dear old boy, he patronises Ridley; a man of
genius, whom those sentries ought to salute, by Jove, sir, when he
passes. Ridley patronised by an old officer of Indian dragoons, a little
bit of a Rosey, and a fellow who is not fit to lay his palette for him! I
want sometimes to ask J. J.'s pardon, after the Colonel has been talking
to him in his confounded condescending way, uttering some awful bosh
about the fine arts. Rosey follows him, and trips round J. J.'s studio,
and pretends to admire, and says, 'How soft; how sweet!' recalling some
of mamma-in-law's dreadful expressions, which make me shudder when I hear
them. If my poor old father had a confidant into whose arm he could hook
his own, and whom he could pester with his family griefs as I do you, the
dear old boy would have his dreary story to tell too. I hate banks,
bankers, Bundelcund, indigo, cotton, and the whole business. I go to that
confounded board, and never hear one syllable that the fellows are
talking about. I sit there because he wishes me to sit there; don't you
think he sees that my heart is out of the business; that I would rather
be at home in my painting-room? We don't understand each other, but we
feel each other, as it were by instinct. Each thinks in his own way, but
knows what the other is thinking. We fight mute battles, don't you see,
and, our thoughts, though we don't express them, are perceptible to one
another, and come out from our eyes, or pass out from us somehow, and
meet, and fight, and strike, and wound."

Of course Clive's confidant saw how sore and unhappy the poor fellow was,
and commiserated his fatal but natural condition. The little ills of life
are the hardest to bear, as we all very well know. What would the
possession of a hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the applause of
one's countrymen, or the loveliest and best-beloved woman,--of any glory,
and happiness, or good-fortune avail to a gentleman, for instance, who
was allowed to enjoy them only with the condition of wearing a shoe with
a couple of nails or sharp pebbles inside it? All fame and happiness
would disappear, and plunge down that shoe. All life would rankle round
those little nails. I strove, by such philosophic sedatives as confidants
are wont to apply on these occasions, to soothe my poor friend's anger
and pain; and I dare say the little nails hurt the patient just as much
as before.

Clive pursued his lugubrious talk through the Park, and continued it as
far as the modest-furnished house which we then occupied in the Pimlico
region. It so happened that the Colonel and Mrs. Clive also called upon
us that day, and found this culprit in Laura's drawing-room, when they
entered it, descending out of that splendid barouche in which we have
already shown Mrs. Clive to the public.

"He has not been here for months before; nor have you Rosa; nor have you,
Colonel; though we have smothered our indignation, and been to dine with
you, and to call, ever so many times!" cries Laura.

The Colonel pleaded his business engagements; Rosa, that little woman of
the world, had a thousand calls to make, and who knows how much to do?
since she came out. She had been to fetch papa, at Bays's, and the porter
had told the Colonel that Mr. Clive and Mr. Pendennis had just left the
club together.

"Clive scarcely ever drives with me," says Rosa; "papa almost always
does."

"Rosey's is such a swell carriage, that I feel ashamed," says Clive.

"I don't understand you young men. I don't see why you need be ashamed to
go on the Course with your wife in her carriage, Clive," remarks the
Colonel.

"The Course! the Course is at Calcutta, papa!" cries Rosey. We drive in
the Park."

"We have a park at Barrackpore too, my dear," says papa.

"And he calls his grooms saices! He said he was going to send away a
saice for being tipsy, and I did not know in the least what he could
mean, Laura!"

"Mr. Newcome! you must go and drive on the Course with Rosa now; and the
Colonel must sit and talk with me, whom he has not been to see for such a
long time." Clive presently went off in state by Rosey's side, and then
Laura showed Colonel Newcome his beautiful white Cashmere shawl round a
successor of that little person who had first been wrapped in that web,
now a stout young gentleman whose noise could be clearly heard in the
upper regions.

"I wish you could come down with us, Arthur, upon our electioneering
visit."

"That of which you were talking last night? Are you bent upon it?"

"Yes, I am determined on it."

Laura heard a child's cry at this moment, and left the room with a
parting glance at her husband, who in fact had talked over the matter
with Mrs. Pendennis, and agreed with her in opinion.

As the Colonel had opened the question, I ventured to make a respectful
remonstrance against the scheme. Vindictiveness on the part of a man so
simple and generous, so fair and noble in all his dealings as Thomas
Newcome, appeared in my mind unworthy of him. Surely his kinsman had
sorrow and humiliation enough already at home. Barnes's further
punishment, we thought, might be left to time, to remorse, to the Judge
of right and wrong; Who better understands than we can do, our causes and
temptations towards evil actions, Who reserves the sentence for His own
tribunal. But when angered, the best of us mistake our own motives, as we
do those of the enemy who inflames us. What may be private revenge, we
take to be indignant virtue and just revolt against wrong. The Colonel
would not hear of counsels of moderation, such as I bore him from a sweet
Christian pleader. "Remorse!" he cried out with a laugh, "that villain
will never feel it until he is tied up and whipped at the cart's tail!
Time change that rogue! Unless he is wholesomely punished, he will grow a
greater scoundrel every year. I am inclined to think, sir," says he, his
honest brows darkling as he looked towards me, "that you too are spoiled
by this wicked world, and these heartless, fashionable, fine people. You
wish to live well with the enemy, and with us too, Pendennis. It can't
be. He who is not with us is against us. I very much fear, sir, that the
women, the women, you understand, have been talking you over. Do not let
us speak any more about this subject, for I don't wish that my son, and
my son's old friend, should have a quarrel." His face became red, his
voice quivered with agitation, and he looked with glances which I was
pained to behold in those kind old eyes: not because his wrath and
suspicion visited myself, but because an impartial witness, nay, a friend
to Thomas Newcome in that family quarrel, I grieved to think that a
generous heart was led astray, and to see a good man do wrong. So with no
more thanks for his interference than a man usually gets who meddles in
domestic strifes, the present luckless advocate ceased pleading.

To be sure, the Colonel and Clive had other advisers, who did not take
the peaceful side. George Warrington was one of these; he was for war a
l'outrance with Barnes Newcome; for keeping no terms with such a villain.
He found a pleasure in hunting him, and whipping him. "Barnes ought to be
punished," George said, "for his poor wife's misfortune; it was Barnes's
infernal cruelty, wickedness, selfishness, which had driven her into
misery and wrong." Mr. Warrington went down to Newcome, and was present
at that lecture whereof mention has been made in a previous chapter. I am
afraid his behaviour was very indecorous; he laughed at the pathetic
allusions of the respected Member for Newcome; he sneered at the sublime
passages; he wrote an awful critique in the Newcome Independent two days
after, whereof the irony was so subtle, that half the readers of the
paper mistook his grave scorn for respect, and his gibes for praise.

Clive, his father, and Frederick Bayham, their faithful aide-de-camp,
were at Newcome likewise when Sir Barnes's oration was delivered. At
first it was given out at Newcome that the Colonel visited the place for
the purpose of seeing his dear old friend and pensioner, Mrs. Mason, who
was now not long to enjoy his bounty, and so old, as scarcely to know her
benefactor. Only after her sleep, or when the sun warmed her and the old
wine with which he supplied her, was the good old woman able to recognise
her Colonel. She mingled father and son together in her mind. A lady who
now often came in to her, thought she was wandering in her talk, when the
poor old woman spoke of a visit she had had from her boy; and then the
attendant told Miss Newcome that such a visit had actually taken place,
and that but yesterday Clive and his father had been in that room, and
occupied the chair where she sat. "The young lady was taken quite ill,
and seemed ready to faint almost," Mrs. Mason's servant and spokeswoman
told Colonel Newcome when that gentleman arrived shortly after Ethel's
departure, to see his old nurse. "Indeed! he was very sorry." The maid
told many stories about Miss Newcome's goodness and charity; how she was
constantly visiting the poor now; how she was for ever engaged in good
works for the young, the sick, and the aged. She had had a dreadful
misfortune in love; she was going to be married to a young marquis;
richer even than Prince de Moncontour down at Rosebury; but it was all
broke off on account of that dreadful affair at the Hall.

Was she very good to the poor? did she come often to see her
grandfather's old friend? it was no more than she ought "to do," Colonel
Newcome said; without, however, thinking fit to tell his informant that
he had himself met his niece Ethel, five minutes before he had entered
Mrs. Mason's door.

The poor thing was in discourse with Mr. Harris, the surgeon, and talking
(as best she might, for no doubt the news which she had just heard had
agitated her), talking about blankets, and arrowroot, wine, and
medicaments for her poor, when she saw her uncle coming towards her. She
tottered a step or two forwards to meet him; held both her hands out, and
called his name; but he looked her sternly in the face, took off his hat
and bowed, and passed on. He did not think fit to mention the meeting
even to his son, Clive; but we may be sure Mr. Harris, the surgeon, spoke
of the circumstance that night after the lecture, at the club, where a
crowd of gentlemen were gathered together, smoking their cigars, and
enjoying themselves according to their custom, and discussing Sir Barnes
Newcome's performance.

According to established usage in such cases, our esteemed representative
was received by the committee of the Newcome Athenaeum, assembled in
their committee-room, and thence marshalled by the chairman and
vice-chairman to his rostrum in the lecture-hall, round about which the
magnates of the institution and the notabilities of the town were rallied
on this public occasion. The Baronet came in some state from his own
house, arriving at Newcome in his carriage with four horses, accompanied
by my lady his mother, and Miss Ethel his beautiful sister, who now was
mistress at the Hall. His little girl was brought--five years old now;
she sate on her aunt's knee, and slept during a greater part of the
performance. A fine bustle, we may be sure, was made on the introduction
of these personages to their reserved seats on the platform, where they
sate encompassed by others of the great ladies of Newcome, to whom they
and the lecturer were especially gracious at this season. Was not
Parliament about to be dissolved, and were not the folks at Newcome
Park particularly civil at that interesting period? So Barnes Newcome
mounts his pulpit, bows round to the crowded assembly in acknowledgment
of their buzz of applause or recognition, passes his lily-white
pocket-handkerchief across his thin lips, and dashes off into his lecture
about Mrs. Hemans and the poetry of the affections. A public man, a
commercial man as we well know, yet his heart is in his home, and his joy
in his affections; the presence of this immense assembly here this
evening; of the industrious capitalists; of the intelligent middle class;
of the pride and mainstay of England, the operatives of Newcome; these,
surrounded by their wives and their children (a graceful bow to the
bonnets to the right of the platform), show that they too have hearts to
feel, and homes to cherish; that they, too, feel the love of women, the
innocence of children, the love of song! Our lecturer then makes a
distinction between man's poetry and woman's poetry, charging
considerably in favour of the latter. We show that to appeal to the
affections is after all the true office of the bard; to decorate the
homely threshold, to wreathe flowers round the domestic hearth, the
delightful duty of the Christian singer. We glance at Mrs. Hemans's
biography, and state where she was born, and under what circumstances she
must have at first, etc. etc. Is this a correct account of Sir Barnes
Newcome's lecture? I was not present, and did not read the report. Very
likely the above may be a reminiscence of that mock lecture which
Warrington delivered in anticipation of the Baronet's oration.

After he had read for about five minutes, it was remarked the Baronet
suddenly stopped and became exceedingly confused over his manuscript:
betaking himself to his auxiliary glass of water before he resumed his
discourse, which for a long time was languid, low, and disturbed in tone.
This period of disturbance, no doubt, must have occurred when Sir Barnes
saw before him F. Bayham and Warrington seated in the amphitheatre; and,
by the side of those fierce scornful countenances, Clive Newcome's pale
face.

Clive Newcome was not looking at Barnes. His eyes were fixed upon the
lady seated not far from the lecturer--upon Ethel, with her arm round her
little niece's shoulder, and her thick black ringlets drooping down over
a face paler than Clive's own.

Of course she knew that Clive was present. She was aware of him as she
entered the hall; saw him at the very first moment; saw nothing but him,
I dare say, though her eyes were shut and her head was turned now towards
her mother, and now bent down on the little niece's golden curls. And the
past and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and passions, and
tones and looks for ever echoing in the heart, and present in the memory
--these, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great
gulf of time, and parting, and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved
for many years. There she sits; the same, but changed: as gone from him
as if she were dead; departed indeed into another sphere, and entered
into a kind of death. If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but
a corpse unburied. Strew round it the flowers of youth. Wash it with
tears of passion. Wrap it and envelop it with fond devotion. Break heart,
and fling yourself on the bier, and kiss her cold lips and press her
hand! It falls back dead on the cold breast again. The beautiful lips
have never a blush or a smile. Cover them and lay them in the ground, and
so take thy hatband off, good friend, and go to thy business. Do you
suppose you are the only man who has had to attend such a funeral? You
will find some men smiling and at work the day after. Some come to the
grave now and again out of the world, and say a brief prayer, and a "God
bless her!" With some men, she gone, and her viduous mansion your heart
to let, her successor, the new occupant, poking in all the drawers and
corners, and cupboards of the tenement, finds her miniature and some of
her dusty old letters hidden away somewhere, and says--Was this the face
he admired so? Why, allowing even for the painter's flattery, it is quite
ordinary, and the eyes certainly do not look straight. Are these the
letters you thought so charming? Well, upon my word, I never read
anything more commonplace in my life! See, here's a line half blotted
out. Oh, I suppose she was crying then--some of her tears, idle tears--
Hark, there is Barnes Newcome's eloquence still plapping on like water
from a cistern--and our thoughts, where have they wandered? far away from
the lecture--as far away as Clive's almost. And now the fountain ceases
to trickle; the mouth from which issued that cool and limpid flux ceases
to smile; the figure is seen to bow and retire; a buzz, a hum, a whisper,
a scuffle, a meeting of bonnets and wagging of feathers and rustling of
silks ensues. "Thank you! delightful, I am sure!" "I really was quite
overcome;" "Excellent;" "So much obliged," are rapid phrases heard
amongst the polite on the platform. While down below, "Yaw! quite enough
of that;" "Mary Jane, cover your throat up, and don't kitch cold, and
don't push me, please, sir;" "Arry! coom along and ave a pint a ale,"
etc., are the remarks heard, or perhaps not heard, by Clive Newcome, as
he watches at the private entrance of the Athenaeum, where Sir Barnes's
carriage is waiting with its flaming lamps, and domestics in state
liveries. One of them comes out of the building bearing the little girl
in his arms, and lays her in the carriage. Then Sir Barnes, and Lady
Anne, and the Mayor; then Ethel issues forth, and as she passes under the
lamps, beholds Clive's face as pale and sad as her own.

Shall we go visit the lodge-gates of Newcome Park the moon shining on
their carving? Is there any pleasure in walking by miles of grey paling,
and endless palisades of firs? Oh, you fool, what do you hope to see
behind that curtain? Absurd fugitive, whither would you run? Can you
burst the tether of fate: and is not poor dear little Rosey Mackenzie
sitting yonder waiting for you by the stake? Go home, sir; and don't
catch cold. So Mr. Clive returns to the King's Arms, and goes up to his
bedroom, and he hears Mr. F. Bayham's deep voice as he passes by the
Boscawen Room, where the Jolly Britons are as usual assembled.




CHAPTER LXVII

Newcome and Liberty


We have said that the Baronet's lecture was discussed in the
midnight senate assembled at the King's Arms, where Mr. Tom Potts
showed the orator no mercy. The senate of the King's Arms was hostile
to Sir Barnes Newcome. Many other Newcomites besides were savage and
inclined to revolt against the representative of their borough. As these
patriots met over their cups, and over the bumper of friendship uttered
the sentiments of freedom, they had often asked of one another, where
should a man be found to rid Newcome of its dictator? Generous hearts
writhed under the oppression: patriotic eyes scowled when Barnes Newcome
went by: with fine satire, Tom Potts at Brown the hatter's shop, who made
the hats for Sir Barnes Newcome's domestics, proposed to take one of the
beavers--a gold-laced one with a cockade and a cord--and set it up in the
market-place and bid all Newcome come bow to it, as to the hat of
Gessler. "Don't you think, Potts," says F. Bayham, who of course was
admitted into the King's Arms club, and ornamented that assembly by his
presence and discourse, "Don't you think the Colonel would make a good
William Tell to combat against that Gessler?" Ha! Proposal received with
acclamation--eagerly adopted by Charles Tucker, Esq., Attorney-at-Law,
who would not have the slightest objection to conduct Colonel Newcome's,
or any other gentleman's electioneering business in Newcome or elsewhere.

Like those three gentlemen in the plays and pictures of William Tell, who
conspire under the moon, calling upon liberty and resolving to elect Tell
as their especial champion--like Arnold, Melchthal, and Werner--Tom
Potts, Fred Bayham, and Charles Tucker, Esqs., conspired round a
punch-bowl, and determined that Thomas Newcome should be requested to
free his country. A deputation from the electors of Newcome, that is to
say, these very gentlemen waited on the Colonel in his apartment the very
next morning, and set before him the state of the borough; Barnes
Newcome's tyranny, under which it groaned; and the yearning of all honest
men to be free from that usurpation. Thomas Newcome received the
deputation with great solemnity and politeness, crossed his legs, folded
his arms, smoked his cheroot, and listened moat decorously, as now Potts,
now Tucker, expounded to him; Bayham giving the benefit of his emphatic
"hear, hear," to their statements, and explaining dubious phrases to the
Colonel in the most affable manner.

Whatever the conspirators had to say against Barnes, Colonel Newcome was
only too ready to believe. He had made up his mind that that criminal
ought to be punished and exposed. The lawyer's covert innuendoes, who was
ready to insinuate any amount of evil against Barnes which could safely
be uttered, were by no means strong enough for Thomas Newcome. "'Sharp
practice! exceedingly alive to his own interests--reported violence of
temper and tenacity of money'--say swindling at once, sir--say falsehood
and rapacity--say cruelty and avarice," cries the Colonel. "I believe,
upon my honour and conscience, that unfortunate young man to be guilty of
every one of those crimes."

Mr. Bayham remarks to Mr. Potts that our friend the Colonel, when he does
utter an opinion, takes care that there shall be no mistake about it.

"And I took care there should be no mistake before I uttered it at all,
Bayham!" cries F. B.'s patron. "As long as I was in any doubt about this
young man, I gave the criminal the benefit of it, as a man who admires
our glorious constitution should do, and kept my own counsel, sir."

"At least," remarks Mr. Tucker, "enough is proven to show that Sir Barnes
Newcome Newcome, Baronet, is scarce a fit person to represent this great
borough in Parliament."

"Represent Newcome in Parliament! It is a disgrace to that noble
institution the English House of Commons, that Barnes Newcome should sit
in it. A man whose word you cannot trust; a man stained with every
private crime. What right has he to sit in the assembly of the
legislators of the land, sir?" cries the Colonel, waving his hand as if
addressing a chamber of deputies.

"You are for upholding the House of Commons?" inquires the lawyer.

"Of course, sir, of course."

"And for increasing the franchise, Colonel Newcome, I should hope?"
continues Mr. Tucker.

"Every man who can read and write ought to have a vote, sir; that is my
opinion!" cries the Colonel.

"He's a Liberal to the backbone," says Potts to Tucker.

"To the backbone!" responds Tucker to Potts. "The Colonel will do for us,
Potts."

"We want such a man, Tucker; the Independent has been crying out for such
a man for years past. We ought to have a Liberal as second representative
of this great town--not a sneaking half-and-half Ministerialist like Sir
Barnes, a fellow with one leg in the Carlton and the other in Brookes's.
Old Mr. Bunce we can't touch. His place is safe; he is a good man of
business: we can't meddle with Mr. Bunce--I know that, who know the
feeling of the country pretty well."

"Pretty well! Better than any man in Newcome, Potts!" cries Mr. Tucker.

"But a good man like the Colonel,--a good Liberal like the Colonel,--a
man who goes in for household suffrage----"

"Certainly, gentlemen."

"And the general great Liberal principles--we know, of course--such a man
would assuredly have a chance against Sir Barnes Newcome at the coming
election! could we find such a man! a real friend of the people!"

"I know a friend of the people if ever there was one," F. Bayham
interposes.

"A man of wealth, station, experience; a man who has fought for his
country; a man who is beloved in this place as you are, Colonel Newcome:
for your goodness is known, sir--You are not ashamed of your origin, and
there is not a Newcomite old or young, but knows how admirably good you
have been to your old friend, Mrs.--Mrs. What-d'-you-call'-em."

"Mrs. Mason," from F. B.

"Mrs. Mason. If such a man as you, sir, would consent to put himself in
nomination at the next election, every true Liberal in this place would
rush to support you; and crush the oligarchy who rides over the liberties
of this borough!"

"Something of this sort, gentlemen, I own to you had crossed my mind,"
Thomas Newcome remarked. "When I saw that disgrace to my name, and the
name of my father's birthplace, representing the borough in Parliament, I
thought for the credit of the town and the family, the Member for Newcome
at least might be an honest man. I am an old soldier; have passed all my
life in India; and am little conversant with affairs at home" (cries of
"You are, you are"). "I hoped that my son, Mr. Clive Newcome, might have
been found qualified to contest this borough against his unworthy cousin,
and possibly to sit as your representative in Parliament. The wealth I
have had the good fortune to amass will descend to him naturally, and at
no very distant period of time, for I am nearly seventy years of age,
gentlemen."

The gentlemen are astonished at this statement.

"But," resumed the Colonel; "my son Clive, as my friend Bayham knows, and
to my own regret and mortification, as I don't care to confess to you,
declares he has no interest or desire in politics, or for public
distinction--prefers his own pursuits--and even these I fear do not
absorb him--declines the offer which I made him, to present himself in
opposition to Sir Barnes Newcome. It becomes men in a certain station, as
I think, to assert that station; and though a few years back I never
should have thought of public life at all, and proposed to end my days in
quiet as a retired dragoon officer, since--since it has pleased Heaven to
increase very greatly my pecuniary means, to place me, as a director and
manager of an important banking company, in a station of great public
responsibility, I and my brother-directors have thought it but right that
one of us should sit in Parliament, if possible, and I am not a man to
shirk from that or from any other duty."

"Colonel, will you attend a meeting of electors which we will call, and
say as much to them and as well?" cries Mr. Potts. "Shall I put an
announcement in my paper to the effect that you are ready to come
forward?"

"I am prepared to do so, my good sir."

And presently this solemn palaver ended.

Besides the critical article upon the Baronet's lecture, of which Mr.
Warrington was the author, there appeared in the leading columns of the
ensuing number of Mr. Potts' Independent, some remarks of a very smashing
or hostile nature, against the Member for Newcome. "This gentleman has
shown such talent in the lecturing business," the Independent said, "that
it is a great pity he should not withdraw himself from politics, and
cultivate what all Newcome knows are the arts which he understands best;
namely, poetry and the domestic affections. The performance of our
talented representative last night was so pathetic as to bring tears into
the eyes of several of our fair friends. We have heard, but never
believed until now, that Sir Barnes Newcome possessed such a genius for
making women cry. Last week we had the talented Miss Noakes, from
Slowcome, reading Milton to us; how far superior was the eloquence of Sir
Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., even to that of the celebrated jestress!
Bets were freely offered in the room last night that Sir Barnes would
beat any woman,--bets which were not taken, as we scarcely need say, so
well do our citizens appreciate the character of our excellent, our
admirable representative.--Let the Baronet stick to his lectures, and let
Newcome relieve him of his political occupations. He is not fit for them,
he is too sentimental a man for us; the men of Newcome want a sound
practical person; the Liberals of Newcome have a desire to be
represented. When we elected Sir Barnes, he talked liberally enough, and
we thought he would do, but you see the honourable Baronet is so
poetical! we ought to have known that, and not to have believed him. Let
us have a straightforward gentleman. If not a man of words, at least let
us have a practical man. If not a man of eloquence, one at any rate whose
word we can trust, and we can't trust Sir Barnes Newcome's; we have tried
him, and we can't really. Last night when the ladies were crying, we
could not for the souls of us help laughing. We hope we know how to
conduct ourselves as gentlemen. We trust we did not interrupt the harmony
of the evening; but Sir Barnes Newcome, prating about children and
virtue, and affection and poetry, this is really too strong.

"The Independent, faithful to its name, and ever actuated by principles
of honour, has been, as our thousands of readers know, disposed to give
Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., a fair trial. When he came forward
after his father's death, we believed in his pledges and promises, as a
retrencher and reformer, and we stuck by him. Is there any man in
Newcome, except, perhaps, our twaddling old contemporary the Sentinel,
who believes in Sir B. N. any more? We say no, and we now give the
readers of the Independent, and the electors of this borough, fair
notice, that when the dissolution of Parliament takes place, a good man,
a true man, a man of experience, no dangerous Radical, or brawling tap
orator--Mr. Hicks's friends well understand whom we mean--but a gentleman
of Liberal principles, well-won wealth, and deserved station and honour,
will ask the electors of Newcome whether they are, or are not
discontented with their present unworthy Member. The Independent for one,
says, we know good men of your family, we know in it men who would do
honour to any name; but you, Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., we trust
no more."

In the electioneering matter, which had occasioned my unlucky
interference, and that subsequent little coolness upon the good Colonel's
part, Clive Newcome had himself shown that the scheme was not to his
liking; had then submitted as his custom was: and doing so with a bad
grace, as also was to be expected, had got little thanks for his
obedience. Thomas Newcome was hurt at his son's faint-heartedness, and of
course little Rosey was displeased at his hanging back. He set off in his
father's train, a silent, unwilling partisan. Thomas Newcome had the
leisure to survey Clive's glum face opposite to him during the whole of
their journey, and to chew his mustachios, and brood upon his wrath and
wrongs. His life had been a sacrifice for that boy! What darling schemes
had he not formed in his behalf, and how superciliously did Clive meet
his projects! The Colonel could not see the harm of which he had himself
been the author. Had he not done everything in mortal's power for his
son's happiness, and how many young men in England were there with such
advantages as this moody, discontented, spoiled boy? As Clive backed out
of the contest, of course his father urged it only the more vehemently.
Clive slunk away from committees and canvassing, and lounged about the
Newcome manufactories, whilst his father, with anger and bitterness in
his heart, remained at the post of honour, as he called it, bent upon
overcoming his enemy and carrying his point against Barnes Newcome. "If
Paris will not fight, sir," the Colonel said, with a sad look following
his son, "Priam must." Good old Priam believed his cause to be a
perfectly just one, and that duty and his honour called upon him to draw
the sword. So there was difference between Thomas Newcome and Clive his
son. I protest it is with pain and reluctance I have to write that the
good old man was in error--that there was a wrong-doer, and that Atticus
was he.

Atticus, be it remembered, thought himself compelled by the very best
motives. Thomas Newcome, the Indian banker, was at war with Barnes, the
English banker. The latter had commenced the hostilities by a sudden and
cowardly act of treason. There were private wrongs to envenom the
contest, but it was the mercantile quarrel on which the Colonel chose to
set his declaration of war. Barnes's first dastardly blow had
occasioned it, and his uncle was determined to carry it through. This I
have said was also George Warrington's judgment, who, in the ensuing
struggle between Sir Barnes and his uncle, acted as a very warm and
efficient partisan of the latter. "Kinsmanship!" says George, "what has
old Tom Newcome ever had from his kinsman but cowardice and treachery? If
Barnes had held up his finger, the young one might have been happy; if he
could have effected it, the Colonel and his bank would have been ruined.
I am for war, and for seeing the old boy in Parliament. He knows no more
about politics than I do about dancing the polka; but there are five
hundred wiseacres in that assembly who know no more than he does, and an
honest man taking his seat there, in place of a confounded little rogue,
at least makes a change for the better."

I dare say Thomas Newcome, Esq. would by no means have concurred in the
above estimate of his political knowledge, and thought himself as well
informed as another. He used to speak with the greatest gravity about our
constitution as the pride and envy of the world, though he surprised you
as much by the latitudinarian reforms, which he was eager to press
forward, as by the most singular old Tory opinions which he advocated on
other occasions. He was for having every man to vote; every poor man to
labour short time and get high wages; every poor curate to be paid double
or treble; every bishop to be docked of his salary, and dismissed from
the House of Lords. But he was a staunch admirer of that assembly, and a
supporter of the rights of the Crown. He was for sweeping off taxes from
the poor, and as money must be raised to carry on government, he opined
that the rich should pay. He uttered all these opinions with the greatest
gravity and emphasis, before a large assembly of electors, and others
convened in the Newcome Town Hall, amid the roars of applause of the
non-electors, and the bewilderment and consternation of Mr. Potts, of the
Independent, who had represented the Colonel in his paper as a safe and
steady reformer. Of course the Sentinel showed him up as a most dangerous
radical, a sepoy republican, and so forth, to the wrath and indignation
of Colonel Newcome. He a republican! he scorned the name! He would die as
he had bled many a time for his sovereign. He an enemy of our beloved
Church! He esteemed and honoured it, as he hated and abhorred the
superstitions of Rome. (Yells, from the Irish in the crowd.) He an enemy
of the House of Lords! He held it to be the safeguard of the constitution
and the legitimate prize of our most illustrious, naval, military, and--
and--legal heroes (ironical cheers). He repelled with scorn the dastard
attacks of the journal which had assailed him; he asked, laying his hands
on his heart, if as a gentleman, an officer bearing Her Majesty's
commission, he could be guilty of a desire to subvert her empire and to
insult the dignity of her crown?

After this second speech at the Town Hall, it was asserted by a
considerable party in Newcome, that Old Tom (as the mob familiarly called
him) was a Tory, while an equal number averred that he was a Radical. Mr.
Potts tried to reconcile his statements, a work in which I should think
the talented editor of the Independent had no little difficulty. "He
knows nothing about it," poor Clive said with a sigh; "his politics are
all sentiment and kindness; he will have the poor man paid double wages,
and does not remember that the employer would be ruined: you have heard
him, Pen, talking in this way at his own table, but when he comes out
armed cap-a-pied, and careers against windmills in public, don't you see
that as Don Quixote's son I had rather the dear brave old gentleman was
at home?"

So this faineant took but little part in the electioneering doings,
holding moodily aloof from the meetings, and councils, and public-houses,
where his father's partisans were assembled.




CHAPTER LXVIII

A Letter and a Reconciliation


Miss Ethel Newcome to Mrs. Pendennis:

"Dearest Laura,--I have not written to you for many weeks past. There
have been some things too trivial, and some too sad, to write about; some
things I know I shall write of if I begin, and yet that I know I had best
leave; for of what good is looking to the past now? Why vex you or myself
by reverting to it? Does not every day bring its own duty and task, and
are these not enough to occupy one? What a fright you must have had with
my little goddaughter! Thank heaven she is well now, and restored to you.
You and your husband I know do not think it essential, but I do, most
essential, and am very grateful that she was taken to church before her
illness.

"Is Mr. Pendennis proceeding with his canvass? I try and avoid a certain
subject, but it will come. You know who is canvassing against us here. My
poor uncle has met with very considerable success amongst the lower
classes. He makes them rambling speeches at which my brother and his
friends laugh, but which the people applaud. I saw him only yesterday, on
the balcony of the King's Arms, speaking to a great mob, who were
cheering vociferously below. I had met him before. He would not even stop
and give his Ethel of old days his hand. I would have given him I don't
know what, for one kiss, for one kind word; but he passed on and would
not answer me. He thinks me--what the world thinks me, worldly and
heartless; what I was. But at least, dear Laura, you know that I always
truly loved him, and do now, although he is our enemy, though he believes
and utters the most cruel things against Barnes, though he says that
Barnes Newcome, my father's son, my brother, Laura, is not an honest man.
Hard, selfish, worldly, I own my poor brother to be, and pray Heaven to
amend him; but dishonest! and to be so maligned by the person one loves
best in the world! This is a hard trial. I pray a proud heart may be
bettered by it.

"And I have seen my cousin; once at a lecture which poor Barnes gave, and
who seemed very much disturbed on perceiving Clive; once afterwards at
good old Mrs. Mason's, whom I have always continued to visit for uncle's
sake. The poor old woman, whose wits are very nearly gone, held both our
hands, and asked when we were going to be married? and laughed, poor old
thing! I cried out to her that Mr. Clive had a wife at home, a young dear
wife, I said. He gave a dreadful sort of laugh, and turned away into the
window. He looks terribly ill, pale, and oldened.

"I asked him a great deal about his wife, whom I remember a very pretty,
sweet-looking girl indeed, at my Aunt Hobson's, but with a not agreeable
mother as I thought then. He answered me by monosyllables, appeared as
though he would speak, and then became silent. I am pained, and yet glad
that I saw him, I said, not very distinctly, I dare say, that I hoped the
difference between Barnes and uncle would not extinguish his regard for
mamma and me, who have always loved him; when I said loved him, he give
one of his bitter laughs again; and so he did when I said I hoped his
wife was well. You never would tell me much about Mrs. Newcome; and I
fear she does not make my cousin happy. And yet this marriage was of my
uncle's making: another of the unfortunate marriages in our family. I am
glad that I paused in time, before the commission of that sin; I strive
my best, and to amend my temper, my inexperience, my shortcomings, and
try to be the mother of my poor brother's children. But Barnes has never
forgiven me my refusal of Lord Farintosh. He is of the world still,
Laura. Nor must we deal too harshly with people of his nature, who cannot
perhaps comprehend a world beyond. I remember in old days, when we were
travelling on the Rhine, in the happiest days of my whole life, I used to
hear Clive and his friend Mr. Ridley, talk of art and of nature in a way
that I could not understand at first, but came to comprehend better as my
cousin taught me; and since then, I see pictures, landscapes, and
flowers, with quite different eyes, and beautiful secrets as it were, of
which I had no idea before. The secret of all secrets, the secret of the
other life, and the better world beyond ours, may not this be unrevealed
to some? I pray for them all, dearest Laura, for those nearest and
dearest to me, that the truth may lighten their darkness, and Heaven's
great mercy defend them in the perils and dangers of their night.

"My boy at Sandhurst has done very well indeed; and Egbert, I am happy to
say, thinks of taking orders; he has been very moderate at College. Not
so Alfred; but the Guards are a sadly dangerous school for a young man; I
have promised to pay his debts, and he is to exchange into the line.
Mamma is coming to us at Christmas with Alice; my sister is very pretty
indeed, I think, and I am rejoiced she is to marry young Mr. Mumford, who
has a tolerable living, and who has been attached to her ever since he
was a boy at Rugby School.

"Little Barnes comes on bravely with his Latin; and Mr. Whitestock, a
most excellent and valuable person in this place, where there is so
much Romanism and Dissent, speaks highly of him. Little Clara is so like
her unhappy mother in a thousand ways and actions, that I am shocked
often; and see my brother starting back and turning his head away, as if
suddenly wounded. I have heard the most deplorable accounts of Lord and
Lady Highgate. Oh, dearest friend and sister!-save you, I think I scarce
know any one that is happy in the world: I trust you may continue so-you
who impart your goodness and kindness to all who come near you-you in
whose sweet serene happiness I am thankful to be allowed to repose
sometimes. You are the island in the desert, Laura! and the birds sing
there, and the fountain flows; and we come and repose by you for a little
while, and to-morrow the march begins again, and the toil, and the
struggle, and the desert. Good-bye, fountain! Whisper kisses to my
dearest little ones from their affectionate       Aunt Ethel.

"A friend of his, a Mr. Warrington, has spoken against us several times
with extraordinary ability, as Barnes owns. Do you know Mr. W.? He wrote
a dreadful article in the Independent, about the last poor lecture, which
was indeed sad, sentimental, commonplace: and the critique is terribly
comical. I could not help laughing, remembering some passages in it, when
Barnes mentioned it: and my brother became so angry! They have put up a
dreadful caricature of B. in Newcome: and my brother says he did it, but
I hope not. It is very droll, though: he used to make them very funnily.
I am glad he has spirits for it. Good-bye again.--E. N."


"He says he did it!" cries Mr. Pendennis, laying the letter down. "Barnes
Newcome would scarcely caricature himself, my dear?"

"'He' often means--means Clive--I think," says Mrs. Pendennis, in an
offhand manner.

"Oh! he means Clive, does he, Laura?"

"Yes--and you mean goose, Mr. Pendennis!" that saucy lady replies.

It must have been about the very time when this letter was written, that
a critical conversation occurred between Clive and his father, of which
the lad did not inform me until much later days; as was the case--the
reader has been more than once begged to believe--with many other
portions of this biography.

One night the Colonel, having come home from a round of electioneering
visits, not half satisfied with himself; exceedingly annoyed (much more
than he cared to own) with the impudence of some rude fellows at the
public-houses, who had interrupted his fine speeches with odious hiccups
and familiar jeers, was seated brooding over his cheroot by the
chimney-fire; friend F. B. (of whose companionship his patron was
occasionally tired) finding much better amusement with the Jolly Britons
in the Boscawen Room below. The Colonel, as an electioneering business,
had made his appearance in the club. But that ancient Roman warrior had
frightened those simple Britons. His manners were too awful for them: so
were Clive's, who visited them also under Mr. Pott's introduction; but
the two gentlemen, each being full of care and personal annoyance at the
time, acted like wet blankets upon the Britons--whereas F. B. warmed them
and cheered them, affably partook of their meals with them, and
graciously shared their cups. So the Colonel was alone, listening to the
far-off roar of the Britons' choruses by an expiring fire, as he sate by
a glass of cold negus and the ashes of his cigar.

I dare say he may have been thinking that his fire was well-nigh out,--
his cup of the dregs, his pipe little more now than dust and ashes--when
Clive, candle in hand, came into their sitting-room.

As each saw the other's face, it was so very sad and worn and pale, that
the young man started back; and the elder, with quite the tenderness of
old days, cried, "God bless me, my boy, how ill you look! Come and warm
yourself--look, the fire's out. Have something, Clivy!"

For months past they had not had a really kind word. The tender old voice
smote upon Clive, and he burst into sudden tears. They rained upon his
father's trembling old brown hand, and stooped down and kissed it.

"You look very ill too, father," says Clive.

"Ill? not I!" cries the father, still keeping the boy's hand under both
his own on the mantelpiece. "Such a battered old fellow as I am has a
right to look the worse for wear; but you, boy; why do you look so pale?"

"I have seen a ghost, father," Clive answered. Thomas, however, looked
alarmed and inquisitive as though the boy was wandering in his mind.

"The ghost of my youth, father, the ghost of my happiness, and the best
days of my life," groaned out the young man. "I saw Ethel to-day. I went
to see Sarah Mason, and she was there."

"I had seen her, but I did not speak of her," said the father. I thought
it was best not to mention her to you, my poor boy. And are--are you fond
of her still, Clive?"

"Still! once means always in these things, father, doesn't it? Once means
to-day, and yesterday, and forever and ever."

"Nay, my boy, you mustn't talk to me so, or even to yourself so. You have
the dearest little wife at home, a dear little wife and child."

"You had a son, and have been kind enough to him, God knows. You had a
wife: but that doesn't prevent other--other thoughts. Do you know you
never spoke twice in your life about my mother? You didn't care for her."

"I--I did my duty by her; I denied her nothing. I scarcely ever had a
word with her, and I did my best to make her happy," interposed the
Colonel.

"I know, but your heart was with the other. So is mine. It's fatal; it
runs in the family, father."

The boy looked so ineffably wretched that the father's heart melted still
more. "I did my best, Clive," the Colonel gasped out. "I went to that
villain Barnes and offered him to settle every shilling I was worth on
you--I did--you didn't know that--I'd kill myself for your sake, Clivy.
What's an old fellow worth living for? I can live upon a crust and a
cigar. I don't care about a carriage, and only go in it to please Rosey.
I wanted to give up all for you, but he played me false, that scoundrel
cheated us both; he did, and so did Ethel."

"No, sir; I may have thought so in my rage once, but I know better now.
She was the victim and not the agent. Did Madame de Florac play you false
when she married her husband? It was her fate, and she underwent it. We
all bow to it, we are in the track and the car passes over us. You know
it does, father." The Colonel was a fatalist: he had often advanced this
Oriental creed in his simple discourses with his son and Clive's friends.

"Besides," Clive went on, "Ethel does not care for me. She received me
to-day quite coldly, and held her hand out as if we had only parted last
year. I suppose she likes that marquis who jilted her--God bless her! How
shall we know what wins the hearts of women? She has mine. There was my
Fate. Praise be to Allah! It is over."

"But there's that villain who injured you. His isn't over yet," cried the
Colonel, clenching his trembling hand.

"Ah, father! Let us leave him to Allah too! Suppose Madame de Florac had
a brother who insulted you. You know you wouldn't have revenged yourself.
You would have wounded her in striking him."

"You called out Barnes yourself, boy," cried the father.

"That was for another cause, and not for my quarrel. And how do you know
I intended to fire? By Jove, I was so miserable then that an ounce of
lead would have done me little harm!"

The father saw the son's mind more clearly than he had ever done
hitherto. They had scarcely ever talked upon that subject which the
Colonel found was so deeply fixed in Clive's heart. He thought of his own
early days, and how he had suffered, and beheld his son before him
racked with the same cruel pangs of enduring grief. And he began to own
that he had pressed him too hastily in his marriage; and to make an
allowance for an unhappiness of which he had in part been the cause.

"Mashallah! Clive, my boy," said the old man, "what is done is done."

"Let us break up our camp before this place, and not go to war with
Barnes, father," said Clive. "Let us have peace--and forgive him if we
can."

"And retreat before this scoundrel, Clive?"

"What is a victory over such a fellow? One gives a chimney-sweep the
wall, father."

"I say again--What is done is done. I have promised to meet him at the
hustings, and I will. I think it is best: and you are right: and you act
like a high-minded gentleman--and my dear old boy--not to meddle in the
quarrel--though I didn't think so--and the difference gave me a great
deal of pain--and so did what Pendennis said--and I'm wrong--and thank
God I am wrong--and God bless you, my own boy!" the Colonel cried out in
a burst of emotion; and the two went to their bedrooms together, and were
happier as they shook hands at the doors of their adjoining chambers than
they had been for many a long day and year.




CHAPTER LXIX

The Election


Having thus given his challenge, reconnoitred the enemy, and pledged
himself to do battle at the ensuing election, our Colonel took leave of
the town of Newcome, and returned to his banking affairs in London. His
departure was as that of a great public personage; the gentlemen of the
Committee followed him obsequiously down to the train. "Quick," bawls out
Mr. Potts to Mr. Brown, the station-master, "Quick, Mr. Brown, a carriage
for Colonel Newcome!" Half a dozen hats are taken off as he enters into
the carriage, F. Bayham and his servant after him, with portfolios,
umbrellas, shawls, despatch-boxes. Clive was not there to act as his
father's aide-de-camp. After their conversation together the young man
had returned to Mrs. Clive and his other duties in life.

It has been said that Mr. Pendennis was in the country, engaged in a
pursuit exactly similar to that which occupied Colonel Newcome. The
menaced dissolution of Parliament did not take place so soon as we
expected. The Ministry still hung together, and by consequence, Sir
Barnes Newcome kept the seat in the House of Commons, from which his
elder kinsman was eager to oust him. Away from London, and having but few
correspondents, save on affairs of business, I heard little of Clive and
the Colonel, save an occasional puff of one of Colonel Newcome's
entertainments in the Pall Mall Gazette, to which journal F. Bayham still
condescended to contribute; and a satisfactory announcement in a certain
part of that paper, that on such a day, in Hyde Park Gardens, Mrs. Clive
Newcome had presented her husband with a son. Clive wrote to me
presently, to inform me of the circumstance, stating at the same time,
with but moderate gratification on his own part, that the Campaigner,
Mrs. Newcome's mamma, had upon this second occasion made a second
lodgment in her daughter's house and bedchamber, and showed herself
affably disposed to forget the little unpleasantries which had clouded
over the sunshine of her former visit.

Laura, with a smile of some humour, said she thought now would be the
time when, if Clive could be spared from his bank, he might pay us that
visit at Fairoaks which had been due so long, and hinted that change of
air and a temporary absence from Mrs. Mackenzie might be agreeable to my
old friend.

It was, on the contrary, Mr. Pendennis's opinion that his wife artfully
chose that period of time when little Rosey was, perforce, kept at home
and occupied with her delightful maternal duties, to invite Clive to see
us. Mrs. Laura frankly owned that she liked our Clive better without his
wife than with her, and never ceased to regret that pretty Rosey had not
bestowed her little hand upon Captain Hoby, as she had been very well
disposed at one time to do. Against all marriages of interest this
sentimental Laura never failed to utter indignant protests; and Clive's
had been a marriage of interest, a marriage made up by the old people, a
marriage which the young man had only yielded out of good-nature and
obedience. She would apostrophise her unconscious young ones, and inform
those innocent babies that they should never be made to marry except for
love, never--an announcement which was received with perfect indifference
by little Arthur on his rocking-horse, and little Helen smiling and
crowing in her mother's lap.

So Clive came down to us, careworn in appearance, but very pleased and
happy, he said, to stay for a while with the friends of his youth. We
showed him our modest rural lions; we got him such sport and company as
our quiet neighbourhood afforded, we gave him fishing in the Brawl, and
Laura in her pony-chaise drove him to Baymouth, and to Clavering Park and
town, and visit the famous cathedral at Chatteris, where she was pleased
to recount certain incidents of her husband's youth.

Clive laughed at my wife's stories; he pleased himself in our home; he
played with our children, with whom he had became a great favourite; he
was happier, he told me with a sigh, than he had been for many a day. His
gentle hostess echoed the sigh of the poor young fellow. She was sure
that his pleasure was only transitory, and was convinced that many deep
cares weighed upon his mind.

Ere long my old schoolfellow made me sundry confessions, which showed
that Laura's surmises were correct. About his domestic affairs he did not
treat much; the little boy was said to be a very fine little boy; the
ladies had taken entire possession of him. "I can't stand Mrs. Mackenzie
any longer, I own," says Clive; "but how resist a wife at such a moment?
Rosa was sure she would die, unless her mother came to her, and of course
we invited Mrs. Mack. This time she is all smiles and politeness with the
Colonel: the last quarrel is laid upon me, and in so far I am easy, as
the old folks get on pretty well together." To me, considering these
things, it was clear that Mr. Clive Newcome was but a very secondary
personage indeed in his father's new fine house which he inhabited, and
in which the poor Colonel had hoped they were to live such a happy
family.

But it was about Clive Newcome's pecuniary affairs that I felt the most
disquiet when he came to explain these to me. The Colonel's capital and
that considerable sum which Mrs. Clive had inherited from her good old
uncle, were all involved in a common stock, of which Colonel Newcome took
the management. "The governor understands business so well, you see,"
says Clive; "is a most remarkable head for accounts: he must have
inherited that from my grandfather, you know, who made his own fortune:
all the Newcomes are good at accounts, except me, a poor useless devil
who knows nothing but to paint a picture, and who can't even do that." He
cuts off the head of a thistle as he speaks, bites his tawny mustachios,
plunges his hands into his pockets and his soul into reverie.

"You don't mean to say," asks Mr. Pendennis, "that your wife's fortune
has not been settled upon herself?"

"Of course it has been settled upon herself; that is, it is entirely her
own--you know the Colonel has managed all the business, he understands it
better than we do."

"Do you say that your wife's money is not vested in the hands of
trustees, and for her benefit?"

"My father is one of the trustees. I tell you he manages the whole thing.
What is his property is mine and ever has been; and I might draw upon him
as much as I liked: and you know it's five times as great as my wife's.
What is his is ours, and what is ours is his, of course; for instance,
the India Stock, which poor Uncle James left, that now stands in the
Colonel's name. He wants to be a Director: he will be at the next
election--he must have a certain quantity of India Stock, don't you see?"

"My dear fellow, is there then no settlement made upon your wife at all?"

"You needn't look so frightened," says Clive. "I made a settlement on
her: with all my worldly goods I did her endow three thousand three
hundred and thirty-three pounds six and eightpence, which my father sent
over from India to my uncle, years ago, when I came home."

I might well indeed be aghast at this news, and had yet further
intelligence from Clive, which by no means contributed to lessen my
anxiety. This worthy old Colonel, who fancied himself to be so clever a
man of business, chose to conduct it in utter ignorance and defiance of
law. If anything happened to the Bundelcund Bank, it was clear that not
only every shilling of his own property, but every farthing bequeathed to
Rosa Mackenzie would be lost; only his retiring pension, which was
luckily considerable, and the hundred pounds a year which Clive had
settled on his wife, would be saved out of the ruin.

And now Clive confided to me his own serious doubts and misgivings
regarding the prosperity of the Bank itself. He did not know why, but he
could not help fancying that things were going wrong. Those partners who
had come home, having sold out of the Bank, and living in England so
splendidly, why had they quitted it? The Colonel said it was a proof of
the prosperity of the company, that so many gentlemen were enriched who
had taken shares in it. "But when I asked my father," Clive continued,
"why he did not himself withdraw, the dear old Colonel's countenance
fell: he told me such things were not to be done every day; and ended, as
usual, by saying that I do not understand anything about business. No
more I do: that is the truth. I hate the whole concern, Pen! I hate that
great tawdry house in which we live; and those fearfully stupid parties:
--Oh, how I wish we were back in Fitzroy Square! But who can recall
bygones, Arthur; or wrong steps in life? We must make the best of to-day,
and to-morrow must take care of itself. 'Poor little child!' I could not
help thinking, as I took it crying in my arms the other day, 'what has
life in store for you, my poor weeping baby?' My mother-in-law cried out
that I should drop the baby, and that only the Colonel knew how to hold
it. My wife called from her bed; the nurse dashed up and scolded me; and
they drove me out of the room amongst them. By Jove, Pen, I laugh when
some of my friends congratulate me on my good fortune! I am not quite the
father of my own child, nor the husband of my own wife, nor even the
master of my own easel. I am managed for, don't you see? boarded, lodged,
and done for. And here is the man they call happy. Happy! Oh!!! Why had I
not your strength of mind; and why did I ever leave my art, my mistress?"

And herewith the poor lad fell to chopping thistles again; and quitted
Fairoaks shortly, leaving his friends there very much disquieted about
his prospects, actual and future.

The expected dissolution of Parliament came at length. All the country
papers in England teemed with electioneering addresses; and the country
was in a flutter with particoloured ribbons. Colonel Thomas Newcome,
pursuant to his promise, offered himself to the independent electors of
Newcome in the Liberal journal of the family town, whilst Sir Barnes
Newcome, Bart., addressed himself to his old and tried friends, and
called upon the friends of the constitution to rally round him, in the
Conservative print. The addresses of our friend were sent to us at
Fairoaks by the Colonel's indefatigable aide-de-camp, Mr. Frederick
Bayham. During the period which had elapsed since the Colonel's last
canvassing visit and the issuing of the writs now daily expected for the
new Parliament, many things of great importance had occurred in Thomas
Newcome's family--events which were kept secret from his biographer, who
was, at this period also, pretty entirely occupied with his own affairs.
These, however, are not the present subject of this history, which has
Newcome for its business, and the parties engaged in the family quarrel
there.

There were four candidates in the field for the representation of that
borough. That old and tried member of Parliament, Mr. Bunce, was
considered to be secure; and the Baronet's seat was thought to be pretty
safe on account of his influence in the place. Nevertheless, Thomas
Newcome's supporters were confident for their champion, and that when the
parties came to the poll, the extreme Liberals of the borough would
divide their votes between him and the fourth candidate, the
uncompromising Radical, Mr. Barker.

In due time the Colonel and his staff arrived at Newcome, and resumed the
active canvass which they had commenced some months previously. Clive was
not in his father's suite this time, nor Mr. Warrington, whose
engagements took him elsewhere. The lawyer, the editor of the
Independent, and F. B., were the Colonel's chief men. His headquarters
(which F. B. liked very well) were at the hotel where we last saw him,
and whence issuing with his aide-de-camp at his heels, the Colonel went
round to canvass personally, according to his promise, every free and
independent elector of the borough. Barnes too was canvassing eagerly on
his side, and was most affable and active; the two parties would often
meet nose to nose in the same street, and their retainers exchange looks
of defiance. With Mr. Potts of the Independent, a big man, on his left;
with Mr. Frederick, a still bigger man, on his right; his own trusty
bamboo cane in his hand, before which poor Barnes had shrunk abashed ere
now, Colonel Newcome had commonly the best of these street encounters,
and frowned his nephew Barnes, and Barnes's staff, off the pavement. With
the non-electors the Colonel was a decided favourite; the boys invariably
hurrayed him; whereas they jeered and uttered ironical cries after poor
Barnes, asking, "Who beat his wife? Who drove his children to the
workhouse?" and other unkind personal questions. The man upon whom the
libertine Barnes had inflicted so cruel an injury in his early days, was
now the Baronet's bitterest enemy. He assailed him with curses and
threats when they met, and leagued his brother-workmen against him. The
wretched Sir Barnes owned with contrition that the sins of his youth
pursued him; his enemy scoffed at the idea of Barnes's repentance; he was
not moved at the grief, the punishment in his own family, the humiliation
and remorse which the repentant prodigal piteously pleaded. No man was
louder in his cries of mea culpa than Barnes: no man professed a more
edifying repentance. He was hat in hand to every black-coat, established
or dissenting. Repentance was to his interest, to be sure, but yet let us
hope it was sincere. There is some hypocrisy, of which one does not like
even to entertain the thought; especially that awful falsehood which
trades with divine truth, and takes the name of Heaven in vain.

The Roebuck Inn at Newcome stands in the market-place, directly facing
the King's Arms, where, as we know, Colonel Newcome and uncompromising
toleration held their headquarters. Immense banners of blue and yellow
floated from every window of the King's Arms, and decorated the balcony
from which the Colonel and the assistants were in the habit of addressing
the multitude. Fiddlers and trumpeters, arrayed in his colours, paraded
the town and enlivened it with their melodious strains. Other trumpeters
and fiddlers, bearing the true-blue cockades and colours of Sir Barnes
Newcome, Bart., would encounter the Colonel's musicians, on which
occasions of meeting, it is to be feared, small harmony was produced.
They banged each other with their brazen instruments. The warlike
drummers thumped each other's heads in lieu of the professional
sheepskin. The townboys and street-blackguards rejoiced in these combats,
and exhibited their valour on one side or the other. The Colonel had to
pay a long bill for broken brass when he settled the little accounts of
the election.

In after times, F. B. was pleased to describe the circumstances of a
contest in which he bore a most distinguished part. It was F. B.'s
opinion that his private eloquence brought over many waverers to the
Colonel's side, and converted numbers of the benighted followers of Sir
Barnes Newcome. Bayham's voice was indeed magnificent, and could be heard
from the King's Arm's balcony above the shout and roar of the multitude,
the gongs and bugles of the opposition bands. He was untiring in his
oratory--undaunted in the presence of the crowds below. He was immensely
popular, F. B. Whether he laid his hand upon his broad  chest, took off
his hat and waved it, or pressed his blue and yellow ribbons to his
bosom, the crowd shouted, "Hurra: silence! bravo! Bayham for ever!" "They
would have carried me in triumph," said F. B.; "if I had but the
necessary qualification I might be member for Newcome this day or any
other I chose."

I am afraid in this conduct of the Colonel's election Mr. Bayham resorted
to acts of which his principal certainly would disapprove, and engaged
auxiliaries whose alliance was scarcely creditable. Whose was the hand
which flung the potato which struck Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., on the
nose as he was haranguing the people from the Roebuck? How came it that
whenever Sir Barnes and his friends essayed to speak, such an awful
yelling and groaning took place in the crowd below, that the words of
those feeble orators were inaudible? Who smashed all the front windows of
the Roebuck? Colonel Newcome had not words to express his indignation at
proceedings so unfair. When Sir Barnes and staff were hustled in the
market-place and most outrageously shoved, jeered, and jolted, the
Colonel from the King's Arms organised a rapid sally, which he himself
headed with his bamboo cane; cut out Sir Barnes and his followers from
the hands of the mob, and addressed those ruffians in a noble speech, of
which bamboo-cane--Englishman--shame--fair-play, were the most emphatic
expressions. The mob cheered Old Tom as they called him--they made way
for Sir Barnes, who shrunk pale and shuddering back into his hotel again
--who always persisted in saying that that old villain of a dragoon had
planned both the assault and the rescue.

"When the dregs of the people--the scum of the rabble, sir, banded
together by the myrmidons of Sir Barnes Newcome, attacked us at the
King's Arms, and smashed ninety-six pounds' worth of glass at one volley,
besides knocking off the gold unicorn head and the tail of the British
lion; it was fine, sir," F. B. said, "to see how the Colonel came
forward, and the coolness of the old boy in the midst of the action. He
stood there in front, sir, with his old hat off, never so much as once
bobbing his old head, and I think he spoke rather better under fire than
he did when there was no danger. Between ourselves, he ain't much of a
speaker, the old Colonel; he hems and haws, and repeats himself a good
deal. He hasn't the gift of natural eloquence which some men have,
Pendennis. You should have heard my speech, sir, on the Thursday in the
Town Hall--that was something like a speech. Potts was jealous of it, and
always reported me most shamefully."

In spite of his respectful behaviour to the gentlemen in black coats, his
soup-tickets and his flannel-tickets, his own pathetic lectures and his
sedulous attendance at other folk's sermons, poor Barnes could not keep
up his credit with the serious interest at Newcome, and the
meeting-houses and their respective pastors and frequenters turned their
backs upon him. The case against him was too flagrant: his enemy, the
factory-man, worked it with an extraordinary skill, malice, and
pertinacity. Not a single man, woman, or child in Newcome but was made
acquainted with Sir Barnes's early peccadillo. Ribald ballads were howled
through the streets describing his sin, and his deserved punishment. For
very shame, the reverend dissenting gentlemen were obliged to refrain
from voting for him; such as ventured, believing in the sincerity of his
repentance, to give him their voices, were yelled away from the
polling-places. A very great number who would have been his friends,
were compelled to bow to decency and public opinion, and supported
the Colonel.

Hooted away from the hustings, and the public places whence the rival
candidates addressed the free and independent electors, this wretched and
persecuted Sir Barnes invited his friends and supporters to meet him at
the Athenaeum Room--scene of his previous eloquent performances. But,
though this apartment was defended by tickets, the people burst into it;
and Nemesis, in the shape of the persevering factory-man, appeared before
the scared Sir Barnes and his puzzled committee. The man stood up and
bearded the pale Baronet. He had a good cause, and was in truth a far
better master of debate than our banking friend, being a great speaker
amongst his brother-operatives, by whom political questions are
discussed, and the conduct of political men examined, with a ceaseless
interest and with an ardour and eloquence which are often unknown in what
is called superior society. This man and his friends round about him
fiercely silenced the clamour of "Turn him out," with which his first
appearance was assailed by Sir Barnes's hangers-on. He said, in the name
of justice he would speak up; if they were fathers of families and loved
their wives and daughters he dared them to refuse him a hearing. Did they
love their wives and their children? it was a shame that they should take
such a man as that yonder for their representative in Parliament. But the
greatest sensation he made was when, in the middle of his speech, after
inveighing against Barnes's cruelty and parental ingratitude, he asked,
"Where were Barnes's children?" and actually thrust forward two, to the
amazement of the committee and the ghastly astonishment of the guilty
Baronet himself.

"Look at them," says the man: "they are almost in rags, they have to put
up with scanty and hard food; contrast them with his other children, whom
you see lording in gilt carriages, robed in purple and fine linen, and
scattering mud from their wheels over us humble people as we walk the
streets; ignorance and starvation is good enough for these, for those
others nothing can be too fine or too dear. What can a factory-girl
expect from such a fine, high-bred, white-handed, aristocratic gentleman
as Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet, but to be cajoled, and seduced, and
deserted, and left to starve! When she has served my lord's pleasure, her
natural fate is to be turned into the street; let her go and rot there
and her children beg in the gutter.

"This is the most shameful imposture," gasps out Sir Barnes, "these
children are not--are not----"

The man interrupted him with a bitter laugh. "No," he says; "they are not
his; that's true enough, friends. Its Tom Martin's girl and boy, a
precious pair of lazy little scamps. But, at least he thought they were
his children. See how much he knows about them! He hasn't seen his
children for years; he would have left them and their mother to starve,
and did, but for shame and fear. The old man, his father, pensioned them,
and he hasn't the heart to stop their wages now. Men of Newcome, will you
have this man to represent you in Parliament?" And the crowd roared "No;"
and Barnes and his shamefaced committee slunk out of the place, and no
wonder the dissenting clerical gentlemen were shy of voting for him.

A brilliant and picturesque diversion in Colonel Newcome's favour was due
to the inventive genius of his faithful aide-de-camp, F. B. On the
polling-day, as the carriages full of voters came up to the market-place,
there appeared nigh to the booths an open barouche, covered all over with
ribbon, and containing Frederick Bayham, Esq., profusely decorated with
the Colonel's colours, and a very old woman and her female attendant, who
were similarly ornamented. It was good old Mrs. Mason, who was pleased
with the drive and the sunshine, though she scarcely understood the
meaning of the turmoil, with her maid by her side, delighted to wear such
ribbons, and sit in such a post of honour. Rising up in the carriage,
F. B. took off his hat, bade his men of brass be silent, who were
accustomed to bray "See the Conquering Hero come," whenever the Colonel,
or Mr. Bayham, his brilliant aide-de-camp, made their appearance;--
bidding, we say, the musicians and the universe to be silent, F. B. rose,
and made the citizens of Newcome a splendid speech. Good old unconscious
Mrs. Mason was the theme of it, and the Colonel's virtues and faithful
gratitude in tending her. "She was his father's old friend. She was Sir
Barnes Newcome's grandfather's old friend. She had lived for more than
forty years at Sir Barnes Newcome's door, and how often had he been to
see her? Did he go every week? No. Every month? No. Every year? No. Never
in the whole course of his life had he set his foot into her doors!"
(Loud yells, and cries of 'Shame!') "Never had he done her one single act
of kindness. Whereas for years and years past, when he was away in India,
heroically fighting the battles of his country, when he was
distinguishing himself at Assaye, and--and--Mulligatawny, and
Seringapatam, in the hottest of the fight and the fiercest of the danger,
in the most terrible moment of the conflict, and the crowning glory of
the victory, the good, the brave, the kind old Colonel,--why should he
say Colonel? why should he not say Old Tom at once?" (immense roars of
applause) "always remembered his dear old nurse and friend. Look at that
shawl, boys, which she has got on! My belief is that Colonel Newcome took
that shawl in single combat, and on horseback, from the prime minister of
Tippoo Sahib." (Immense cheers and cries of 'Bravo, Bayham!') "Look at
that brooch the dear old thing wears!" (he kissed her hand whilst so
apostrophising her). "Tom Newcome never brags about his military
achievements, he is the most modest as well as the bravest man in the
world. What if I were to tell you that he cut that brooch from the throat
of an Indian rajah? He's man enough to do it." ('He is! he is!' from all
parts of the crowd.) "What, you want to take the horses out, do you?" (to
the crowd, who were removing those quadrupeds). "I ain't agoing to
prevent you; I expected as much of you. Men of Newcome, I expected as
much of you, for I know you! Sit still, old lady; don't be frightened,
ma'am: they are only going to pull you to the King's Arms, and show you
to the Colonel."

This, indeed, was the direction in which the mob (whether inflamed by
spontaneous enthusiasm, or excited by cunning agents placed amongst the
populace by F. B., I cannot say), now took the barouche and its three
occupants. With a myriad roar and shout the carriage was dragged up in
front of the King's Arms, from the balconies of which a most satisfactory
account of the polling was already placarded. The extra noise and
shouting brought out the Colonel, who looked at first with curiosity at
the advancing procession, and then, as he caught sight of Sarah Mason,
with a blush and a bow of his kind old head.

"Look at him, boys!" cried the enraptured F. B., pointing up to the old
man. "Look at him; the dear old boy! Isn't he an old trump? which will
you have for your Member, Barnes Newcome or Old Tom?"

And as might be supposed, an immense shout of "Old Tom!" arose from the
multitude; in the midst of which, blushing and bowing still, the Colonel
went back to his committee-room: and the bands played "See the Conquering
Hero" louder than ever; and poor Barnes in the course of his duty having
to come out upon his balcony at the Roebuck opposite, was saluted with a
yell as vociferous as the cheer for the Colonel had been; and old Mrs.
Mason asked what the noise was about; and after making several vain
efforts, in dumb show, to the crowd, Barnes slunk back into his hole
again as pale as the turnip which was flung at his head: and the horses
were brought, and Mrs. Mason driven home; and the day of election came to
an end.

Reasons of personal gratitude, as we have stated already, prevented His
Highness the Prince de Moncontour from taking a part in this family
contest. His brethren of the House of Higg, however, very much to
Florac's gratification, gave their second votes to Colonel Newcome,
carrying with them a very great number of electors: we know that in the
present Parliament, Mr. Higg and Mr. Bunce sit for the borough of
Newcome. Having had monetary transactions with Sir Barnes Newcome, and
entered largely into railway speculations with him, the Messrs. Higg had
found reason to quarrel with the Baronet; accuse him of sharp practices
to the present day, and have long stories to tell which do not concern us
about Sir Barnes's stratagems, grasping, and extortion. They their
following, deserting Sir Barnes, whom they had supported in previous
elections, voted for the Colonel, although some of the opinions of that
gentleman were rather too extreme for such sober persons.

Not exactly knowing what his politics were when he commenced the canvass,
I can't say to what opinions the poor Colonel did not find himself
committed by the time when the election was over. The worthy gentleman
felt himself not a little humiliated by what he had to say and to unsay,
by having to answer questions, and submit to familiarities, to shake
hands which, to say truth, he did not care for grasping at all. His
habits were aristocratic; his education had been military; the kindest
and simplest soul alive, he yet disliked all familiarity, and expected
from common people the sort of deference which he had received from his
men in the regiment. The contest saddened and mortified him; he felt that
he was using wrong means to obtain an end that perhaps was not right (for
so his secret conscience must have told him); he was derogating from his
own honour in tampering with political opinions, submitting to
familiarities, condescending to stand by whilst his agents solicited
vulgar suffrages or uttered claptraps about retrenchment and reform. "I
felt I was wrong," he said to me, in after days, "though I was too proud
to own my error in those times, and you and your good wife and my boy
were right in protesting against that mad election." Indeed, though we
little knew what events were speedily to happen, Laura and I felt very
little satisfaction when the result of the Newcome election was made
known to us, and we found Sir Barnes Newcome third, and Col. Thomas
Newcome second upon the poll.

Ethel was absent with her children at Brighton. She was glad, she wrote,
not to have been at home during the election. Mr. and Mrs. C. were at
Brighton, too. Ethel had seen Mrs. C. and her child once or twice. It was
a very fine child. "My brother came down to us," she wrote, "after all
was over. He is furious against M. de Moncontour, who, he says, persuaded
the Whigs to vote against him, and turned the election."




CHAPTER LXX

Chiltern Hundreds


We shall say no more regarding Thomas Newcome's political doings; his
speeches against Barnes, and the Baronet's replies. The nephew was beaten
by his stout old uncle.

In due time the Gazette announced that Thomas Newcome, Esq., was returned
as one of the Members of Parliament for the borough of Newcome; and after
triumphant dinners, speeches, and rejoicings, the Member came back to his
family in London, and to his affairs in that city.

The good Colonel appeared to be by no means elated by his victory. He
would not allow that he was wrong in engaging in that family war, of
which we have just seen the issue; though it may be that his secret
remorse on this account in part occasioned his disquiet. But there were
other reasons, which his family not long afterwards came to understand,
for the gloom and low spirits which now oppressed the head of their home.

It was observed (that is, if simple little Rosey took the trouble to
observe) that the entertainments at the Colonel's mansion were more
frequent and splendid even than before; the silver cocoa-nut tree was
constantly in requisition, and around it were assembled many new guests,
who had not formerly been used to sit under those branches. Mr. Sherrick
and his wife appeared at those parties, at which the proprietor of Lady
Whittlesea's Chapel made himself perfectly familiar. Sherrick cut jokes
with the master of the house, which the latter received with a very grave
acquiescence; he ordered the servants about, addressing the butler as
"Old Corkscrew," and bidding the footman, whom he loved to call by his
Christian name, to "look alive." He called the Colonel "Newcome"
sometimes, and facetiously speculated upon the degree of relationship
subsisting between them now that his daughter was married to Clive's
uncle, the Colonel's brother-in-law. Though I dare say Clive did not much
relish receiving news of his aunt, Sherrick was sure to bring such
intelligence when it reached him; and announced, in due time, the birth
of a little cousin at Boggley Wollah, whom the fond parents designed to
name "Thomas Newcome Honeyman."

A dreadful panic and ghastly terror seized poor Clive on occasion which
he described to me afterwards. Going out from home one day with his
father, he beheld a wine-merchant's cart, from which hampers were carried
down the area gate into the lower regions of Colonel Newcome's house.
"Sherrick and Co., Wine Merchants, Walpole Street," was painted upon the
vehicle.

"Good heavens! sir, do you get your wine from him?" Clive cried out to
his father, remembering Honeyman's provisions in early times. The
Colonel, looking very gloomy and turning red, said, "Yes, he bought wine
from Sherrick, who had been very good-natured and serviceable; and who--
and who, you know, is our connexion now." When informed of the
circumstance by Clive, I too, as I confess, thought the incident
alarming.

Then Clive, with a laugh, told me of a grand battle which had taken place
in consequence of Mrs. Mackenzie's behaviour to the wine-merchant's wife.
The Campaigner had treated this very kind and harmless, but vulgar woman,
with extreme hauteur--had talked loud during her singing--the beauty of
which, to say truth, time had considerably impaired--had made
contemptuous observations regarding her upon more than one occasion. At
length the Colonel broke out in great wrath against Mrs. Mackenzie--bade
her to respect that lady as one of his guests--and, if she did not like
the company which assembled at his house, hinted to her that there were
many thousand other houses in London where she could find a lodging. For
the sake of her grandchild, and her adored child, the Campaigner took no
notice of this hint; and declined to remove from the quarter which she
had occupied ever since she had become a grandmamma.

I myself dined once or twice with my old friends, under the shadow of the
pickle-bearing cocoa-nut tree; and could not but remark a change of
personages in the society assembled. The manager of the City branch of
the B. B. C. was always present--an ominous-looking man, whose whispers
and compliments seemed to make poor Clive, at his end of the table, very
melancholy. With the City manager came the City manager's friends, whose
jokes passed gaily round, and who kept the conversation to themselves.
Once I had the happiness to meet Mr. Ratray, who had returned, filled
with rupees from the Indian Bank; who told us many anecdotes of the
splendour of Rummun Loll at Calcutta, who complimented the Colonel on his
fine house and grand dinners with sinister good-humour. Those compliments
did not seem to please our poor friend; that familiarity choked him. A
brisk little chattering attorney, very intimate with Sherrick, with a
wife of dubious gentility, was another constant guest. He enlivened the
table by his jokes, and recounted choice stories about the aristocracy,
with certain members of whom the little man seemed very familiar. He knew
to a shilling how much this lord owed--and how much the creditors allowed
to that marquis. He had been concerned with such and such a nobleman, who
was now in the Queen's Bench. He spoke of their lordships affably and
without their titles--calling upon "Louisa, my dear," his wife, to
testify to the day when Viscount Tagrag dined with them, and Earl
Bareacres sent them the pheasants. F. B., as sombre and downcast as his
hosts now seemed to be, informed me demurely that the attorney was a
member of one of the most eminent firms in the City--that he had been
engaged in procuring the Colonel's parliamentary title for him--and in
various important matters appertaining to the B. B. C.; but my knowledge
of the world and the law was sufficient to make me aware that this
gentleman belonged to a well-known firm of money-lending solicitors, and
I trembled to see such a person in the home of our good Colonel. Where
were the generals and the judges? Where were the fogies and their
respectable ladies? Stupid they were, and dull their company; but better
a stalled ox in their society, than Mr. Campion's jokes over Mr.
Sherrick's wines.

After the little rebuke administered by Colonel Newcome, Mrs. Mackenzie
abstained from overt hostilities against any guests of her daughter's
father-in-law; and contented herself by assuming grand and princess-like
airs in the company of the new ladies. They flattered her and poor little
Rosa intensely. The latter liked their company, no doubt. To a man of the
world looking on, who has seen the men and morals of many cities, it was
curious, almost pathetic, to watch that poor little innocent creature
fresh and smiling, attired in bright colours and a thousand gewgaws,
simpering in the midst of these darkling people--practising her little
arts and coquetries, with such a court round about her. An unconscious
little maid, with rich and rare gems sparkling on all her fingers, and
bright gold rings as many as belonged to the late Old Woman of Banbury
Cross--still she smiled and prattled innocently before these banditti--I
thought of Zerlina and the Brigands, in Fra Diavolo.

Walking away with F. B. from one of these parties of the Colonel's, and
seriously alarmed at what I had observed there, I demanded of Bayham
whether my conjectures were not correct, that some misfortune overhung
our old friend's house? At first Bayham denied stoutly or pretended
ignorance; but at length, having reached the Haunt together, which I had
not visited since I was a married man, we entered that place of
entertainment, and were greeted by its old landlady and waitress, and
accommodated with a quiet parlour. And here F. B., after groaning and
sighing--after solacing himself with a prodigious quantity of bitter
beer--fairly burst out, and, with tears in his eyes, made a full and sad
confession respecting this unlucky Bundelcund Banking Company. The shares
had been going lower and lower, so that there was no sale now for them at
all. To meet the liabilities, the directors must have undergone the
greatest sacrifices. He did know--he did not like to think what the
Colonel's personal losses were. The respectable solicitors of the Company
had retired, long since, after having secured payment of a most
respectable bill; and had given place to the firm of dubious law-agents
of whom I had that evening seen a partner. How the retiring partners from
India had been allowed to withdraw, and to bring fortunes along with
them, was a mystery to Mr. Frederick Bayham. The great Indian
millionnaire was in his, F. B.'s eyes, "a confounded mahogany-coloured
heathen humbug." These fine parties which the Colonel was giving, and
that fine carriage which was always flaunting about the Park with poor
Mrs. Clive and the Campaigner, and the nurse and the baby, were, in F.
B.'s opinion, all decoys and shams. He did not mean to say that the meals
were not paid, and that the Colonel had to plunder for his horses' corn;
but he knew that Sherrick, and the attorney, and the manager, insisted
upon the necessity of giving these parties, and keeping up this state and
grandeur, and opined that it was at the special instance of these
advisers that the Colonel had contested the borough for which he was now
returned. "Do you know how much that contest cost?" asks F. B. "The sum,
sir, was awful! and we have ever so much of it to pay. I came up twice
myself from Newcome to Campion and Sherrick about it. I betray no
secrets--F. B., sir, would die a thousand deaths before he would tell the
secrets of his benefactor!--But, Pendennis, you understand a thing or
two. You know what o'clock it is, and so does yours truly, F. B., who
drinks your health. I know the taste of Sherrick's wine well enough.
F. B., sir, fears the Greeks and all the gifts they bring. Confound his
Amontillado! I had rather drink this honest malt and hops all my life
than ever see a drop of his abominable sherry. Golden? F. B. believes it
is golden--and a precious deal dearer than gold too"--and herewith,
ringing the bell, my friend asked for a second pint of the just-named and
cheaper fluid.

I have of late had to recount portions of my dear old friend's history
which must needs be told, and over which the writer does not like to
dwell. If Thomas Newcome's opulence was unpleasant to describe, and to
contrast with the bright goodness and simplicity I remembered in former
days, how much more painful is that part of his story to which we are now
come perforce, and which the acute reader of novels has, no doubt, long
foreseen? Yes, sir or madam, you are quite right in the opinion which you
have held all along regarding that Bundelcund Banking Company, in which
our Colonel has invested every rupee he possesses, Solvuntur rupees, etc.
I disdain, for the most part, the tricks and surprises of the novelist's
art. Knowing, from the very beginning of our story, what was the issue of
this Bundelcund Banking concern, I have scarce had patience to keep my
counsel about it; and whenever I have had occasion to mention the
Company, have scarcely been able to refrain from breaking out into fierce
diatribes against that complicated, enormous, outrageous swindle. It was
one of many similar cheats which have been successfully practised upon
the simple folks, civilian and military, who toil and struggle--who fight
with sun and enemy--who pass years of long exile and gallant endurance in
the service of our empire in India. Agency houses after agency houses
have been established, and have flourished in splendour and magnificence,
and have paid fabulous dividends--and have enormously enriched two or
three wary speculators--and then have burst in bankruptcy, involving
widows, orphans, and countless simple people who trusted their all to the
keeping of these unworthy treasurers.

The failure of the Bundelcund Bank which we now have to record, was one
only of many similar schemes ending in ruin. About the time when Thomas
Newcome was chaired as Member of Parliament for the borough of which he
bore the name, the great Indian merchant who was at the head of the
Bundelcund Banking Company's affairs at Calcutta, suddenly died of
cholera at his palace at Barackpore. He had been giving of late a series
of the most splendid banquets with which Indian prince ever entertained a
Calcutta society. The greatest and proudest personages of that
aristocratic city had attended his feasts. The fairest Calcutta beauties
had danced in his halls. Did not poor F. B. transfer from the columns of
the Bengal Hurkaru to the Pall Mall Gazette the most astounding
descriptions of those Asiatic Nights Entertainments, of which the very
grandest was to come off on the night when cholera seized Rummun Loll in
its grip? There was to have been a masquerade outvying all European
masquerades in splendour. The two rival queens of the Calcutta society
were to have appeared each with her court around her. Young civilians at
the College, and young ensigns fresh landed, had gone into awful expenses
and borrowed money at interest from the B. B. C. and other banking
companies, in order to appear with befitting splendour as knights and
noblemen of Henrietta Maria's Court (Henrietta Maria, wife of Hastings
Hicks, Esq., Sudder Dewanee Adawlut), or as princes and warriors
surrounding the palanquin of Lalla Rookh (the lovely wife of Hon.
Cornwallis Bobus, Member of Council): all these splendours were there. As
carriage after carriage drove up from Calcutta, they were met at Rummun
Loll's gate by ghastly weeping servants, who announced their master's
demise.

On the next day the Bank at Calcutta was closed, and the day after, when
heavy bills were presented which must be paid, although by this time
Rummun Loll was not only dead but buried, and his widows howling over his
grave, it was announced throughout Calcutta that but 800 rupees were left
in the treasury of the B. B. C. to meet engagements to the amount of four
lakhs then immediately due, and sixty days afterwards the shutters were
closed at No. 175 Lothbury, the London offices of the B. B. C. of India,
and 35,000 pounds worth of their bills refused by their agents, Messrs.
Baines, Jolly and Co., of Fog Court.

When the accounts of that ghastly bankruptcy arrived from Calcutta, it
was found, of course, that the merchant-prince Rummun Loll owed the
B. B. C. twenty-five lakhs of rupees, the value of which was scarcely
even represented by his respectable signature. It was found that one of
the auditors of the bank, the generally esteemed Charley Conder (a
capital fellow, famous for his good dinners, and for playing low-comedy
characters at the Chowringhee Theatre), was indebted to the bank in
90,000 pounds; and also it was discovered that the revered Baptist
Bellman, Chief Registrar of the Calcutta Tape and Sealing-Wax Office (a
most valuable and powerful amateur preacher who had converted two
natives, and whose serious soirees were thronged at Calcutta), had helped
himself to 73,000 pounds more, for which he settled in the Bankruptcy
Court before he resumed his duties in his own. In justice to Mr. Bellman,
it must be said that he could have had no idea of the catastrophe
impending over the B. B. C. For, only three weeks before that great bank
closed its doors, Mr. Bellman, as guardian of the children of his widowed
sister Mrs. Green, had sold the whole of the late Colonel's property out
of Company's paper and invested it in the bank, which gave a high
interest, and with bills of which, drawn upon their London
correspondents, he had accommodated Mrs. Colonel Green when she took her
departure for Europe with her numerous little family on board the
Burrumpooter.

And now you have the explanation of the title of this chapter, and know
wherefore Thomas Newcome never sat in Parliament. Where are our dear old
friends now? Where are Rosey's chariots and horses? Where her jewels and
gewgaws? Bills are up in the fine new house. Swarms of Hebrew gentlemen
with their hats on are walking about the drawing-rooms, peering into the
bedrooms, weighing and poising the poor old silver cocoa-nut tree, eyeing
the plate and crystal, thumbing the damask of the curtains, and
inspecting ottomans, mirrors, and a hundred articles of splendid
trumpery. There is Rosey's boudoir which her father-in-law loved to
ornament--there is Clive's studio with a hundred sketches--there is the
Colonel's bare room at the top of the house, with his little iron
bedstead and ship's drawers, and a camel trunk or two which have
accompanied him on many an Indian march, and his old regulation sword,
and that one which the native officers of his regiment gave him when he
bade them farewell. I can fancy the brokers' faces as they look over this
camp wardrobe, and that the uniforms will not fetch much in Holywell
Street. There is the old one still, and that new one which he ordered and
wore when poor little Rosey was presented at court. I had not the heart
to examine their plunder, and go amongst those wreckers. F. B. used to
attend the sale regularly, and report its proceedings to us with eyes
full of tears. "A fellow laughed at me," says F. B., "because when I came
into the dear old drawing-room I took my hat off. I told him that if he
dared say another word I would knock him down." I think F. B. may be
pardoned in this instance for emulating the office of auctioneer. Where
are you, pretty Rosey and poor little helpless baby? Where are you, dear
Clive--gallant young friend of my youth? Ah! it is a sad story--a
melancholy page to pen! Let us pass it over quickly--I love not to think
of my friend in pain.




CHAPTER LXXI

In which Mrs. Clive Newcome's Carriage is ordered


All the friends of the Newcome family, of course, knew the disaster which
had befallen the good Colonel, and I was aware, for my own part, that not
only his own, but almost the whole of Rosa Newcome's property was
involved in the common ruin. Some proposals of temporary relief were made
to our friends from more quarters than one, but were thankfully rejected
--and we were led to hope that the Colonel, having still his pension
secured to him, which the law could not touch, might live comfortably
enough the retirement to which, of course, he would betake himself, when
the melancholy proceedings consequent on the bankruptcy were brought to
an end. It was shown that he had been egregiously duped in the
transaction--that his credulity had cost him and his family a large
fortune--that he had given up every penny which belonged to him--that
there could not be any sort of stain upon his honest reputation. The
judge before whom he appeared spoke with feeling and regard of the
unhappy gentleman--the lawyer who examined him respected the grief and
fall of that simple old man. Thomas Newcome took a little room near the
court where his affairs and the affairs of the company were adjudged--
lived with a frugality which never was difficult to him--And once when
perchance I met him in the City, avoided me, with a bow and courtesy that
was quite humble, though proud and somehow inexpressibly touching to me.
Fred Bayham was the only person whom he admitted. Fred always faithfully
insisted upon attending him in and out of court. J. J. came to me
immediately after he heard of the disaster, eager to place all his
savings at the service of his friends. Laura and I came to London, and
were urgent with similar offers. Our good friend declined to see any of
us. F. B., again, with tears trickling on his rough cheeks, and a break
in his voice, told me he feared that affairs must be very bad indeed, for
the Colonel absolutely denied himself a cheroot to smoke. Laura drove to
his lodgings and took him a box, which was held up to him as he came to
open the door to my wife's knock by our smiling little boy, He patted the
child on his golden head and kissed him. My wife wished he would have
done as much for her--but he would not--though she owned she kissed his
hand. He drew it across his eyes and thanked her in a very calm and
stately manner--but he did not invite her within the threshold of his
door, saying simply, that such a room was not a fit place to receive a
lady, "as you ought to know very well, Mrs. Smith," he said to the
landlady, who had accompanied my wife up the stairs. "He will eat
scarcely anything," the woman told us, "his meals come down untouched;
his candles are burning all night, almost, as he sits poring over his
papers."

"He was bent--he who used to walk so uprightly," Laura said. He seemed to
have grown many years older, and was, indeed, quite a decrepit old man.

"I am glad they have left Clive out of the bankruptcy," the Colonel said
to Bayham; it was almost the only time when his voice exhibited any
emotion. "It was very kind of them to leave out Clive, poor boy, and I
have thanked the lawyers in court." Those gentlemen, and the judge
himself, were very much moved at this act of gratitude. The judge made a
very feeling speech to the Colonel when he came up for his certificate.
He passed very different comments on the conduct of the Manager of the
Bank, when that person appeared for examination. He wished that the law
had power to deal with those gentlemen who had come home with large
fortunes from India, realised but a few years before the bankruptcy.
Those gentlemen had known how to take care of themselves very well; and
as for the Manager, is not his wife giving elegant balls at her elegant
house at Cheltenham at this very day?

What weighed most upon the Colonel's mind, F. B. imagined, was the
thought that he had been the means of inducing many poor friends to
embark their money in this luckless speculation. Take J. J.'s money after
he had persuaded old Ridley to place 200 pounds in Indian shares! Good
God, he and his family should rather perish than he would touch a
farthing of it! Many fierce words were uttered to him by Mrs. Mackenzie,
for instance--by her angry daughter at Musselburgh--Josey's husband, by
Mr. Smee, R.A., and two or three Indian officers, friends of his own, who
had entered into the speculation on his recommendation. These rebukes
Thomas Newcome bore with an affecting meekness, as his faithful F. B.
described to me, striving with many oaths and much loudness to carry off
bis own emotion. But what moved the Colonel most of all, was a letter
which came at this time from Honeyman in India, saying that he was doing
well--that of course he knew of his benefactor's misfortune, and that he
sent a remittance which, D. V., should be annual, in payment of his debt
to the Colonel, and his good sister at Brighton. "On receipt of this
letter," said F. B., "the old man was fairly beaten--the letter, with the
bill in it, dropped out of his hands. He clasped them together, shaking
in every limb, and his head dropped down on his breast as he said, 'I
thank my God Almighty for this!' and he sent the cheque off to Mrs.
Honeyman by the post that night, sir, every shilling of it; and he passed
his old arm under mine--and we went out to Tom's Coffee-House, and he ate
some dinner the first time for ever so long, and drank a couple of
glasses of port wine, and F. B. stood it, sir, and would stand his
heart's blood that dear old boy."

It was on a Monday morning that those melancholy shutters were seen over
the offices of the Bundelcund Bank in Lothbury, which were not to come
down until the rooms were handed over to some other, and, let us trust,
more fortunate speculators. The Indian bills had arrived, and been
protested in the City on the previous Saturday. The Campaigner and Mrs.
Rosey had arranged a little party to the theatre that evening, and the
gallant Captain Goby had agreed to quit the delights of the Flag Club, in
order to accompany the ladies. Neither of them knew what was happening in
the City, or could account otherwise than by the common domestic causes,
for Clive's gloomy despondency and his father's sad reserve. Clive had
not been in the City on this day. He had spent it, as usual, in his
studio, boude by his wife, and not disturbed by the messroom raillery of
the Campaigner. They had dined early, in order to be in time for the
theatre. Goby entertained them with the latest jokes from the
smoking-room at the Flag, and was in his turn amused by the brilliant
plans for the season which Rosey and her mamma sketched out the
entertainments which Mrs. Clive proposed to give, the ball--she was
dying for a masked ball just such a one as that was described in the
Pall Mall Gazette of last week, out of that paper with the droll title,
the Bengal Hurkaru, which the merchant-prince, the head of the bank,
you know, in India, had given at Calcutta. "We must have a ball, too,"
says Mrs. Mackenzie; "society demands it of you." "Of course it does,"
echoes Captain Goby, and he bethought him of a brilliant circle of young
fellows from the Flag, whom he would bring in splendid uniform to dance
with the pretty Mrs. Clive Newcome.

After the dinner--they little knew it was to be their last in that fine
house--the ladies retired to give their parting kiss to baby--a parting
look to the toilettes, with which they proposed to fascinate the
inhabitants of the pit and the public boxes at the Olympic. Goby made
vigorous play with the claret-bottle during the brief interval of
potation allowed to him; he, too, little deeming that he should never
drink bumper there again; Clive looking on with the melancholy and silent
acquiescence which had, of late, been his part in the household. The
carriage was announced--the ladies came down--pretty capotes on the
lovely Campaigner, Goby vowed, looking as young and as handsome as her
daughter, by Jove, and the ball door was opened to admit the two
gentlemen and ladies to their carriage, when, as they were about to step
in, a hansom cab drove up rapidly, in which was perceived Thomas
Newcome's anxious face. He got out of the vehicle--his own carriage
making way for him--the ladies still on the steps. "Oh, the play! I
forgot," said the Colonel.

"Of course we are going to the play, papa," cries little Rosey, with a
gay little tap of her hand.

"I think you had better not," Colonel Newcome said gravely.

"Indeed my darling child has set her heart upon it, and I would not have
her disappointed for the world in her situation," cries the Campaigner,
tossing up her head.

The Colonel for reply bade his coachman drive to the stables, and come
for further orders; and, turning to his daughter's guest, expressed to
Captain Goby his regret that the proposed party could not take place on
that evening, as he had matter of very great importance to communicate to
his family. On hearing these news, and understanding that his further
company was not desirable, the Captain, a man of great presence of mind,
arrested the hansom cabman, who was about to take his departure, and who
blithely, knowing the Club and its inmates full well, carried off the
jolly Captain to finish his evening at the Flag.

"Has it come, father?" said Clive with a sure prescience, looking in his
father's face.

The father took and grasped the hand which his son held out. "Let us go
back into the dining-room," he said. They entered it, and he filled
himself a glass of wine out of the bottle still standing amidst the
dessert. He bade the butler retire, who was lingering about the room and
sideboard, and only wanted to know whether his master would have dinner,
that was all. And, this gentleman having withdrawn, Colonel Newcome
finished his glass of sherry and broke a biscuit; the Campaigner assuming
an attitude of surprise and indignation, whilst Rosey had leisure to
remark that papa looked very ill, and that something must have happened.

The Colonel took both her hands and drew her towards him and kissed her,
whilst Rosey's mamma, flouncing down on a chair, beat a tattoo upon the
tablecloth with her fan. "Something has happened, my love," the Colonel
said very sadly; "you must show all your strength of mind, for a great
misfortune has befallen us."

"Good heavens, Colonel, what is it? don't frighten my beloved child,"
cries the Campaigner, rushing towards her darling, and enveloping her in
her robust arms. "What can have happened, don't agitate this darling
child, sir," and she looked indignantly towards the poor Colonel.

"We have received the very worst news from Calcutta, a confirmation of
the news by the last mail, Clivey, my boy."

"It is no news to me. I have always been expecting it, father," says
Clive, holding down his head.

"Expecting what? What have you been keeping back from us? In what have
you been deceiving us, Colonel Newcome?" shrieks the Campaigner; and
Rosa, crying out, "Oh, mamma, mamma!" begins to whimper.

"The chief of the bank in India is dead," the Colonel went on. "He has
left its affairs in worse than disorder. We are, I fear, ruined, Mrs.
Mackenzie." And the Colonel went on to tell how the bank could not open
on Monday morning, and its bills to a great amount had already been
protested in the City that day.

Rosey did not understand half these news, or comprehend the calamity
which was to follow; but Mrs. Mackenzie, rustling in great wrath, made a
speech, of which the anger gathered as he proceeded; in which she vowed
and protested that her money, which the Colonel, she did not know from
what motives, had induced her to subscribe, should not be sacrificed, and
that have it she would, the bank shut or not, the next Monday morning--
that her daughter had a fortune of her own which her poor dear brother
James should have divided and would have divided much more fairly, had he
not been wrongly influenced--she would not say by whom, and she commanded
Colonel Newcome upon that instant, if he was, as he always pretended to
be, an honourable man, to give an account of her blessed darling's
property, and to pay back her own, every sixpence of it. She would not
lend it for an hour longer, and to see that that dear blessed child now
sleeping unconsciously upstairs, and his dear brothers and sisters who
might follow, for Rosey was a young woman, a poor innocent creature, too
young to be married, and never would have been married had she listened
to her mamma's advice. She demanded that the baby, and all succeeding
babies, should have their rights, and should be looked to by their
grandmother, if their father's father was so unkind, and so wicked, and
so unnatural, as to give their money to rogues, and deprive them of their
just bread.

Rosey began to cry more loudly than ever during the utterance of mamma's
sermon, so loudly that Clive peevishly cried out, "Hold your tongue," on
which the Campaigner, clutching her daughter to her breast again, turned
on her son-in-law, and abused him as she had abused his father before
him, calling out that they were both in a conspiracy to defraud her
child, and the little darling upstairs of its bread, and she would speak,
yes, she would, and no power should prevent her, and her money she would
have on Monday, as sure as her poor dear husband, Captain Mackenzie, was
dead, and she never would have been cheated so, yes, cheated, if he had
been alive.

At the word "cheated" Clive broke out with an execration--the poor
Colonel with a groan of despair--the widow's storm continued, and above
that howling tempest of words rose Mrs. Clive's piping scream, who went
off into downright hysterics at last, in which she was encouraged by her
mother, and in which she gasped out frantic ejaculations regarding baby;
dear, darling, ruined baby, and so forth.

The sorrow-stricken Colonel had to quell the women's tongues and shrill
anger, and his son's wrathful replies, who could not bear the weight of
Mrs. Mackenzie upon him; and it was not until these three were allayed,
that Thomas Newcome was able to continue his sad story, to explain what
had happened, and what the actual state of the case was, and to oblige
the terror-stricken women at length to hear something like reason.

He then had to tell them, to their dismay, that he would inevitably be
declared a bankrupt in the ensuing week; that the whole of his property
in that house, as elsewhere, would be seized and sold for the creditors'
benefit; and that his daughter had best immediately leave a home where
she would be certainly subject to humiliation and annoyance. "I would
have Clive, my boy, take you out of the country, and--and return to me
when I have need of him, and shall send for him," the father said fondly
in reply to a rebellious look on his son's face. "I would have you quit
this house as soon as possible. Why not to-night? The law blood-hound may
be upon us ere an hour is over--at this moment for what I know."

At that moment the door-bell was heard to ring, and the women gave a
scream apiece, as if the bailiffs were actually coming to take
possession. Rosey went off in quite a series of screams, peevishly
repressed by her husband, and always encouraged by mamma, who called her
son-in-law an unfeeling wretch. It must be confessed that Mrs. Clive
Newcome did not exhibit much strength of mind, or comfort her husband
much at a moment when he needed consolation.

From angry rebellion and fierce remonstrance, this pair of women now
passed to an extreme terror and desire for instantaneous flight. They
would go that moment--they would wrap the blessed child up in its shawls
--and nurse should take it anywhere--anywhere, poor neglected thing. "My
trunks," cries Mrs. Mackenzie, "you know are ready packed--I am sure it
is not the treatment which I have received--it is nothing but my duty and
my religion--and the protection which I owe to this blessed unprotected--
yes, unprotected, and robbed, and cheated, darling child--which have made
me stay a single day in this house. I never thought I should have been
robbed in it, or my darlings with their fine fortunes flung naked on the
world. If my Mac was here, you never had dared to have done this, Colonel
Newcome--no, never. He had his faults--Mackenzie had--but he would never
have robbed his own children! Come away, Rosey, my blessed love, come let
us pack your things, and let us go and hide our heads in sorrow
somewhere. Ah! didn't I tell you to beware of all painters, and that
Clarence was a true gentleman, and loved you with all his heart, and
would never have cheated you out of your money, for which I will have
justice as sure as there is justice in England."

During this outburst the Colonel sat utterly scared and silent,
supporting his poor head between his hands. When the harem had departed
he turned sadly to his son. Clive did not believe that his father was a
cheat and a rogue. No, thank God! The two men embraced with tender
cordiality and almost happy emotion on the one side and the other. Never
for one moment could Clive think his dear old father meant wrong--though
the speculations were unfortunate in which he had engaged--though Clive
had not liked them; it was a relief to his mind that they were now come
to an end; they should all be happier now, thank God! those clouds of
distrust being removed. Clive felt not one moment's doubt but that they
should be able to meet fortune with a brave face; and that happier, much
happier days were in store for him than ever they had known since the
period of this confounded prosperity.

"Here's a good end to it," says Clive, with flashing eyes and a flushed
face, "and here's a good health till to-morrow, father!" and he filled
into two glasses the wine still remaining in the flask. "Good-bye to our
fortune, and bad luck go with her--I puff the prostitute away--Si celeres
quatit pennas, you remember what we used to say at Grey Friars--resign
quae dedit, et mea virtute me involve, probamque pauperiem sine dote
quaero." And he pledged his father, who drank his wine, his hand shaking
as he raised the glass to his lips, and his kind voice trembling as he
uttered the well-known old school words, with an emotion that was as
sacred as a prayer. Once more, and with hearts full of love, the two men
embraced. Clive's voice would tremble now if he told the story, as it did
when he spoke it to me in happier times, one calm summer evening when we
sat together and talked of dear old days.

Thomas Newcome explained to his son the plan, which, to his mind, as he
came away from the City after the day's misfortunes, he thought it was
best to pursue. The women and the child were clearly best out of the way.
"And you too, my boy, must be on duty with them until I send for you,
which I will do if your presence can be of the least service to me, or is
called for by--by--our honour," said the old man with a drop in his
voice. "You must obey me in this, dear Clive, as you have done in
everything, and been a good and dear, and obedient son to me. God pardon
me for having trusted to my own simple old brains too much, and not to
you who know so much better. You will obey me this once more, my boy--you
will promise me this?" and the old man as he spoke took Clive's hand in
both his, and fondly caressed it.

Then with a shaking hand he took out of his pocket his old purse with the
steel rings, which he had worn for many and many a long year. Clive
remembered it, and his father's face how it would beam with delight, when
he used to take that very purse out in Clive's boyish days and tip him
just after he left school. "Here are some notes and some gold," he said.
"It is Rosey's, honestly, Clive dear, her half-year's dividend, for which
you will give an order, please, to Sherrick. He has been very kind and
good, Sherrick. All the servants were providentially paid last week--
there are only the outstanding week's bills out--we shall manage to meet
those, I dare say. And you will see that Rosey only takes away such
clothes for herself and her baby as are actually necessary, won't you,
dear? the plain things, you know--none of the fineries--they may be
packed in a petara or two, and you will take them with you--but the pomps
and vanities, you know, we will leave behind--the pearls and bracelets,
and the plate, and all that rubbish--and I will make an inventory of them
to-morrow when you are gone, and give them up, every rupee's worth, sir,
every anna, by Jove, to the creditors."

The darkness had fallen by this time, and the obsequious butler entered
to light the dining-room lamps. "You have been a very good and kind
servant to us, Martin," says the Colonel, making him a low bow. "I should
like to shake you by the hand. We must part company now, and I have no
doubt you and your fellow servants will find good places, all of you, as
you merit, Martin--as you merit. Great losses have fallen upon our
family--we are ruined, sir--we are ruined! The great Bundelcund Banking
Company has stopped payment in India, and our branch here must stop on
Monday. Thank my friends downstairs for their kindness to me and my
family." Martin bowed in silence with great respect. He and his comrades
in the servants'-hall had been expecting this catastrophe, quite as long
as the Colonel himself who thought he had kept his affairs so profoundly
secret.

Clive went up into his women's apartments, looking with but little
regret, I dare say, round those cheerless nuptial chambers with all their
gaudy fittings; the fine looking-glasses, in which poor Rosey's little
person had been reflected; the silken curtains under which he had lain by
the poor child's side, wakeful and lonely. Here he found his child's
nurse, and his wife, and wife's mother, busily engaged with a
multiplicity of boxes; with flounces, feathers, fal-lals, and finery,
which they were stowing away in this trunk and that; while the baby lay
on its little pink pillow breathing softly, a little pearly fist placed
close to its mouth. The aspect of the tawdry vanities scattered here and
there chafed and annoyed the young man. He kicked the robes over with his
foot. When Mrs. Mackenzie interposed with loud ejaculations, he sternly
bade her to be silent, and not wake the child. His words were not to be
questioned when he spoke in that manner. "You will take nothing with you,
Rosey, but what is strictly necessary--only two or three of your plainest
dresses, and what is required for the boy. What is in this trunk?" Mrs.
Mackenzie stepped forward and declared, and the nurse vowed upon her
honour, and the lady's-maid asserted really now upon honour too, that
there was nothing but what was most strictly necessary in that trunk, to
which affidavits, when Clive applied to his wife, she gave a rather timid
assent.

"Where are the keys of that trunk?" Upon Mrs. Mackenzie's exclamation of
"What nonsense!" Clive, putting his foot upon the flimsy oil-covered box,
vowed he would kick the lid off unless it was instantly opened. Obeying
this grim summons, the fluttering women produced the keys, and the black
box was opened before him.

The box was found to contain a number of objects which Clive pronounced
to be by no means necessary to his wife's and child's existence.
Trinket-boxes and favourite little gimcracks, chains, rings and pearl
necklaces, the tiara poor Rosey had worn at court--the feathers and the
gorgeous train which had decorated the little person--all these were
found packed away in this one receptacle; and in another box, I am sorry
to say, were the silver forks and spoons (the butler wisely judging that
the rich and splendid electrotype ware might as well be left behind)--all
the silver forks, spoons, and ladles, and our poor old friend the
cocoa-nut tree, which these female robbers would have carried out of
the premises.

Mr. Clive Newcome burst out into fierce laughter when he saw the
cocoa-nut tree; he laughed so loud that baby woke, and his mother-in-law
called him a brute, and the nurse ran to give its accustomed quietus to
the little screaming infant. Rosey's eyes poured forth a torrent of
little protests, and she would have cried yet more loudly than the other
baby, had not her husband, again fiercely checking her, sworn with a
dreadful oath, that unless she told him the whole truth, "By heavens she
should leave the house with nothing but what covered her." Even the
Campaigner could not make head against Clive's stern resolution; and the
incipient insurrection of the maids and the mistresses was quelled by his
spirit. The lady's-maid, a flighty creature, received her wages and took
her leave: but the nurse could not find it in her heart to quit her
little nursling so suddenly, and accompanied Clive's household in the
journey upon which those poor folks were bound. What stolen goods were
finally discovered when the family reached foreign parts were found in
Mrs. Mackenzie's trunks, not in her daughter's: a silver filigree basket,
a few teaspoons, baby's gold coral, and a costly crimson velvet-bound
copy of the Hon. Miss Grimstone's Church Service, to which articles,
having thus appropriated them, Mrs. Mackenzie henceforward laid claim as
her own.

So when the packing was done a cab was called to receive the modest
trunks of this fugitive family--the coachman was bidden to put his horses
to again, and for the last time poor Rosey Newcome sate in her own
carriage, to which the Colonel conducted her with his courtly old bow,
kissing the baby as it slept once more unconscious in its nurse's
embrace, and bestowing a very grave and polite parting salute upon the
Campaigner.

Then Clive and his father entered a cab on which the trunks were borne,
and they drove to the Tower Stairs, where the ship lay which was to
convey them out of England; and, during that journey, no doubt, they
talked over their altered prospects, and I am sure Clive's father blessed
his son fondly, and committed him and his family to a good God's gracious
keeping, and thought of him with sacred love when they had parted, and
Thomas Newcome had returned to his lonely house to watch and to think of
his ruined fortunes, and to pray that he might have courage under them;
that he might bear his own fate honourably; and that a gentle one might
be dealt to those beloved beings for whom his life had been sacrificed in
vain.




CHAPTER LXXII

Belisarius


When the sale of Colonel Newcome's effects took place, a friend of the
family bought in for a few shillings those two swords which had hung, as
we have said, in the good man's chamber, and for which no single broker
present had the heart to bid. The head of Clive's father, painted by
himself, which had always kept its place in the young man's studio,
together with a lot of his oil-sketchings, easels, and painting
apparatus, were purchased by the faithful J. J., who kept them until his
friend should return to London and reclaim them, and who showed the most
generous solicitude in Clive's behalf. J. J. was elected of the Royal
Academy this year, and Clive, it was evident, was working hard at the
profession which he had always loved; for he sent over three pictures to
the Academy, and I never knew man more mortified than the affectionate
J. J., when two of these unlucky pieces were rejected by the committee
for the year. One pretty little piece, called "The Stranded Boat," got a
fair place on the Exhibition walls, and, you may be sure, was loudly
praised by a certain critic in the Pall Mall Gazette. The picture was
sold on the first day of the exhibition at the price of twenty-five
pounds, which the artist demanded; and when the kind J. J. wrote to
inform his friend of this satisfactory circumstance, and to say that he
held the money at Clive's disposal, the latter replied with many
expressions of sincere gratitude, at the same time begging him directly
to forward the money, with our old friend Thomas Newcome's love, to Mrs.
Sarah Mason, at Newcome. But J. J. never informed his friend that he
himself was the purchaser of the picture; nor was Clive made acquainted
with the fact until some time afterwards, when he found it hanging in
Ridley's studio.

I have said that we none of us were aware at this time what was the real
state of Colonel Newcome's finances, and hoped that, after giving up
every shilling of his property which was confiscated to the creditors of
the Bank, he had still, from his retiring pension and military
allowances, at least enough reputably to maintain him. On one occasion,
having business in the City, I there met Mr. Sherrick. Affairs had been
going ill with that gentleman--he had been let in terribly, he informed
me, by Lord Levant's insolvency--having had large money transactions with
his lordship. "There's none of them so good as old Newcome," Mr. Sherrick
said with a sigh; "that was a good one--that was an honest man if ever I
saw one--with no more guile, and no more idea of business than a baby.
Why didn't he take my advice, poor old cove?--he might be comfortable
now. Why did he sell away that annuity, Pendennis? I got it done for him
when nobody else perhaps could have got it done for him--for the security
ain't worth twopence if Newcome wasn't an honest man;--but I know he is,
and would rather starve and eat the nails off his fingers than not keep
his word, the old trump. And when he came to me, a good two months before
the smash of the Bank, which I knew it, sir, and saw that it must come--
when he came and raised three thousand pounds to meet them d--d
electioneering bills, having to pay lawyers, commission, premium,
life-insurance--you know the whole game, Mr. P.--I as good as went down
on my knees to him--I did--at the North and South American Coffee-house,
where he was to meet the party about the money, and said, 'Colonel, don't
raise it--I tell you, let it stand over--let it go in along with the
bankruptcy that's a-coming,'--but he wouldn't--he went on like an old
Bengal tiger, roaring about his honour; he paid the bills every shilling
--infernal long bills they were, and it's my belief that, at this minute,
he ain't got fifty pounds a year of his own to spend. I would send him
back my commission--I would by Jove--only times is so bad, and that
rascal Levant let me in. It went to my heart to take the old cock's
money--but it's gone--that and ever so much more--and Lady Whittlesea's
Chapel too, Mr. P. Hang that young Levant."

Squeezing my hand after this speech, Sherrick ran across the street after
some other capitalist who was entering the Diddlesex Insurance Office,
and left me very much grieved and dismayed at finding that my worst fears
in regard to Thomas Newcome were confirmed. Should we confer with his
wealthy family respecting the Colonel's impoverished condition? Was his
brother Hobson Newcome aware of it? As for Sir Barnes, the quarrel
between him and his uncle had been too fierce to admit of hopes of relief
from that quarter. Barnes had been put to very heavy expenses in the
first contested election; had come forward again immediately on his
uncle's resignation, but again had been beaten by a more liberal
candidate, his quondam former friend, Mr. Higg--who formally declared
against Sir Barnes, and who drove him finally out of the representation
of Newcome. From this gentleman it was vain of course for Colonel
Newcome's friends to expect relief.

How to aid him? He was proud--past work--nearly seventy years old. "Oh,
why did those cruel Academicians refuse Clive's pictures?" cries Laura.
"I have no patience with them--had the pictures been exhibited I know who
might have bought them--but that is vain now. He would suspect at once,
and send her money away. Oh, Pen! why, why didn't he come when I wrote
that letter to Brussels?"

From persons so poorly endowed with money as ourselves, any help, but of
the merest temporary nature, was out of the question. We knew our friends
too well not to know that they would disdain to receive it. It was agreed
between me and Laura that at any rate I should go and see Clive. Our
friends indeed were at a very short distance from us, and, having exiled
themselves from England, could yet see its coasts from their windows upon
any clear day. Boulogne was their present abiding-place--refuge of how
many thousands of other unfortunate Britons--and to this friendly port
I betook myself speedily, having the address of Colonel Newcome. His
quarters were in a quiet grass-grown old street of the Old Town. None
of the family were at home when I called. There was indeed no servant to
answer the bell, but the good-natured French domestic of a neighbouring
lodger told me that the young monsieur went out every day to make his
designs, and that I should probably find the elder gentleman upon the
rampart, where he was in the custom of going every day. I strolled along
by those pretty old walks and bastions, under the pleasant trees which
shadow them, and the grey old gabled houses from which you look down
upon the gay new city, and the busy port, and the piers stretching into
the shining sea, dotted with a hundred white sails or black smoking
steamers, and bounded by the friendly lines of the bright English shore.
There are few prospects more charming than the familiar view from those
old French walls--few places where young children may play, and
ruminating old age repose more pleasantly than on those peaceful
rampart gardens.

I found our dear old friend seated on one of the benches, a newspaper on
his knees, and by his side a red-cheeked little French lass, upon whose
lap Thomas Newcome the younger lay sleeping. The Colonel's face flushed
up when he saw me. As he advanced a step or two towards me I could see
that he trembled in his walk. His hair had grown almost quite white. He
looked now to be more than his age--he whose carriage last year had been
so erect, whose figure had been so straight and manly. I was very much
moved at meeting him, and at seeing the sad traces which pain and grief
had left in the countenance of the dear old man.

"So you are come to see me, my good young friend," cried the Colonel,
with a trembling voice. "It is very, very kind of you. Is not this a
pretty drawing-room to receive our friends in? We have not many of them
now; Boy and I come and sit here for hours every day. Hasn't he grown a
fine boy? He can say several words now, sir, and can walk surprisingly
well. Soon he will be able to walk with his grandfather, and then Marie
will not have the trouble to wait upon either of us." He repeated this
sentiment in his pretty old French, and turning with a bow to Marie. The
girl said monsieur knew very well that she did not desire better than to
come out with baby; that it was better than staying at home, pardieu;
and, the clock striking at this moment, she rose up with her child,
crying out that it was time to return or madame would scold.

"Mrs. Mackenzie has rather a short temper," the Colonel said with a
gentle smile. "Poor thing, she has had a great deal to bear in
consequence, Pen, of my imprudence. I am glad you never took shares in
our bank. I should not be so glad to see you as I am now, if I had
brought losses upon you as I have upon so many of my friends." I, for my
part, trembled to hear the good old man was under the domination of the
Campaigner.

"Bayham sends me the paper regularly; he is a very kind faithful
creature. How glad I am that he has got a snug berth in the City! His
company really prospers, I am happy to think, unlike some companies you
know of, Pen. I have read your two speeches, sir, and Clive and I liked
them very much. The poor boy works all day at his pictures. You know he
has sold one at the exhibition, which has given us a great deal of heart
--and he has completed two or three more--and I am sitting to him now
for--what do you think, sir? for Belisarius. Will you give Belisarius and
the Obolus kind word?"

"My dear, dear old friend," I said in great emotion, "if you will do me
the kindness to take my Obolus or to use my services in any way, you will
give me more pleasure than ever I had from your generous bounties in old
days. Look, sir, I wear the watch which you gave me when you went to
India. Did you not tell me then to look over Clive and serve him if I
could? Can't I serve him now?" and I went on further in this strain,
asseverating with great warmth and truth that my wife's affection and my
own were most sincere for both of them, and that our pride would be to be
able to help such dear friends.

The Colonel said I had a good heart, and my wife had, though--though--he
did not finish this sentence, but I could interpret it without need of
its completion. My wife and the two ladies of Colonel Newcome's family
never could be friends, however much my poor Laura tried to be intimate
with these women. Her very efforts at intimacy caused a frigidity and
hauteur which Laura could not overcome. Little Rosey and her mother set
us down as two aristocratic personages; nor for our parts were we very
much disturbed at this opinion of the Campaigner and little Rosa.

I talked with the Colonel for half an hour or more about his affairs,
which indeed were very gloomy, and Clive's prospects, of which he strove
to present as cheering a view as possible. He was obliged to confirm the
news which Sherrick had given me, and to own, in fact, that all his
pension was swallowed up by a payment of interest and life insurance for
sums which he had been compelled to borrow. How could he do otherwise
than meet his engagements? Thank God, he had Clive's full approval for
what he had done--had communicated the circumstance to his son almost
immediately after it took place, and that was a comfort to him--an
immense comfort. "For the women are very angry," said the poor Colonel;
"you see they do not understand the laws of honour, at least as we
understand them: and perhaps I was wrong in hiding the truth as I
certainly did from Mrs. Mackenzie, but I acted for the best--I hoped
against hope that some chance might turn in our favour. God knows, I had
a hard task enough in wearing a cheerful face for months, and in
following my little Rosa about to her parties and balls; but poor Mrs.
Mackenzie has a right to be angry, only I wish my little girl did not
side with her mother so entirely, for the loss of her affection gives me
great pain."

So it was as I suspected. The Campaigner ruled over this family, and
added to all their distresses by her intolerable presence and tyranny.
"Why, sir," I ventured to ask, "if, as I gather from you--and I
remember," I added with a laugh, "certain battles-royal which Clive
described to me in old days--if you and the Campai--Mrs. Mackenzie do not
agree, why should she continue to live with you, when you would all be so
much happier apart?"

"She has a right to live in the house," says the Colonel; "It is I who
have no right in it. I am a poor old pensioner, don't you see, subsisting
on Rosey's bounty? We live on the hundred a year, secured to her at her
marriage, and Mrs. Mackenzie has her forty pounds of pension which she
adds to the common stock. It is I who have made away with every shilling
of Rosey's 17,000 pounds, God help me, and with 1500 pounds of her
mother's. They put their little means together, and they keep us--me and
Clive. What can we do for a living? Great God! What can we do? Why, I am
so useless that even when my poor boy earned 25 pounds for his picture, I
felt we were bound to send it to Sarah Mason, and you may fancy when this
came to Mrs. Mackenzie's ears, what a life my boy and I led. I have never
spoken of these things to any mortal soul--I even don't speak of them
with Clive--but seeing your kind and honest face has made me talk--you
must pardon my garrulity--I am growing old, Arthur. This poverty and
these quarrels have beaten my spirit down--there, I shall talk on this
subject no more. I wish, sir, I could ask you to dine with us, but"--and
here he smiled--"we must get the leave of the higher powers."

I was determined, in spite of prohibitions and Campaigners, to see my old
friend Clive, and insisted on walking back with the Colonel to his
lodgings, at the door of which we met Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter.
Rosa blushed up a little--looked at her mamma--and then greeted me with a
hand and a curtsey. The Campaigner also saluted me in a majestic but
amicable manner, made no objection even to my entering her apartments and
seeing the condition to which they were reduced: this phrase was uttered
with particular emphasis and a significant look towards the Colonel, who
bowed his meek head and preceded me into the lodgings, which were in
truth very homely, pretty, and comfortable. The Campaigner was an
excellent manager--restless, bothering, brushing perpetually. Such
fugitive gimcracks as they had brought away with them decorated the
little salon. Mrs. Mackenzie, who took the entire command, even pressed
me to dine and partake, if so fashionable a gentleman would condescend to
partake, of a humble exile's fare. No fare was perhaps very pleasant to
me in company with that woman, but I wanted to see my dear old Clive, and
gladly accepted his voluble mother-in-law's not disinterested
hospitality. She beckoned the Colonel aside; whispered to him, putting
something into his hand; on which he took his hat and went away. Then
Rosey was dismissed upon some other pretext, and I had the felicity to be
left alone with Mrs. Captain Mackenzie.

She instantly improved the occasion; and with great eagerness and
volubility entered into her statement of the present affairs and position
of this unfortunate family. She described darling Rosey's delicate state,
poor thing--nursed with tenderness and in the lap of luxury--brought up
with every delicacy and the fondest mother--never knowing in the least
how to take care of herself, and likely to fall down and perish unless
the kind Campaigner were by to prop and protect her. She was in delicate
health--very delicate--ordered cod-liver oil by the doctor. Heaven knows
how he could be paid for those expensive medicines out of the pittance to
which the imprudence--the most culpable and designing imprudence, and
extravagance, and folly of Colonel Newcome had reduced them! Looking out
from the window as she spoke I saw--we both saw--the dear old gentleman
sadly advancing towards the house, a parcel in his hand. Seeing his near
approach, and that our interview was likely to come to an end, Mrs.
Mackenzie rapidly whispered to me that she knew I had a good heart--that
I had been blessed by Providence with a fine fortune, which I knew how to
keep better than some folks--and that if, as no doubt was my intention--
for with what other but a charitable view could I have come to see them?
--and most generous and noble was it of you to come, and I always thought
it of you, Mr. Pendennis, whatever other people said to the contrary. If
I proposed to give them relief, which was most needful--and for which a
mother's blessings would follow me--let it be to her, the Campaigner,
that my loan should be confided--for as for the Colonel, he is not fit to
be trusted with a shilling, and has already flung away immense sums upon
some old woman he keeps in the country, leaving his darling Rosey without
the actual necessaries of life.

The woman's greed and rapacity--the flattery with which she chose to
belabour me at dinner, so choked and disgusted me, that I could hardly
swallow the meal, though my poor old friend had been sent out to purchase
a pate from the pastrycook's for my especial refection. Clive was not at
the dinner. He seldom returned till late at night on sketching days.
Neither his wife nor his mother-in-law seemed much to miss him; and
seeing that the Campaigner engrossed the entire share of the
conversation, and proposed not to leave me for five minutes alone with
the Colonel, I took leave rather speedily of my entertainers, leaving a
message for Clive, and a prayer that he would come and see me at my
hotel.




CHAPTER LXXIII

In which Belisarius returns from Exile


I was sitting in the dusk in my room at Hotel des Bains, when the visitor
for whom I hoped made his appearance in the person of Clive, with his
broad shoulders, and broad hat, and a shaggy beard, which he had thought
fit in his quality of painter to assume. Our greeting it need not be said
was warm; and our talk, which extended far into the night, very friendly
and confidential. If I make my readers confidants in Mr. Clive's private
affairs, I ask my friend's pardon for narrating his history in their
behoof. The world had gone very ill with my poor Clive, and I do not
think that the pecuniary losses which had visited him and his father
afflicted him near so sorely as the state of his home. In a pique with
the woman he loved, and from that generous weakness which formed part of
his character, and which led him to acquiesce in most wishes of his good
father, the young man had gratified the darling desire of the Colonel's
heart, and taken the wife whom his two old friends brought to him. Rosey,
who was also, as we have shown, of a very obedient and ductile nature,
had acquiesced gladly enough in her mamma's opinion, that she was in love
with the rich and handsome young Clive, and accepted him for better or
worse. So undoubtedly would this good child have accepted Captain Hoby,
her previous adorer, have smilingly promised fidelity to the Captain at
church, and have made a very good, happy, and sufficient little wife for
that officer,--had not mamma commanded her to jilt him. What wonder that
these elders should wish to see their two dear young ones united? They
began with suitable age, money, good temper, and parents' blessings. It
is not the first time that, with all these excellent helps to prosperity
and happiness, a marriage has turned out unfortunately--a pretty, tight
ship gone to wreck that set forth on its voyage with cheers from the
shore, and every prospect of fair wind and fine weather.

We have before quoted poor Clive's simile of the shoes with which his
good old father provided him--as pretty a little pair of shoes as need
be--only they did not fit the wearer. If they pinched him at first, how
they blistered and tortured him now! If Clive was gloomy and discontented
even when the honeymoon had scarce waned, and he and his family sat at
home in state and splendour under the boughs of the famous silver
cocoa-nut tree, what was the young man's condition now in poverty, when
they had no love along with a scant dinner of herbs; when his
mother-in-law grudged each morsel which his poor old father ate--when a
vulgar, coarse-minded woman pursued with brutal sarcasm and deadly
rancour one of the tenderest and noblest gentlemen in the world--when an
ailing wife, always under some one's domination, received him with
helpless hysterical cries and reproaches--when a coarse female tyrant,
stupid, obstinate, utterly unable to comprehend the son's kindly genius,
or the father's gentle spirit, bullied over both, using the intolerable
undeniable advantage which her actual wrongs gave her to tyrannise over
these two wretched men! He had never heard the last of that money which
they had sent to Mrs. Mason, Clive said. When the knowledge of the fact
came to the Campaigner's ears, she raised such a storm as almost killed
the poor Colonel, and drove his son half mad. She seized the howling
infant, vowing that its unnatural father and grandfather were bent upon
starving it--she consoled and sent Rosey into hysterics--she took the
outlawed parson to whose church they went, and the choice society of
bankrupt captains, captains' ladies, fugitive stockbrokers' wives, and
dingy frequenters of billiard-rooms, and refugees from the Bench, into
her councils; and in her daily visits amongst these personages, and her
walks on the pier, whither she trudged with poor Rosey in her train, Mrs.
Mackenzie made known her own wrongs and her daughter's--showed how the
Colonel, having robbed and cheated them previously, was now living upon
them; insomuch that Mrs. Bolter, the levanting auctioneer's wife, would
not make the poor old man a bow when she met him--that Mrs. Captain
Kitely, whose husband had lain for seven years past in Boulogne gaol
ordered her son to cut Clive; and when, the child being sick, the poor
old Colonel went for arrowroot to the chemist's, young Snooks, the
apothecary's assistant, refused to allow him to take the powder away
without previously depositing the money.

He had no money, Thomas Newcome. He gave up every farthing. After having
impoverished all around him, he had no right, he said, to touch a
sixpence of the wretched pittance remaining to them--he had even given up
his cigar, the poor old man, the companion and comforter of forty years.
He was "not fit to be trusted with money," Mrs. Mackenzie said, and the
good man owned as he ate his scanty crust, and bowed his noble old head
in silence under that cowardly persecution.

And this, at the end of threescore and seven or eight years, was to be
the close of a life which had been spent in freedom and splendour, and
kindness and honour; this the reward of the noblest heart that ever beat
--the tomb and prison of a gallant warrior who had ridden in twenty
battles--whose course through life had been a bounty wherever it had
passed--whose name had been followed by blessings, and whose career was
to end here--here--in a mean room, in a mean alley of a foreign town--a
low furious woman standing over him and stabbing the kind defenceless
heart with killing insult and daily outrage!

As we sat together in the dark, Clive told me this wretched story, which
was wrung from him with a passionate emotion that I could not but keenly
share. He wondered the old man lived, Clive said. Some of the women's
taunts and gibes, as he could see, struck his father so that he gasped
and started back as if some one had lashed him with a whip. "He would
make away with himself," said poor Clive, "but he deems this is his
punishment, and that he must bear it as long as it pleases God. He does
not care for his own losses, as far as they concern himself: but these
reproaches of Mrs. Mackenzie, and some things which were said to him in
the Bankruptcy Court, by one or two widows of old friends, who were
induced through his representations, to take shares in that infernal
bank, have affected him dreadfully. I hear him lying awake and groaning
at night, God bless him. Great God! what can I do--what can I do?" burst
out the young man in a dreadful paroxysm of grief. "I have tried to get
lessons--I went to London on the deck of a steamer, and took a lot of
drawings with me--tried picture-dealers--pawnbrokers--Jews--Moss, whom
you may remember at Gandish's, and who gave me for forty-two drawings,
eighteen pounds. I brought the money back to Boulogne. It was enough to
pay the doctor, and bury our last poor little dead baby. Tenez, Pen, you
must give me some supper: I have had nothing all day but a pain de deux
sous; I can't stand it at home. My heart's almost broken--you must give
me some money, Pen, old boy. I know you will. I thought of writing to
you, but I wanted to support myself, you see. When I went to London with
the drawings I tried George's chambers, but he was in the country, I saw
Crackthorpe on the street in Oxford Street, but I could not face him, and
bolted down Hanway Yard. I tried, and I could not ask him, and I got the
eighteen pounds from Moss that day, and came home with it."

Give him money? of course I would give him money--my dear old friend!
And, as an alterative and a wholesome shock to check that burst of
passion and grief in which the poor fellow indulged, I thought fit to
break into a very fierce and angry invective on my own part, which served
to disguise the extreme feeling of pain and pity that I did not somehow
choose to exhibit. I rated Clive soundly, and taxed him with
unfriendliness and ingratitude for not having sooner applied to friends
who would think shame of themselves whilst he was in need. Whatever he
wanted was his as much as mine. I could not understand how the necessity
of the family should, in truth, be so extreme as he described it, for
after all many a poor family lived upon very much less; but I uttered
none of these objections, checking them with the thought that Clive, on
his first arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of
economy, might have imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced him
to this present destitution. (I did not know at the time that Mrs.
Mackenzie had taken entire superintendence of the family treasury--and
that this exemplary woman was putting away, as she had done previously,
sundry little sums to meet rainy days.)

I took the liberty of asking about debts, and of these Clive gave me to
understand there were none--at least none of his or his father's
contracting. "If we were too proud to borrow, and I think we were wrong,
Pen, my dear old boy--I think we were wrong now--at least, we were too
proud to owe. My colourman takes his bill out in drawings, and I think
owes me a trifle. He got me some lessons at fifty sous a ticket--a pound
the ten--from an economical swell who has taken a chateau here, and has
two flunkeys in livery. He has four daughters, who take advantage of the
lessons, and screws ten per cent upon the poor colourman's pencils and
drawing-paper. It's pleasant work to give the lessons to the children;
and to be patronised by the swell; and not expensive to him, is it, Pen?
But I don't mind that, if I could but get lessons enough: for, you see,
besides our expenses here, we must have some more money, and the dear old
governor would die outright if poor old Sarah Mason did not get her fifty
pounds a year."

And now there arrived a plentiful supper, and a bottle of good wine, of
which the giver was not sorry to partake after the meagre dinner at three
o'clock, to which I had been invited by the Campaigner; and it was
midnight when I walked back with my friend to his house in the upper
town; and all the stars of heaven were shining cheerily; and my dear
Clive's face wore an expression of happiness, such as I remembered in old
days, as we shook hands and parted with a "God bless you."

To Clive's friend, revolving these things in his mind, as he lay in one
of those most snug and comfortable beds at the excellent Hotel des Bains,
it appeared that this town of Boulogne was a very bad market for the
artist's talents; and that he had to bring them to London, where a score
of old friends would assuredly be ready to help him. And if the Colonel,
too, could be got away from the domination of the Campaigner, I felt
certain that the dear old gentleman could but profit by his leave of
absence. My wife and I at this time inhabited a spacious old house in
Queens Square, Westminster, where there was plenty of room for father and
son. I knew that Laura would be delighted to welcome these guests--may
the wife of every worthy gentleman who reads these pages be as ready to
receive her husband's friends. It was the state of Rosa's health, and the
Campaigner's authority and permission, about which I was in doubt, and
whether this lady's two slaves would be allowed to go away.

These cogitations kept the present biographer long awake, and he did not
breakfast next day until an hour before noon. I had the coffee-room to
myself by chance, and my meal was not yet ended when the waiter announced
a lady to visit Mr. Pendennis, and Mrs. Mackenzie made her appearance. No
signs of care or poverty were visible in the attire or countenance of the
buxom widow. A handsome bonnet, decorated within with a profusion of
poppies, bluebells; and ears of corn; a jewel on her forehead, not
costly, but splendid in appearance, and glittering artfully over that
central spot from which her wavy chestnut hair parted to cluster in
ringlets round her ample cheeks; a handsome India shawl, smart gloves, a
rich silk dress, a neat parasol of blue with pale yellow lining, a
multiplicity of glittering rinks, and a very splendid gold watch and
chain, which I remembered in former days as hanging round poor Rosey's
white neck;--all these adornments set off the widow's person, so that you
might have thought her a wealthy capitalist's lady, and never could have
supposed that she was a poor, cheated, ruined, robbed, unfortunate
Campaigner.

Nothing could be more gracious than the accueil of this lady. She paid me
many handsome compliments about my literary work--asked most
affectionately for dear Mrs. Pendennis and the dear children--and then,
as I expected, coming to business, contrasted the happiness and genteel
position of my wife and family with the misery and wrongs of her own
blessed child and grandson. She never could call that child by the odious
name which he received at his baptism. I knew what bitter reasons she had
to dislike the name of Thomas Newcome.

She again rapidly enumerated the wrongs she had received at the hands of
that gentleman; mentioned the vast sums of money out of which she and her
soul's darling had been tricked by that poor muddle-headed creature, to
say no worse of him; and described finally their present pressing need.
The doctors, the burial, Rosey's delicate condition, the cost of
sweetbreads, calf's-foot jelly, and cod-liver oil, were again passed in a
rapid calculation before me; and she ended her speech by expressing her
gratification that I had attended to her advice of the previous day, and
not given Clive Newcome a direct loan; that the family wanted it, the
Campaigner called upon Heaven to witness; that Clive and his absurd poor
father would fling guineas out of the window was a fact equally certain;
the rest of the argument was obvious, namely, that Mr. Pendennis should
administer a donation to herself.

I had brought but a small sum of money in my pocket-book, though Mrs.
Mackenzie, intimate with bankers, and having, thank Heaven, in spite of
all her misfortunes, the utmost confidence of all her tradesmen, hinted a
perfect willingness on her part to accept an order upon her friends,
Hobson Brothers of London.

This direct thrust I gently and smilingly parried by asking Mrs.
Mackenzie whether she supposed a gentleman who had just paid an
electioneering bill, and had, at the best of times, but a very small
income, might sometimes not be in a condition to draw satisfactorily upon
Messrs. Hobson or any other bankers? Her countenance fell at this remark,
nor was her cheerfulness much improved by the tender of one of the two
bank-notes which then happened to be in my possession. I said that I had
a use for the remaining note, and that it would not be more than
sufficient to pay my hotel bill, and the expenses of my party back to
London.

My party? I had here to divulge, with some little trepidation, the plan
which I had been making overnight; to explain how I thought that Clive's
great talents were wasted at Boulogne, and could only find a proper
market in London; how I was pretty certain, through my connection with
booksellers, to find some advantageous employment for him, and would have
done so months ago had I known the state of the case; but I had believed,
until within a very few days since, that the Colonel, in spite of his
bankruptcy, was still in the enjoyment of considerable military pensions.

This statement, of course, elicited from the widow a number of remarks
not complimentary to my dear old Colonel. He might have kept his pensions
had he not been a fool--he was a baby about money matters--misled himself
and everybody--was a log in the house, etc. etc. etc.

I suggested that his annuities might possibly be put into some more
satisfactory shape--that I had trustworthy lawyers with whom I would put
him in communication--that he had best come to London to see to these
matters--and that my wife had a large house where she would most gladly
entertain the two gentlemen.

This I said with some reasonable dread--fearing, in the first place, her
refusal; in the second, her acceptance of the invitation, with a
proposal, as our house was large, to come herself and inhabit it for a
while. Had I not seen that Campaigner arrive for a month at poor James
Binnie's house in Fitzroy Square, and stay there for many years? Was I
not aware that when she once set her foot in a gentleman's establishment,
terrific battles must ensue before she could be dislodged? Had she not
once been routed by Clive? and was she not now in command and possession?
Do I not, finally, know something of the world; and have I not a weak,
easy temper? I protest it was with terror that I awaited the widow's
possible answer to my proposal.

To my great relief, she expressed the utmost approval of both my plans. I
was uncommonly kind, she was sure, to interest myself about the two
gentlemen, and for her blessed Rosa's sake, a fond mother thanked me. It
was most advisable that he should earn some money by that horrid
profession which he had chosen to adopt--a trade, she called it. She was
clearly anxious get rid both of father and son, and agreed that the
sooner they went the better.

We walked back arm-in-arm to the Colonel's quarters in the Old Town, Mrs.
Mackenzie, in the course of our walk, doing me the honour to introduce me
by name to several dingy acquaintances, whom we met sauntering up the
street, and imparting to me, as each moved away, the pecuniary cause of
his temporary residence in Boulogne. Spite of Rosey's delicate state of
health, Mrs. Mackenzie did not hesitate to break the news to her of the
gentlemen's probable departure, abruptly and eagerly, as if the
intelligence was likely to please her:--and it did, rather than
otherwise. The young woman, being in the habit of letting mamma judge for
her, continued it in this instance; and whether her husband stayed or
went, seemed to be equally content or apathetic. "And is it not most kind
and generous of dear Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis to propose to receive Mr.
Newcome and the Colonel?" This opportunity for gratitude being pointed
out to Rosey, she acquiesced in it straightway--it was very kind of me,
Rosey was sure. "And don't you ask after dear Mrs. Pendennis and the dear
children--you poor dear suffering darling child?" Rosey, who had
neglected this inquiry, immediately hoped Mrs. Pendennis and the children
were well. The overpowering mother had taken utter possession of this
poor little thing. Rosey's eyes followed the Campaigner about, and
appealed to her at all moments. She sat under Mrs. Mackenzie as a bird
before a boa-constrictor, doomed--fluttering--fascinated--scared and
fawning as a whipt spaniel before a keeper.

The Colonel was on his accustomed bench on the rampart at this sunny
hour. I repaired thither, and found the old gentleman seated by his
grandson, who lay, as yesterday, on the little bonne's lap, one of his
little purple hands closed round the grandfather's finger. "Hush!" says
the good man, lifting up his other finger to his moustache, as I
approached, "Boy's asleep. Il est bien joli quand il dort--le Boy,
n'est-ce pas, Marie?" The maid believed monsieur well--the boy was a
little angel. "This maid is a most trustworthy, valuable person,
Pendennis," the Colonel said, with much gravity.

The boa-constrictor had fascinated him, too--the lash of that woman at
home had cowed that helpless, gentle, noble spirit. As I looked at the
head so upright and manly, now so beautiful and resigned--the year of his
past life seemed to pass before me somehow in a flash of thought. I could
fancy the accursed tyranny--the dumb acquiescence--the brutal jeer--the
helpless remorse--the sleepless nights of pain and recollection--the
gentle heart lacerated with deadly stabs--and the impotent hope. I own I
burst into a sob at the sight, and thought of the noble suffering
creature, and hid my face, and turned away.

He sprang up, releasing his hand from the child's, and placing it, the
kind shaking hand, on my shoulder. "What is it, Arthur--my dear boy?" he
said, looking wistfully in my face. "No bad news from home, my dear?
Laura and the children well?"

The emotion was mastered in a moment, I put his arm under mine, and as we
slowly sauntered up and down the sunny walk of the old rampart, I told
him how I had come with special commands from Laura to bring him for a
while to stay with us, and to settle his business, which I was sure had
been wofully mismanaged, and to see whether we could not find the means
of getting some little out of the wreck of the property for the boy
yonder.

At first Colonel Newcome would not hear of quitting Boulogne, where Rosey
would miss him--he was sure she would want him--but before the ladies of
his family, to whom we presently returned, Thomas Newcome's resolution
was quickly recalled. He agreed to go, and Clive coming in at this time
was put in possession of our plan and gladly acquiesced in it. On that
very evening I came with a carriage to conduct my two friends to the
steamboat. Their little packets were made and ready. There was no
pretence of grief at parting on the women's side, but Marie, the little
maid, with Boy in her arms, cried sadly; and Clive heartily embraced the
child; and the Colonel, going back to give it one more kiss, drew out of
his neckcloth a little gold brooch which he wore, and which, trembling,
he put into Marie's hand, bidding her take good care of Boy till his
return.

"She is a good girl--a most faithful, attached girl, Arthur, do you see,"
the kind old gentleman said; "and I had no money to give her--no, not one
single rupee."




CHAPTER LXXIV

In which Clive begins the World


We are ending our history, and yet poor Clive is but beginning the world.
He has to earn the bread which he eats henceforth; and, as I saw his
labours, his trials, and his disappointments, I could not but compare his
calling with my own.

The drawbacks and penalties attendant upon our profession are taken into
full account, as we well know, by literary men, and their friends. Our
poverty, hardships, and disappointments are set forth with great
emphasis, and often with too great truth by those who speak of us; but
there are advantages belonging to our trade which are passed over, I
think, by some of those who exercise it and describe it, and for which,
in striking the balance of our accounts, we are not always duly thankful.
We have no patron, so to speak--we sit in ante-chambers no more, waiting
the present of a few guineas from my lord, in return for a fulsome
dedication. We sell our wares to the book-purveyor, between whom and us
there is no greater obligation than between him and his paper-maker or
printer. In the great towns in our country immense stores of books are
provided for us, with librarians to class them, kind attendants to wait
upon us, and comfortable appliances for study. We require scarce any
capital wherewith to exercise our trade. What other so-called learned
profession is equally fortunate? A doctor, for example, after carefully
and expensively educating himself, must invest in house and furniture,
horses, carriage, and menservants, before the public patient will think
of calling him in. I am told that such gentlemen have to coax and wheedle
dowagers, to humour hypochondriacs, to practise a score of little
subsidiary arts in order to make that of healing profitable. How many
many hundreds of pounds has a barrister to sink upon his stock-in-trade
before his returns are available? There are the costly charges of
university education--the costly chambers in the Inn of Court--the clerk
and his maintenance--the inevitable travels on circuit--certain expenses
all to be defrayed before the possible client makes his appearance, and
the chance of fame or competency arrives. The prizes are great, to be
sure, in the law, but what a prodigious sum the lottery-ticket costs! If
a man of letters cannot win, neither does he risk so much. Let us speak
of our trade as we find it, and not be too eager in calling out for
public compassion.

The artists, for the most part, do not cry out their woes as loudly as
some gentlemen of the literary fraternity, and yet I think the life of
many of them is harder; their chances even more precarious, and the
conditions of their profession less independent and agreeable than ours.
I have watched Smee, Esq., R.A., flattering and fawning, and at the same
time boasting and swaggering, poor fellow, in order to secure a sitter. I
have listened to a Manchester magnate talking about fine arts before one
of J. J.'s pictures, assuming the airs of a painter, and laying down the
most absurd laws respecting the art. I have seen poor Tomkins bowing a
rich amateur through a private view, and noted the eager smiles on
Tomkins' face at the amateur's slightest joke, the sickly twinkle of hope
in his eyes as Amateur stopped before his own picture. I have been
ushered by Chipstone's black servant through hall after hall peopled with
plaster gods and heroes, into Chipstone's own magnificent studio, where
he sat longing vainly for an order, and justly dreading his landlord's
call for the rent. And, seeing how severely these gentlemen were taxed in
their profession, I have been grateful for my own more fortunate one,
which necessitates cringing to no patron; which calls for no keeping up
of appearances; and which requires no stock-in-trade save the workman's
industry, his best ability, and a dozen sheets of paper.

Having to turn with all his might to his new profession, Clive Newcome,
one of the proudest men alive, chose to revolt and to be restive at
almost every stage of his training. He had a natural genius for his art,
and had acquired in his desultory way a very considerable skill. His
drawing was better than his painting (an opinion which, were my friend
present, he of course would utterly contradict); his designs and sketches
were far superior to his finished compositions. His friends, presuming to
judge of this artist's qualifications, ventured to counsel him
accordingly, and were thanked for their pains in the usual manner. We had
in the first place to bully and browbeat Clive most fiercely, before he
would take fitting lodgings for the execution of those designs which we
had in view for him. "Why should I take expensive lodgings?" says Clive,
slapping his fist on the table. "I am a pauper, and can scarcely afford
to live in a garret. Why should you pay me for drawing your portrait and
Laura's and the children? What the deuce does Warrington want with the
effigy of his old mug? You don't want them a bit--you only want to give
me money.--It would be much more honest of me to take the money at once
and own that I am a beggar; and I tell you what, Pen, the only money
which I feel I come honestly by, is that which is paid me by a little
printseller in Long Acre who buys my drawings, one with another, at
fourteen shillings apiece, and out of whom I can earn pretty nearly two
hundred a year. I am doing Coaches for him, sir, and Charges of Cavalry;
the public like the Mail Coaches best--on a dark paper--the horses and
miles picked out white--yellow dust--cobalt distance, and the guard and
coachman of course in vermilion. That's what a gentleman can get his
bread by--portraits, pooh! it's disguised beggary, Crackthorpe, and a
half-dozen men of his regiment came, like good fellows as they are, and
sent me five pounds apiece for their heads, but I tell you I am ashamed
to take the money." Such used to be the tenor of Clive Newcome's
conversation as he strode up and down our room after dinner, pulling his
moustache, and dashing his long yellow hair off his gaunt face.

When Clive was inducted into the new lodgings at which his friends
counselled him to hang up his ensign, the dear old Colonel accompanied
his son, parting with a sincere regret from our little ones at home, to
whom he became greatly endeared during his visit to us, and who always
hailed him when he came to see us with smiles and caresses and sweet
infantile welcome. On that day when he went away, Laura went up and
kissed him with tears in her eyes. "You know how long I have been wanting
to do it," this lady said to her husband. Indeed I cannot describe the
behaviour of the old man during his stay with us, his gentle gratitude,
his sweet simplicity and kindness, his thoughtful courtesy. There was not
a servant in our little household but was eager to wait upon him. Laura's
maid was as tender-hearted at his departure as her mistress. He was
ailing for a short time, when our cook performed prodigies of puddings
and jellies to suit his palate. The youth who held the offices of butler
and valet in our establishment--a lazy and greedy youth whom Martha
scolded in vain--would jump up and leave his supper to carry a message to
our Colonel. My heart is full as I remember the kind words which he said
to me at parting, and as I think that we were the means of giving a
little comfort to that stricken and gentle soul.

Whilst the Colonel and his son stayed with us, letters of course passed
between Clive and his family at Boulogne, but my wife remarked that the
receipt of those letters appeared to give our friend but little pleasure.
They were read in a minute, and he would toss them over to his father, or
thrust them into his pocket with a gloomy face. "Don't you see," groans
out Clive to me one evening, "that Rosa scarcely writes the letters, or
if she does, that her mother is standing over her? That woman is the
Nemesis of our life, Pen. How can I pay her off? Great God! how can I pay
her off?" And so having spoken, his head fell between his hands, and as I
watched him I saw a ghastly domestic picture before me of helpless pain,
humiliating discord, stupid tyranny.

What, I say again, are the so-called great ills of life compared to these
small ones?

The Colonel accompanied Clive to the lodgings which we had found for the
young artist, in a quarter not far removed from the old house in Fitzroy
Square, where some happy years of his youth had been spent. When sitters
came to Clive--as at first they did in some numbers, many of his early
friends being anxious to do him a service--the old gentleman was
extraordinarily cheered and comforted. We could see by his face that
affairs were going on well at the studio. He showed us the rooms which
Rosey and the boy were to occupy. He prattled to our children and their
mother, who was never tired of hearing him, about his grandson. He filled
up the future nursery with a hundred little knick-knacks of his own
contriving; and with wonderful cheap bargains, which he bought in his
walks about Tottenham Court Road. He pasted a most elaborate book of
prints and sketches for Boy. It was astonishing what notice Boy already
took of pictures. He would have all the genius of his father. Would he
had had a better grandfather than the foolish old man who had ruined all
belonging to him!

However much they like each other, men in the London world see their
friends but seldom. The place is so vast that even next door is distant;
the calls of business, society, pleasure, so multifarious that mere
friendship can get or give but an occasional shake of the hand in the
hurried moments of passage. Men must live their lives; and are perforce
selfish, but not unfriendly. At a great need you know where to look for
your friend, and he that he is secure of you. So I went very little to
Howland Street, where Clive now lived; very seldom to Lamb Court, where
my dear old friend Warrington still sate in his old chambers, though our
meetings were none the less cordial when they occurred, and our trust in
one another always the same. Some folks say the world is heartless: he
who says so either prates commonplaces (the most likely and charitable
suggestion), or is heartless himself, or is most singular and unfortunate
in having made no friends. Many such a reasonable mortal cannot have: our
nature, I think, not sufficing for that sort of polygamy. How many
persons would you have to deplore your death; or whose death would you
wish to deplore? Could our hearts let in such a harem of dear
friendships, the mere changes and recurrences of grief and mourning would
be intolerable, and tax our lives beyond their value. In a word, we carry
our own burthen in the world; push and struggle along on our own affairs;
are pinched by our own shoes--though Heaven forbid we should not stop and
forget ourselves sometimes, when a friend cries out in his distress, or
we can help a poor stricken wanderer in his way. As for good women--
these, my worthy reader, are different from us--the nature of these is to
love, and to do kind offices, and devise untiring charities:--so I would
have you to know, that, though Mr. Pendennis was parcus suorum cultor et
infrequens, Mrs. Laura found plenty of time to go from Westminster to
Bloomsbury; and to pay visits to her Colonel and her Clive, both of whom
she had got to love with all her heart again, now misfortune was on them;
and both of whom returned her kindness with an affection blessing the
bestower and the receiver; and making the husband proud and thankful
whose wife had earned such a noble regard. What is the dearest praise of
all to a man? his own--or that you should love those whom he loves? I see
Laura Pendennis ever constant and tender and pure, ever ministering in
her sacred office of kindness--bestowing love and followed by blessings.
Which would I have, think you; that priceless crown hymeneal, or the
glory of a Tenth Edition?

Clive and his father had found not only a model friend in the lady above
mentioned, but a perfect prize landlady in their happy lodgings. In her
house, besides those apartments which Mr. Newcome had originally engaged,
were rooms just sufficient to accommodate his wife, child, and servant,
when they should come to him, with a very snug little upper chamber for
the Colonel, close by Boy's nursery, where he liked best to be. "And if
there is not room for the Campaigner, as you call her," says Mrs. Laura,
with a shrug of her shoulders, "why, I am very sorry, but Clive must try
and bear her absence as well as possible. After all, my dear Pen, you
know he is married to Rosa and not to her mamma; and so, and so I think
it will be quite best that they shall have their menage as before."

The cheapness of the lodgings which the prize landlady let, the quantity
of neat new furniture which she put in, the consultations which she had
with my wife regarding these supplies, were quite singular to me. "Have
you pawned your diamonds, you reckless little person, in order to supply
all this upholstery?" "No, sir, I have not pawned my diamonds," Mrs.
Laura answers; and I was left to think (if I thought on the matter at
all) that the landlady's own benevolence had provided these good things
for Clive. For the wife of Laura's husband was perforce poor; and she
asked me for no more money at this time than at any other.

At first, in spite of his grumbling, Clive's affairs looked so
prosperous, and so many sitters came to him from amongst his old friends,
that I was half inclined to believe with the Colonel and my wife, that he
was a prodigious genius, and that his good fortune would go on
increasing. Laura was for having Rosey return to her husband. Every wife
ought to be with her husband. J. J. shook his head about the prosperity.
"Let us see whether the Academy will have his pictures this year, and
what a place they will give him," said Ridley. To do him justice, Clive
thought far more humbly of his compositions than Ridley did. Not a little
touching was it to us, who had known the young men in former days, to see
them in their changed positions. It was Ridley, whose genius and industry
had put him in the rank of a patron--Ridley, the good industrious
apprentice, who had won the prize of his art--and not one of his many
admirers saluted his talent and success with such a hearty recognition as
Clive, whose generous soul knew no envy, and who always fired and kindled
at the success of his friends.

When Mr. Clive used to go over to Boulogne from time to time to pay his
dutiful visits to his wife, the Colonel did not accompany his son, but,
during the latter's absence, would dine with Mrs. Pendennis.

Though the preparations were complete in Howland Street, and Clive
dutifully went over to Boulogne, Mrs. Pendennis remarked that he seemed
still to hesitate about bringing his wife to London.

Upon this Mr. Pendennis observed that some gentlemen were not
particularly anxious about the society of their wives, and that this pair
were perhaps better apart. Upon which Mrs. Pendennis, drubbing on the
ground with a little foot, said, "Nonsense, for shame, Arthur! How can
you speak so flippantly? Did he not swear before Heaven to love and
cherish her, never to leave her, sir? Is not his duty his duty, sir?" (a
most emphatic stamp of the foot). "Is she not his for better, or for
worse?"

"Including the Campaigner, my dear?" says Mr. P.

"Don't laugh, sir! She must come to him. There is no room in Howland
Street for Mrs. Mackenzie."

"You artful scheming creature! We have some spare rooms. Suppose we ask
Mrs. Mackenzie to come and live with us, my dear? and we could then have
the benefit of the garrison anecdotes, and mess jocularities of your
favourite, Captain Goby."

"I could never bear the horrid man!" cried Mrs. Pendennis. And how can I
tell why she disliked him?

Everything being now ready for the reception of Clive's little family, we
counselled our friend to go over to Boulogne, and bring back his wife and
child, and then to make some final stipulation with the Campaigner. He
saw, as well as we, that the presence and tyranny of that fatal woman
destroyed his father's health and spirits--that the old man knew no peace
or comfort in her neighbourhood, and was actually hastening to his grave
under that dreadful and unremitting persecution. Mrs. Mackenzie made
Clive scarcely less wretched than his father--she governed his household
--took away his weak wife's allegiance and affection from him--and caused
the wretchedness of every single person round about her. They ought to
live apart. If she was too poor to subsist upon her widow's pension,
which, in truth, was but a very small pittance, let Clive give up to her,
say, the half of his wife's income of one hundred pounds a year. His
prospects and present means of earning money were such that he might
afford to do without that portion of his income; at any rate, he and his
father would be cheaply ransomed at that price from their imprisonment to
this intolerable person. "Go, Clive," said his counsellors, "and bring
back your wife and child, and let us all be happy together." For, you
see, those advisers opined that if we had written over to Mrs. Newcome
--"Come"--she would have come with the Campaigner in her suite.

Vowing that he would behave like a man of courage--and we knew that Clive
had shown himself to be such in two or three previous battles--Clive
crossed the water to bring back his little Rosey. Our good Colonel agreed
to dine at our house during the days of his son's absence. I have said
how beloved he was by young and old there--and he was kind enough to say
afterwards, that no woman had made him so happy as Laura. We did not tell
him--I know not from what reticence--that we had advised Clive to offer a
bribe of fifty pounds a year to Mrs. Mackenzie; until about a fortnight
after Clive's absence, and a week after his return, when news came that
poor old Mrs. Mason was dead at Newcome, whereupon we informed the
Colonel that he had another pensioner now in the Campaigner.

Colonel Newcome was thankful that his dear old friend had gone out of the
world in comfort and without pain. She had made a will long since,
leaving all her goods and chattels to Thomas Newcome--but having no money
to give, the Colonel handed over these to the old lady's faithful
attendant, Keziah.

Although many of the Colonel's old friends had parted from him or
quarrelled with him in consequence of the ill success of the B. B. C.,
there were two old ladies who yet remained faithful to him--Miss Cann,
namely, and honest little Miss Honeyman of Brighton, who, when she heard
of the return to London of her nephew and brother-in-law, made a railway
journey to the metropolis (being the first time she ever engaged in that
kind of travelling), rustled into Clive's apartments in Howland Street in
her neatest silks, and looking not a day older than on that when we last
beheld her; and after briskly scolding the young man for permitting his
father to enter into money affairs--of which the poor dear Colonel was as
ignorant as a baby--she gave them both to understand that she had a
little sum at her banker's at their disposal--and besought the Colonel to
remember that her house was his, and that she should be proud and happy
to receive him as soon and as often and for as long a time as he would
honour her with his company. "Is not my house full of your presents"--
cried the stout little old lady--"have I not reason to be grateful to all
the Newcomes--yes, to all the Newcomes;--for Miss Ethel and her family
have come to me every year for months, and I don't quarrel with them, and
I won't, although you do, sir? Is not this shawl--are not these jewels
that I wear," she continued, pointing to those well-known ornaments, "my
dear Colonel's gift? Did you not relieve my brother Charles in this
country and procure for him his place in India? Yes, my dear friend--and
though you have been imprudent in money matters, my obligations towards
you, and my gratitude, and my affection are always the same." Thus Miss
Honeyman spoke, with somewhat of a quivering voice at the end of her
little oration, but with exceeding state and dignity--for she believed
that her investment of two hundred pounds in that unlucky B. B. C., which
failed for half a million, was a sum of considerable importance, and gave
her a right to express her opinion to the Managers.

Clive came back from Boulogne in a week, as we have said--but he came
back without his wife, much to our alarm, and looked so exceedingly
fierce and glum when we demanded the reason of his return without his
family, that we saw wars and battles had taken place, and thought that in
this last continental campaign the Campaigner had been too much for her
friend.

The Colonel, to whom Clive communicated, though with us the poor lad held
his tongue, told my wife what had happened:--not all the battles; which
no doubt raged at breakfast, dinner, supper, during the week of Clive's
visit to Boulogne,--but the upshot of these engagements. Rosey, not
unwilling in her first private talk with her husband to come to England
with him and the boy, showed herself irresolute on the second day at
breakfast, when the fire was opened on both sides; cried at dinner when
fierce assaults took place, in which Clive had the advantage; slept
soundly, but besought him to be very firm, and met the enemy at breakfast
with a quaking heart; cried all that day during which, pretty well
without cease, the engagement lasted; and when Clive might have conquered
and brought her off, but the weather was windy and the sea was rough, and
he was pronounced a brute to venture on it with a wife in Rosey's
situation.

Behind that "situation" the widow shielded herself. She clung to her
adored child, and from that bulwark discharged abuse and satire at Clive
and his father. He could not rout her out of her position. Having had the
advantage on the first two or three days, on the four last he was beaten,
and lost ground in each action. Rosey found that in her situation she
could not part from her darling mamma. The Campaigner for her part
averred that she might be reduced to beggary; that she might be robbed of
her last farthing and swindled and cheated; that she might see her
daughter's fortune flung away by unprincipled adventurers, and her
blessed child left without even the comforts of life; but desert her in
such a situation, she never would--no, never! Was not dear Rosa's health
already impaired by the various shocks which she had undergone? Did she
not require every comfort, every attendance? Monster! ask the doctor! She
would stay with her darling child in spite of insult and rudeness and
vulgarity. (Rosey's father was a King's officer, not a Company's officer,
thank God!) She would stay as long at least as Rosey's situation
continued, at Boulogne, if not in London, but with her child. They might
refuse to send her money, having robbed her of all her own, but she would
pawn her gown off her back for her child. Whimpers from Rosey--cries of
"Mamma, mamma, compose yourself,"--convulsive sobs--clenched knuckles--
flashing eyes--embraces rapidly clutched--laughs--stamps--snorts--from
the dishevelled Campaigner; grinding teeth--livid fury and repeated
breakages of the third commandment by Clive--I can fancy the whole scene.
He returned to London without his wife, and when she came she brought
Mrs. Mackenzie with her.




CHAPTER LXXV

Founder's Day at the Grey Friars


Rosey came, bringing discord and wretchedness with her to her husband,
and the sentence of death or exile to his dear old father, all of which
we foresaw--all of which Clive's friends would have longed to prevent--
all of which were inevitable under the circumstances. Clive's domestic
affairs were often talked over by our little set. Warrington and F. B.
knew of his unhappiness. We three had strongly opined that the women
being together at Boulogne, should stay there and live there, Clive
sending them over pecuniary aid as his means permitted. "They must hate
each other pretty well by this time," growls George Warrington. "Why on
earth should they not part?" "What a woman that Mrs. Mackenzie is!" cries
F. B. "What an infernal tartar and catamaran! She who was so uncommonly
smiling and soft-spoken, and such a fine woman, by jingo! What puzzles
all women are!" F. B. sighed, and drowned further reflection in beer.

On the other side, and most strongly advocating Rosey's return to Clive,
was Mrs. Laura Pendennis; with certain arguments for which she had
chapter and verse, and against which we of the separatist party had no
appeal. "Did he marry her only for the days of her prosperity?" asked
Laura. "Is it right, is it manly, that he should leave her now she is
unhappy--poor little creature--no woman had ever more need of protection;
and who should be her natural guardian save her husband? Surely, Arthur,
you forget--have you forgotten them yourself, sir?--the solemn vows which
Clive made at the altar. Is he not bound to his wife to keep only unto
her so long as they both shall live, to love and comfort her, honour her,
and keep her in sickness and health?"

"To keep her, yes--but not to keep the Campaigner," cries Mr. Pendennis.
"It is a moral bigamy, Laura, which you advocate, you wicked, immoral
young woman!"

But Laura, though she smiled at this notion, would not be put off from
her first proposition. Turning to Clive, who was with us, talking over
his doleful family circumstances, she took his hand, and pleaded the
cause of right and religion with sweet artless fervour. She agreed with
us that it was a hard lot for Clive to bear. So much the nobler the task,
and the fulfilment of duty in enduring it. A few months too would put an
end to his trials. When his child was born Mrs. Mackenzie would take her
departure. It would even be Clive's duty to separate from her then, as it
now was to humour his wife in her delicate condition, and to soothe the
poor soul who had had a great deal of ill-health, of misfortune, of
domestic calamity to wear and shatter her. Clive acquiesced with a groan,
but--with a touching and generous resignation as we both thought. "She is
right, Pen," he said, "I think your wife is always right. I will try,
Laura, and bear my part, God help me! I will do my duty and strive my
best to soothe and gratify my poor dear little woman. They will be making
caps and things, and will not interrupt me in my studio. Of nights I can
go to Clipstone Street and work at the Life. There's nothing like the
Life, Pen. So you see I shan't be much at home except at meal-times, when
by nature I shall have my mouth full, and no opportunity of quarrelling
with poor Mrs. Mac." So he went home, followed and cheered by the love
and pity of my dear wife, and determined stoutly to bear this heavy yoke
which fate had put on him.

To do Mrs. Mackenzie justice, that lady backed up with all her might the
statement which my wife had put forward, with a view of soothing poor
Clive, viz., that the residence of his mother-in-law in his house was
only to be temporary. "Temporary!" cries Mrs. Mac (who was kind enough to
make a call on Mrs. Pendennis, and treat that lady to a piece of her
mind). "Do you suppose, madam, that it could be otherwise? Do you suppose
that worlds would induce me to stay in a house where I have received such
treatment; where, after I and my daughter had been robbed of every
shilling of our fortune, where we are daily insulted by Colonel Newcome
and his son? Do you suppose, ma'am, that I do not know that Clive's
friends hate me, and give themselves airs and look down upon my darling
child, and try and make differences between my sweet Rosa and me--Rosa
who might have been dead, or might have been starving, but that her dear
mother came to her rescue? No, I would never stay. I loathe every day
that I remain in the house--I would rather beg my bread--I would rather
sweep the streets and starve--though, thank God, I have my pension as the
widow of an officer in Her Majesty's Service, and I can live upon that--
and of that Colonel Newcome cannot rob me; and when my darling love needs
a mother's care no longer, I will leave her. I will shake the dust off my
feet and leave that house. I will--And Mr. Newcome's friends may then
sneer at me and abuse me, and blacken my darling child's heart towards me
if they choose. And I thank you, Mrs. Pendennis, for all your kindness
towards my daughter's family, and for the furniture which you have sent
into the house, and for the trouble you have taken about our family
arrangements. It was for this I took the liberty of calling upon you, and
I wish you a very good morning." So speaking, the Campaigner left my
wife; and Mrs. Pendennis enacted the pleasing scene with great spirit to
her husband afterwards, concluding the whole with a splendid curtsey and
toss of the head, such as Mrs. Mackenzie performed as her parting salute.

Our dear Colonel had fled before. He had acquiesced humbly with the
decree of fate; and, lonely, old and beaten, marched honestly on the path
of duty. It was a great blessing, he wrote to us, to him to think that in
happier days and during many years he had been enabled to benefit his
kind and excellent relative, Miss Honeyman. He could thankfully receive
her hospitality now, and claim the kindness and shelter which this old
friend gave him. No one could be more anxious to make him comfortable.
The air of Brighton did him the greatest good; he had found some old
friends, some old Bengalees there, with whom he enjoyed himself greatly,
etc. How much did we, who knew his noble spirit, believe of this story?
To us Heaven had awarded health, happiness, competence, loving children,
united hearts, and modest prosperity. To yonder good man, whose long life
shone with benefactions, and whose career was but kindness and honour,
fate decreed poverty, disappointment, separation, a lonely old age. We
bowed our heads, humiliated at the contrast of his lot and ours; and
prayed Heaven to enable us to bear our present good fortune meekly, and
our evil days, if they should come, with such a resignation as this good
Christian showed.

I forgot to say that our attempts to better Thomas Newcome's money
affairs were quite in vain, the Colonel insisting upon paying over every
shilling of his military allowances and retiring pension to the parties
from whom he had borrowed money previous to his bankruptcy. "Ah! what a
good man that is," says Mr. Sherrick with tears in his eyes, "what a
noble fellow, sir! He would die rather than not pay every farthing over.
He'd starve, sir, that he would. The money ain't mine, sir, or if it was
do you think I'd take it from the poor old boy? No, sir; by Jove! I
honour and reverence him more now he ain't got a shilling in his pocket,
than ever I did when we thought he was a-rolling in money."

My wife made one or two efforts at Samaritan visits in Howland Street,
but was received by Mrs. Clive with such a faint welcome, and by the
Campaigner with so grim a countenance, so many sneers, innuendoes,
insults almost, that Laura's charity was beaten back, and she ceased to
press good offices thus thanklessly received. If Clive came to visit us,
as he very rarely did, after an official question or two regarding the
health of his wife and child, no further mention was made of his family
affairs. His painting, he said, was getting on tolerably well; he had
work, scantily paid it is true, but work sufficient. He was reserved,
uncommunicative, unlike the frank Clive of former times, and oppressed by
his circumstances, as it was easy to see. I did not press the confidence
which he was unwilling to offer, and thought best to respect his silence.
I had a thousand affairs of my own; who has not in London? If you die
to-morrow, your dearest friend will feel for you a hearty pang of sorrow,
and go to his business as usual. I could divine, but would not care to
describe, the life which my poor Clive was now leading; the vulgar
misery, the sordid home, the cheerless toil, and lack of friendly
companionship which darkened his kind soul. I was glad Clive's father was
away. The Colonel wrote to us twice or thrice; could it be three months
ago?--bless me, how time flies! He was happy, he wrote, with Miss
Honeyman, who took the best care of him.

Mention has been made once or twice in the course of this history of the
Grey Friars school,--where the Colonel and Clive and I had been brought
up,--an ancient foundation of the time of James I., still subsisting in
the heart of London city. The death-day of the founder of the place is
still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the
boys of the school, and the fourscore old men of the Hospital, the
founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice: emblazoned with heraldic
decorations and clumsy carved allegories. There is an old Hall, a
beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time; an old Hall? many
old halls; old staircases, passages, old chambers decorated with old
portraits, walking in the midst of which we walk as it were in the early
seventeenth century. To others than Cistercians, Grey Friars is a dreary
place possibly. Nevertheless, the pupils educated there love to revisit
it; and the oldest of us grow young again for an hour or two as we come
back into those scenes of childhood.

The custom of the school is, that on the 12th of December, the Founder's
Day, the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise of
Fundatoris Nostri, and upon other subjects; and a goodly company of old
Cistercians is generally brought together to attend this oration: after
which we go to chapel and hear a sermon; after which we adjourn to a
great dinner, where old condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and
speeches are made. Before marching from the oration-hall to chapel, the
stewards of the day's dinner, according to old-fashioned rite, have wands
put into their hands, walk to church at the head of the procession, and
sit there in places of honour. The boys are already in their seats, with
smug fresh faces, and shining white collars; the old black-gowned
pensioners are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, and Founder's
Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and
shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights. There he lies,
Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination
Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look at that
familiar old tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were
here, and how the doctor--not the present doctor, the doctor of our time
--used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering
boys, on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us would kick our shins
during service time, and how the monitor would cane us afterwards because
our shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking
about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some threescore old
gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the
psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,--the old reverend
blackgowns. Is Codd Ajax alive, you wonder?--the Cistercian lads called
these old gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore--I know not wherefore--
but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder? or Codd Soldier? or kind old Codd
Gentleman, or has the grave closed over them? A plenty of candles lights
up this chapel, and this scene of age and youth, and early memories, and
pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered
again in the place wherein childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful
and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications
which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and
troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service
for Founder's Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected being the
thirty-seventh, and we hear--

23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in
his way.

24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord
upholdeth him with his hand.

25. I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.

As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up from my book towards the
swarm of black-coated pensioners: and amongst them--amongst them--sate
Thomas Newcome.

His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book--there was no
mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital
of Grey Friars. His order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there
amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The steps
of this good man had been ordered him hither by Heaven's decree: to this
almshouse! Here it was ordained that a life all love, and kindness, and
honour, should end! I heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon,
after that. How dared I to be in a place of mark, and he, he yonder among
the poor? Oh, pardon, you noble soul! I ask forgiveness of you for being
of a world that has so treated you--you my better, you the honest, and
gentle, and good! I thought the service would never end, or the
organist's voluntaries, or the preacher's homily.

The organ played us out of chapel at length, and I waited in the
ante-chapel until the pensioners took their turn to quit it. My dear,
dear old friend! I ran to him with a warmth and eagerness of recognition
which no doubt showed themselves in my face and accents, as my heart was
moved at the sight of him. His own face flushed up when he saw me, and
his hand shook in mine. "I have found a home, Arthur," said he. "Don't
you remember before I went to India, when we came to see the old Grey
Friars, and visited Captain Scarsdale in his room?--a poor brother like
me--an old Peninsular man. Scarsdale is gone now, sir, and is where the
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; and I thought
then, when we saw him,--here would be a place for an old fellow when his
career was over, to hang his sword up; to humble his soul, and to wait
thankfully for the end. Arthur. My good friend, Lord H., who is a
Cistercian like ourselves, and has just been appointed a governor, gave
me his first nomination. Don't be agitated, Arthur my boy, I am very
happy. I have good quarters, good food, good light and fire, and good
friends; blessed be God! my dear kind young friend--my boy's friend; you
have always been so, sir; and I take it uncommonly kind of you, and I
thank God for you, sir. Why, sir, I am as happy as the day is long." He
uttered words to this effect as he walked through the courts of the
building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and comfortable,
with a brisk fire crackling on the hearth; a little tea-table laid out, a
Bible and spectacles by the side of it, and over the mantelpiece a
drawing of his grandson by Clive.

"You may come and see me here, sir, whenever you like, and so may your
dear wife and little ones, tell Laura, with my love;--but you must not
stay now. You must go back to your dinner." In vain I pleaded that I had
no stomach for it. He gave me a look, which seemed to say he desired to
be alone, and I had to respect that order and leave him.

Of course I came to him on the very next day; though not with my wife and
children, who were in truth absent in the country at Rosebury, where they
were to pass the Christmas holidays; and where, this school-dinner over,
I was to join them. On my second visit to Grey Friars my good friend
entered more at length into the reasons why he had assumed the Poor
Brother's gown; and I cannot say but that I acquiesced in his reasons,
and admired that noble humility and contentedness of which he gave me an
example.

"That which had caused him most grief and pain," he said, "in the issue
of that unfortunate bank, was the thought that poor friends of his had
been induced by his representations to invest their little capital in
that speculation. Good Miss Honeyman, for instance, meaning no harm, and
in all respects a most honest and kindly-disposed old lady, had
nevertheless alluded more than once to the fact that her money had been
thrown away; and these allusions, sir, made her hospitality somewhat hard
to bear," said the Colonel. "At home--at poor Clivey's, I mean--it was
even worse," he continued; "Mrs. Mackenzie for months past, by her
complaints, and--and her conduct, has made my son and me so miserable--
that flight before her, and into any refuge, was the best course. She too
does not mean ill, Pen. Do not waste any of your oaths upon that poor
woman," he added, holding up his finger, and smiling sadly. "She thinks I
deceived her, though Heaven knows it was myself I deceived. She has great
influence over Rosa. Very few persons can resist that violent and
headstrong woman, sir. I could not bear her reproaches, or my poor sick
daughter, whom her mother leads almost entirely now, and it was with all
this grief on my mind, that, as I was walking one day upon Brighton
cliff, I met my schoolfellow, my Lord H----, who has ever been a good
friend of mine--and who told me how he had just been appointed a governor
of Grey Friars. He asked me to dine with him on the next day, and would
take no refusal. He knew of my pecuniary misfortunes, of course--and
showed himself most noble and liberal in his offers of help. I was very
much touched by his goodness, Pen,--and made a clean breast of it to his
lordship; who at first would not hear of my coming to this place--and
offered me out of the purse of an old brother-schoolfellow and an old
brother soldier as much--as much as should last me my time. Wasn't it
noble of him, Arthur? God bless him! There are good men in the world,
sir, there are true friends, as I have found in these later days. Do you
know, sir"--here the old man's eyes twinkled,--"that Fred Bayham fixed up
that bookcase yonder--and brought me my little boy's picture to hang up?
Boy and Clive will come and see me soon."

"Do you mean they do not come?" I cried.

"They don't know I am here, sir," said the Colonel, with a sweet, kind
smile. "They think I am visiting his lordship in Scotland. Ah! they are
good people! When we had had a talk downstairs over our bottle of claret
--where my old commander-in-chief would not hear of my plan--we went
upstairs to her ladyship, who saw that her husband was disturbed, and
asked the reason. I dare say it was the good claret that made me speak,
sir; for I told her that I and her husband had had a dispute and that I
would take her ladyship for umpire. And then I told her the story over,
that I had paid away every rupee to the creditors, and mortgaged my
pensions and retiring allowances for the same end, that I was a burden
upon Clivey, who had enough, poor boy, to keep his own family, and his
wife's mother, whom my imprudence had impoverished,--that here was an
honourable asylum which my friend could procure for me, and was not that
better than to drain his purse? She was very much moved, sir--she is a
very kind lady, though she passed for being very proud and haughty in
India--so wrongly are people judged. And Lord H. said, in his rough way,
'that, by Jove, if Tom Newcome took a thing into his obstinate old head
no one could drive it out.' And so," said the Colonel, with his sad
smile, "I had my own way. Lady H. was good enough to come and see me the
very next day--and do you know, Pen, she invited me to go and live with
them for the rest of my life--made me the most generous, the most
delicate offers. But I knew I was right, and held my own. I am too old to
work, Arthur: and better here whilst I am to stay, than elsewhere. Look!
all this furniture came from H. House--and that wardrobe is full of
linen, which she sent me. She has been twice to see me, and every officer
in this hospital is as courteous to me as if I had my fine house."

I thought of the psalm we had heard on the previous evening, and turned
to it in the opened Bible, and pointed to the verse, "Though he fall, he
shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him." Thomas
Newcome seeing my occupation, laid a kind, trembling hand on my shoulder;
and then, putting on his glasses, with a smile bent over the volume. And
who that saw him then, and knew him and loved him as I did--who would not
have humbled his own heart, and breathed his inward prayer, confessing
and adoring the Divine Will, which ordains these trials, these triumphs,
these humiliations, these blest griefs, this crowning Love?

I had the happiness of bringing Clive and his little boy to Thomas
Newcome that evening; and heard the child's cry of recognition and
surprise, and the old man calling the boy's name, as I closed the door
upon that meeting; and by the night's mail I went down to Newcome, to the
friends with whom my own family was already staying.

Of course, my conscience-keeper at Rosebury was anxious to know about the
school-dinner, and all the speeches made, and the guests assembled there;
but she soot ceased to inquire about these when I came to give her the
news of the discovery of our dear old friend in the habit of a Poor
Brother of Grey Friars. She was very glad to hear that Clive and his
little son had been reunited to the Colonel; and appeared to imagine at
first, that there was some wonderful merit upon my part in bringing the
three together.

"Well--no great merit, Pen, as you will put it," says the Confessor; "but
it was kindly thought, sir--and I like my husband when he is kind best;
and don't wonder at your having made a stupid speech at the dinner, as
you say you did, when you had this other subject to think of. That is a
beautiful psalm, Pen, and those verses which you were reading when you
saw him, especially beautiful."

"But in the presence of eighty old gentlemen, who have all come to decay,
and have all had to beg their bread in a manner, don't you think the
clergyman might choose some other psalm?" asks Mr. Pendennis.

"They were not forsaken utterly, Arthur," says Mrs. Laura, gravely: but
rather declines to argue the point raised by me; namely, that the
selection of that especial thirty-seventh psalm was not complimentary to
those decayed old gentlemen.

"All the psalms are good, sir," she says, "and this one, of course, is
included," and thus the discussion closed.

I then fell to a description of Howland Street, and poor Clive, whom I
had found there over his work. A dubious maid scanned my appearance
rather eagerly when I asked to see him. I found a picture-dealer
chaffering with him over a bundle of sketches, and his little boy,
already pencil in hand, lying in one corner of the room, the sun playing
about his yellow hair. The child looked languid and pale, the father worn
and ill. When the dealer at length took his bargains away, I gradually
broke my errand to Clive, and told him from whence I had just come.

He had thought his father in Scotland with Lord H.: and was immensely
moved with the news which I brought.

"I haven't written to him for a month. It's not pleasant the letters I
have to write, Pen, and I can't make them pleasant. Up, Tommykin, and put
on your cap." Tommykin jumps up. "Put on your cap, and tell them to take
off your pinafore, tell grandmamma----"

At that name Tommykin begins to cry.

"Look at that!" says Clive, commencing to speak in the French language,
which the child interrupts by calling out in that tongue. "I speak also
French, papa."

"Well, my child! You will like to come out with papa, and Betsy can dress
you." He flings off his own paint-stained shooting-jacket as he talks,
takes a frock-coat out of a carved wardrobe, and a hat from a helmet on
the shelf. He is no longer the handsome splendid boy of old times. Can
that be Clive, with that haggard face and slouched handkerchief? "I am
not the dandy I was, Pen," he says bitterly.

A little voice is heard crying overhead--and giving a kind of gasp the
wretched father stops in some indifferent speech he was trying to make.
"I can't help myself," he groans out; "my wife is so ill, she can't
attend to the child. Mrs. Mackenzie manages the house for me--and--here!
Tommy, Tommy! papa is coming!" Tommy has been crying again; and flinging
open the studio door, Clive calls out, and dashes upstairs.

I hear scuffling, stamping, loud voices, poor Tommy's scared little pipe
--Clive's fierce objurgations, and the Campaigner's voice barking out--
"Do, sir, do! with my child suffering in the next room. Behave like a
brute to me, do. He shall not go! He shall not have the hat"--"He shall"
--"Ah--ah!" A scream is heard. It is Clive tearing a child's hat out of
the Campaigner's hands, with which, and a flushed face, he presently
rushes downstairs, bearing little Tommy on his shoulder.

"You see what I am come to, Pen," he says with a heartbroken voice,
trying, with hands all of a tremble, to tie the hat on the boy's head. He
laughs bitterly at the ill success of his endeavours. "Oh, you silly
papa!" laughs Tommy, too.

The door is flung open, and the red-faced Campaigner appears. Her face is
mottled with wrath, her bandeaux of hair are disarranged upon her
forehead, the ornaments of her cap, cheap, and dirty, and numerous, only
give her a wilder appearance. She is in a large and dingy wrapper, very
different from the lady who had presented herself a few months back to my
wife--how different from the smiling Mrs. Mackenzie of old days!

"He shall not go out of a winter day, sir," she breaks out. "I have his
mother's orders, whom you are killing. Mr. Pendennis!" She starts,
perceiving me for the first time, and her breast heaves, and she prepares
for combat, and looks at me over her shoulder.

"You and his father are the best judges upon this point, ma'am," said Mr.
Pendennis, with a bow.

"The child is delicate, sir," cries Mrs. Mackenzie; "and this winter----"

"Enough of this," says Clive with a stamp, and passes through her guard
with Tommy, and we descend the stairs, and at length are in the free
street. Was it not best not to describe at full length this portion of
poor Clive's history?




CHAPTER LXXVI

Christmas at Rosebury


We have known our friend Florac under two aristocratic names, and might
now salute him by a third, to which he was entitled, although neither he
nor his wife ever chose to assume it. His father was lately dead, and M.
Paul de Florac might sign himself Duc d'Ivry if he chose, but he was
indifferent as to the matter, and his wife's friends indignant at the
idea that their kinswoman, after having been a Princess, should descend
to the rank of a mere Duchess. So Prince and Princess these good folks
remained, being exceptions to that order, inasmuch as their friends could
certainly put their trust in them.

On his father's death Florac went to Paris, to settle the affairs of the
paternal succession; and, having been for some time absent in his native
country, returned to Rosebury for the winter, to resume that sport of
which he was a distinguished amateur. He hunted in black during the
ensuing season; and, indeed, henceforth laid aside his splendid attire
and his allurements as a young man. His waist expanded, or was no longer
confined by the cestus which had given it a shape. When he laid aside his
black, his whiskers, too, went into a sort of half-mourning, and appeared
in grey. "I make myself old, my friend," he said, pathetically; "I have
no more neither twenty years nor forty." He went to Rosebury Church no
more; but, with great order and sobriety, drove every Sunday to the
neighbouring Catholic chapel at C---- Castle. We had an ecclesiastic or
two to dine with us at Rosebury, one of whom I inclined to think was
Florac's director.

A reason, perhaps, for Paul's altered demeanour, was the presence of his
mother at Rosebury. No politeness or respect could be greater than Paul's
towards the Countess. Had she been a sovereign princess, Madame de Florac
could not have been treated with more profound courtesy than she now
received from her son. I think the humble-minded lady could have
dispensed with some of his attentions; but Paul was a personage who
demonstrated all his sentiments, and performed his various parts in life
with the greatest vigour. As a man of pleasure, for instance, what more
active roue than he? As a jeune homme, who could be younger, and for a
longer time? As a country gentleman, or an l'homme d'affaires, he
insisted upon dressing each character with the most rigid accuracy, and
an exactitude that reminded one somewhat of Bouffe, or Ferville, at the
play. I wonder whether, when is he quite old, he will think proper to
wear a pigtail, like his old father? At any rate, that was a good part
which the kind fellow was now acting, of reverence towards his widowed
mother, and affectionate respect for her declining days. He not only felt
these amiable sentiments, but he imparted them to his friends most
freely, as his wont was. He used to weep freely,--quite unrestrained by
the presence of the domestics, as English sentiment would be:--and when
Madame de Florac quitted the room after dinner, would squeeze my hand and
tell me with streaming eyes, that his mother was an angel. "Her life has
been but a long trial, my friend," he would say. "Shall not I, who have
caused her to shed so many tears, endeavour to dry some?" Of course the
friends who liked him best encouraged him in an intention so pious.

The reader has already been made acquainted with this lady by the letters
of hers, which came into my possession some time after the events which I
am at present narrating: my wife, through our kind friend, Colonel
Newcome, had also had the honour of an introduction to Madame de Florac
at Paris; and, on coming to Rosebury for the Christmas holidays, I found
Laura and the children greatly in favour with the good Countess. She
treated her son's wife with a perfect though distant courtesy. She was
thankful to Madame de Moncontour for the latter's great goodness to her
son. Familiar with but very few persons, she could scarcely be intimate
with her homely daughter-in-law. Madame de Moncontour stood in the
greatest awe of her; and, to do that good lady justice, admired and
reverenced Paul's mother with all her simple heart. In truth, I think
almost every one had a certain awe of Madame de Florac, except children,
who came to her trustingly, and, as it were, by instinct. The habitual
melancholy of her eyes vanished as they lighted upon young faces and
infantile smiles. A sweet love beamed out of her countenance: an angelic
smile shone over her face, as she bent towards them and caressed them.
Her demeanour then, nay, her looks and ways at other times;--a certain
gracious sadness, a sympathy with all grief, and pity for all pain; a
gentle heart, yearning towards all children; and, for her own especially,
feeling a love that was almost an anguish: in the affairs of the common
world only a dignified acquiescence, as if her place was not in it, and
her thoughts were in her Home elsewhere;--these qualities, which we had
seen exemplified in another life, Laura and her husband watched in Madame
de Florac, and we loved her because she was like our mother. I see in
such women, the good and pure, the patient and faithful, the tried and
meek, the followers of Him whose earthly life was divinely sad and
tender.

But, good as she was to us and to all, Ethel Newcome was the French
lady's greatest favourite. A bond of extreme tenderness and affection
united these two. The elder friend made constant visits to the younger at
Newcome; and when Miss Newcome, as she frequently did, came to Rosebury,
we used to see that they preferred to be alone; divining and respecting
the sympathy which brought those two faithful hearts together. I can
imagine now the two tall forms slowly pacing the garden walks, or
turning, as they lighted on the young ones in their play. What was their
talk! I never asked it. Perhaps Ethel never said what was in her heart,
though, be sure, the other knew it. Though the grief of those they love
is untold, women hear it; as they soothe it with unspoken consolations.
To see the elder lady embrace her friend as they parted was something
holy--a sort of saintlike salutation.

Consulting the person from whom I had no secrets, we had thought best at
first not to mention to our friends the place and position in which we
had found our dear Colonel; at least to wait for a fitting opportunity on
which we might break the news to those who held him in such affection. I
told how Clive was hard at work, and hoped the best for him. Good-natured
Madame de Moncontour was easily satisfied with my replies to her
questions concerning our friend. Ethel only asked if he and her uncle
were well, and once or twice made inquiries respecting Rosa and her
child. And now it was that my wife told me, what I need no longer keep
secret, of Ethel's extreme anxiety to serve her distressed relatives, and
how she, Laura, had already acted as Miss Newcome's almoner in furnishing
and hiring those apartments, which Ethel believed were occupied by Clive
and his father, and wife and child. And my wife further informed me with
what deep grief Ethel had heard of her uncle's misfortune, and how, but
that she feared to offend his pride, she longed to give him assistance.
She had even ventured to offer to send him pecuniary help; but the
Colonel (who never mentioned the circumstance to me any other of his
friends), in a kind but very cold letter, had declined to be beholden to
his niece for help.

So I may have remained some days at Rosebury, and the real position of
the two Newcomes was unknown to our friends there. Christmas Eve was
come, and, according to a long-standing promise, Ethel Newcome and her
two children had arrived from the Park, which dreary mansion, since his
double defeat, Sir Barnes scarcely ever visited. Christmas was come, and
Rosebury hall was decorated with holly. Florac did his best to welcome
his friends, and strove to make the meeting gay, though in truth it was
rather melancholy. The children, however, were happy: and they had
pleasure enough, in the school festival, in the distribution of cloaks
and blankets to the poor, and in Madame de Moncontour's gardens,
delightful and beautiful though the winter was there.

It was only a family meeting, Madame de Florac's widowhood not permitting
her presence in large companies. Paul sate at his table between his
mother and Mrs. Pendennis; Mr. Pendennis opposite to him, with Ethel and
Madame de Moncontour on each side. The four children were placed between
these personages, on whom Madame de Florac looked with her tender
glances, and to whose little wants the kindest of hosts ministered with
uncommon good-nature and affection. He was very soft-hearted about
children. "Pourquoi n'en avons-nous pas, Jeanne? He! quoi n'en avons-nous
pas?" he said, addressing his wife by her Christian name. The poor little
lady looked kindly at her husband, and then gave a sigh, and turned and
heaped cake upon the plate of the child next to her. No mamma or Aunt
Ethel could interpose. It was a very light wholesome cake. Brown made it
on purpose for the children, "the little darlings!" cries the Princess.

The children were very happy at being allowed to sit up so late to
dinner, at all the kindly amusements of the day, at the holly and
mistletoe clustering round the lamps--the mistletoe, under which the
gallant Florac, skilled in all British usages, vowed he would have his
privilege. But the mistletoe was clustered round the lamp, the lamp was
over the centre of the great round table--the innocent gratification
which he proposed to himself was denied to M. Paul.

In the greatest excitement and good-humour, our host at the dessert made
us des speech. He carried a toast to the charming Ethel, another to the
charming Mistriss Laura, another to his good fren', his brave frren', his
'appy fren', Pendennis--'appy as possessor of such a wife, 'appy as
writer of works destined to the immortality, etc. etc. The little
children round about clapped their happy little hands, and laughed and
crowed in chorus. And now the nursery and its guardians were about to
retreat, when Florac said he had yet a speech, yet a toast--and he bade
the butler pour wine into every one's glass--yet a toast--and he carried
it to the health of our dear friends, of Clive and his father,--the good,
the brave Colonel! "We who are happy," says he, "shall we not think of
those who are good? We who love each other, shall we not remember those
whom we all love?" He spoke with very great tenderness and feeling. "Ma
bonne mere, thou too shalt drink this toast!" he said, taking his
mother's hand, and kissing it. She returned his caress gently, and tasted
the wine with her pale lips. Ethel's head bent in silence over her glass;
and, as for Laura, need I say what happened to her! When the ladies went
away my heart was opened to my friend Florac, and I told him where and
how I had left my dear Clive's father.

The Frenchman's emotion on hearing this tale was such that I have loved
him ever since. Clive in want! Why had he not sent to his friend? Grands
Dieux! Clive who had helped him in his greatest distress! Clive's father,
ce preux chevalier, ce parfait gentilhomme! In a hundred rapid
exclamations Florac exhibited his sympathy, asking of Fate, why such men
as he and I were sitting surrounded by splendours--before golden vases
crowned with flowers--with valets to kiss our feet--(those were merely
figures of speech in which Paul expressed his prosperity)--whilst our
friend the Colonel, so much better than we, spent his last days in
poverty, and alone.

I liked Florac none the less, I own, because that one of the conditions
of the Colonel's present life, which appeared the hardest to most people,
affected Florac but little. To be a Pensioner of an Ancient Institution?
Why not? Might not a man retire without shame to the Invalides at the
close of his campaigns, and, had not Fortune conquered our old friend,
and age and disaster overcome him? It never once entered Thomas Newcome's
head; nor Clive's, nor Florac's, nor his mother's, that the Colonel
demeaned himself at all by accepting that bounty; and I recollect
Warrington sharing our sentiment and trowling out those noble lines of
the old poet:--

   "His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
      O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
    His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
      But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing.
    Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen.
    Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

    His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,
      And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms;
    A man at arms must now serve on his knees,
      And feed on prayers, which are old age's alms."


These, I say, respected our friend, whatever was the coat he wore;
whereas, among the Colonel's own kinsfolk, dire was the dismay, and
indignation even, which they expressed when they came to hear of this,
what they were pleased to call degradation to their family. Clive's dear
mother-in-law made outcries over the good old man as over a pauper, and
inquired of Heaven, what she had done that her blessed child should have
a mendicant for a father? And Mrs. Hobson, in subsequent confidential
communication with the writer of these memoirs, improved the occasion
religiously as her wont was; referred the matter to Heaven too, and
thought fit to assume that the celestial powers had decreed this
humiliation, this dreadful trial for the Newcome family, as a warning to
them all that they should not be too much puffed up with prosperity, nor
set their affections too much upon things of this earth. Had they not
already received one chastisement in Barnes's punishment, and Lady
Clara's awful falling away? They had taught her a lesson, which the
Colonel's lamentable errors had confirmed,--the vanity of trusting in all
earthly grandeurs! Thus it was this worthy woman plumed herself, as it
were, on her relative's misfortunes; and was pleased to think the latter
were designed for the special warning and advantage of her private
family. But Mrs. Hobson's philosophy is only mentioned by the way. Our
story, which is drawing to its close, has to busy itself with other
members of the house of The Newcomes.

My talk with Florac lasted for some time: at its close, when we went to
join the ladies in the drawing-room, we found Ethel cloaked and shawled,
and prepared for her departure with her young ones, who were already
asleep. The little festival was over, and had ended in melancholy--even
in weeping. Our hostess sate in her accustomed seat by her lamp and her
worktable; but, neglecting her needle, she was having perpetual recourse
to her pocket-handkerchief, and uttering ejaculations of pity between the
intervals of her gushes of tears. Madame de Florac was in her usual
place, her head cast downwards, and her hands folded. My wife was at her
side, a grave commiseration showing itself in Laura's countenance, whilst
I read a yet deeper sadness in Ethel's pale face. Miss Newcome's carriage
had been announced; the attendants had already carried the young ones
asleep to the vehicle; and she was in the act of taking leave. We looked
round at this disturbed party, guessing very likely what the subject of
their talk had been, to which, however, Miss Ethel did not allude: but,
announcing that she had intended to depart without disturbing the two
gentlemen, she bade us farewell and good night. "I wish I could say a
merry Christmas," she added gravely, "but none of us, I fear, can hope
for that." It was evident that Laura had told the last chapter of the
Colonel's story.

Madame de Floras rose up and embraced Miss Newcome, and, that farewell
over, she sank back on the sofa exhausted, and with such an expression of
affliction in her countenance, that my wife ran eagerly towards her. "It
is nothing, my dear," she said, giving a cold hand to the younger lady,
and sate silent for a few moments, during which we heard Florac's voice
without crying Adieu! and the wheels of Miss Newcome's carriage when it
drove away.

Our host entered a moment afterwards; and remarking, as Laura had done,
his mother's pallor and look of anguish, went up and spoke to her with
the utmost tenderness and anxiety.

She gave her hand to her son, and a faint blush rose up out of the past
as it were, and trembled upon her wan cheek. "He was the first friend I
ever had in the world, Paul," she said "the first and the best. He shall
not want, shall he, my son?"

No signs of that emotion in which her daughter-in-law had been indulging
were as yet visible in Madame de Florac's eyes, but, as she spoke,
holding her son's hand in hers, the tears at length overflowed, and with
a sob, her head fell forwards. The impetuous Frenchman flung himself on
his knees before his mother, uttered a hundred words of love and respect
for her, and with tears and sobs of his own called God to witness that
their friend should never want. And so this mother and son embraced each
other, and clung together in a sacred union of love, before which we who
had been admitted as spectators of that scene, stood hushed and
respectful.

That night Laura told me, how, when the ladies left us, the talk had been
entirely about the Colonel and Clive. Madame de Florac had spoken
especially, and much more freely than was her wont. She had told many
reminiscences of Thomas Newcome, and his early days; how her father
taught him mathematics when they were quite poor, and living in their
dear little cottage at Blackheath; how handsome he was then, with bright
eyes, and long black hair flowing over his shoulders; how military glory
was his boyish passion, and he was for ever talking of India, and the
famous deeds of Clive and Lawrence. His favourite book was a history of
India--the history of Orme. "He read it, and I read it also, my
daughter," the French lady said, turning to Ethel; "ah! I may say so
after so many years."

Ethel remembered the book as belonging to her grandmother, and now in the
library at Newcome. Doubtless the same sympathy which caused me to speak
about Thomas Newcome that evening, impelled my wife likewise. She told
her friends, as I had told Florac, all the Colonel's story; and it was
while these good women were under the impression of the melancholy
history, that Florac and his guest found them.

Retired to our rooms, Laura and I talked on the same subject until the
clock tolled Christmas, and the neighbouring church bells rang out a
jubilation. And, looking out into the quiet night, where the stars were
keenly shining, we committed ourselves to rest with humbled hearts;
praying, for all those we loved, a blessing of peace and goodwill.




CHAPTER LXXVII

The Shortest and Happiest in the Whole History


In the ensuing Christmas morning I chanced to rise betimes, and entering
my dressing-room, opened the windows and looked out on the soft
landscape, over which mists were still lying; whilst the serene sky
above, and the lawns and leafless woods in the foreground near, were
still pink with sunrise. The grey had not even left the west yet, and I
could see a star or two twinkling there, to vanish with that twilight.

As I looked out, I saw the not very distant lodge-gate open after a brief
parley, and a lady on horseback, followed by a servant, rode rapidly up
to the house. This early visitor was no other than Miss Ethel Newcome.
The young lady espied me immediately. "Come down; come down to me this
moment, Mr. Pendennis," she cried out. I hastened down to her, supposing
rightly that news of importance had brought her to Rosebury so early.

The news were of importance indeed. "Look here!" she said, "read this;"
and she took a paper from the pocket of her habit. "When I went home last
night, after Madame de Florac had been talking to us about Orme's India,
I took the volumes from the bookcase and found this paper. It is in my
grandmother's--Mrs. Newcome's--handwriting; I know it quite well, it is
dated on the very day of her death. She had been writing and reading in
her study on that very night; I have often heard papa speak of the
circumstance. Look and read. You are a lawyer, Mr. Pendennis; tell me
about this paper."

I seized it eagerly, and cast my eyes over it; but having read it, my
countenance fell.

"My dear Miss Newcome, it is not worth a penny," I was obliged to own.

"Yes, it is, sir, to honest people!" she cried out. "My brother and uncle
will respect it as Mrs. Newcome's dying wish. They must respect it."

The paper in question was a letter in ink that had grown yellow from
time, and was addressed by the late Mrs. Newcome, to "my dear Mr. Luce."

"That was her solicitor, my solicitor still," interposes Miss Ethel.


"THE HERMITAGE, March 14, 182-.

"My Dear Mr. Luce" (the defunct lady wrote)--"My late husband's grandson
has been staying with me lately, and is a most pleasing, handsome, and
engaging little boy. He bears a strong likeness to his grandfather, I
think; and though he has no claims upon me, and I know is sufficiently
provided for by his father Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C.B., of the East
India Company's Service, I am sure my late dear husband will be pleased
that I should leave his grandson, Clive Newcome, a token of peace and
goodwill; and I can do so with the more readiness, as it has pleased
Heaven greatly to increase my means since my husband was called away
hence.

"I desire to bequeath a sum equal to that which Mr Newcome willed to my
eldest son, Brian Newcome, Esq., to Mr. Newcome's grandson, Clive
Newcome; and furthermore, that a token of my esteem and affection, a
ring, or a piece of plate, of the value of one hundred pounds, be given
to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Newcome, my stepson, whose excellent conduct
for many years, and whose repeated acts of gallantry in the service of
his sovereign, have long obliterated the just feelings of displeasure
with which I could not but view his early disobedience and misbehaviour,
before he quitted England against my will, and entered the
military service.

"I beg you to prepare immediately a codicil to my will providing for the
above bequests; and desire that the amount of these legacies should be
taken from the property bequeathed to my eldest son. You will be so good
as to prepare the necessary document, and bring it with you when you come
on Saturday, to yours very truly,
                                           Sophia Alethea Newcome.

"Tuesday night."


I gave back the paper with a sigh to the finder. "It is but a wish of
Mrs. Newcome, my dear Miss Ethel," I said. "Pardon me, if I say, I think
I know your elder brother too well to supposes that he will fulfil it."

"He will fulfil it, sir, I am sure he will," Miss Newcome said, in a
haughty manner. "He would do as much without being asked, I am certain he
would, did he know the depth of my dear uncle's misfortune. Barnes is in
London now, and----"

"And you will write to him? I know what the answer will be."

"I will go to him this very day, Mr. Pendennis! I will go to my dear,
dear uncle. I cannot bear to think of him in that place," cried the young
lady, the tears starting into her honest eyes. "It was the will of
Heaven. Oh, God be thanked for it! Had we found my grandmamma's letter
earlier, Barnes would have paid the legacy immediately, and the money
would have gone in that dreadful bankruptcy. I will go to Barnes to-day.
Will you come with me? Won't you come to your old friends? We may be at
his--at Clive's house this evening; and oh, praise be to God! there need
be no more want in his family."

"My dear friend, I will go with you round the world on such an errand," I
said, kissing her hand. How beautiful she looked; the generous colour
rose in her face, her voice thrilled with happiness. The music of
Christmas church bells leaped up at this moment with joyful gratulations;
the face of the old house, before which we stood talking, shone out in
the morning sun.

"You will come I thank you! I must run and tell Madame de Florac," cried
the happy young lady, and we entered the house together. "How came you to
be kissing Ethel's hand, sir; and what is the meaning of this early
visit?" asks Mrs. Laura, as soon as I had returned to my own apartments.

"Martha, get me a carpet-bag! I am going to London in an hour," cries Mr.
Pendennis. If I had kissed Ethel's hand jus now, delighted at the news
which she brought to me, was not one a thousand times dearer to me, as
happy as her friend? I know who prayed with a thankful heart that day as
we sped, in the almost solitary train, towards London.




CHAPTER LXXVIII

In which the Author goes on a Pleasant Errand


Before I parted with Miss Newcome at the station, she made me promise to
see her on the morrow at an early hour at her brother's house; and having
bidden her farewell and repaired to my own solitary residence, which
presented but a dreary aspect on that festive day, I thought I would pay
Howland Street a visit; and, if invited, eat my Christmas dinner with
Clive.

I found my friend at home, and at work still, in spite of the day. He had
promised a pair of pictures to a dealer for the morrow. "He pays me
pretty well, and I want all the money he will give me, Pen," the painter
said, rubbing on at his canvas. "I am pretty easy in my mind since I have
become acquainted with a virtuous dealer. I sell myself to him, body and
soul, for some half-dozen pounds a week. I know I can get my money, and
he is regularly supplied with his pictures. But for Rosey's illness we
might carry on well enough."

Rosey's illness? I was sorry to hear of that: and poor Clive, entering
into particulars, told me how he had spent upon doctors rather more than
a fourth of his year's earnings. "There is a solemn fellow, to whom the
women have taken a fancy, who lives but a few doors off in Gower Street;
and who, for his last sixteen visits, has taken sixteen pounds sixteen
shillings out of my pocket, and as if guineas grew there, with the most
admirable gravity. He talks the fashions to my mother-in-law. My poor
wife hangs on every word he says. Look! There is his carriage coming up
now! and there is his fee, confound him!" says Clive, casting a rueful
look towards a little packet lying upon the mantelpiece, by the side of
that skinned figure in plaster of Paris which we have seen in most
studios.

I looked out of window and saw a certain Fashionable Doctor tripping out
of his chariot; that Ladies' Delight, who has subsequently migrated from
Bloomsbury to Belgravia; and who has his polite foot now in a thousand
nurseries and boudoirs. What Confessors were in old times, Quackenboss
and his like are in our Protestant country. What secrets they know! into
what mystic chambers do they not enter! I suppose the Campaigner made a
special toilette to receive her fashionable friend, for that lady attired
in considerable splendour, and with the precious jewel on her head, which
I remembered at Boulogne, came into the studio two minutes after the
Doctor's visit was announced, and made him a low curtsey. I cannot
describe the overpowering civilities of that woman.

Clive was very gracious and humble to her. He adopted a lively air in
addressing her--"Must work, you know, Christmas Day and all--for the
owner of the pictures will call for them in the morning. Bring me a good
report about Rosey, Mrs. Mackenzie, please--and if you will have the
kindness to look by the ecorche there, you will see that little packet
which I have left for you." Mrs. Mack, advancing, took the money. "I
thought that plaster of Paris figure was not the only ecorche in the
room."

"I want you to stay to dinner. You must stay, Pen, please," cried Clive;
"and be civil to her, will you? My dear old father is coming to dine
here. They fancy that he has lodgings at the other end of the town, and
that his brothers do something for him. Not a word about Grey Friars. It
might agitate Rosa, you know. Ah! isn't he noble, the dear old boy! and
isn't it fine to see him in that place?" Clive worked on as he talked,
using up the last remnant of the light of Christmas Day, and was cleaning
his palette and brushes, when Mrs. Mackenzie returned to us.

Darling Rosey was very delicate, but Doctor Quackenboss was going to give
her the very same medicine which had done the charming young Duchess of
Clackmannanshire so much good, and he was not in the least disquiet.

On this I cut into the conversation with anecdotes concerning the family
of the Duchess of Clackmannanshire, remembering early days, when it used
to be my sport to entertain the Campaigner with anecdotes of the
aristocracy, about whose proceedings she still maintained a laudable
curiosity. Indeed, one of few the books escaped out of the wreck of
Tyburn Gardens was a Peerage, now a well-worn volume, much read by Rosa
and her mother.

The anecdotes were very politely received--perhaps it was the season
which made Mrs. Mack and her son-in-law on more than ordinarily good
terms. When, turning to the Campaigner, Clive said he wished that she
could persuade me to stay to dinner, she acquiesced graciously and at
once in that proposal, and vowed that her daughter would be delighted if
I could condescend to eat their humble fare. "It is not such a dinner as
you have seen at her house, with six side-dishes, two flanks, that
splendid epergne, and the silver dishes top and bottom; but such as my
Rosa has she offers with a willing heart," cries the Campaigner.

"And Tom may sit to dinner, mayn't he, grandmamma?" asks Clive, in a
humble voice.

"Oh, if you wish it, sir."

"His grandfather will like to sit by him," said Clive. "I will go out and
meet him; he comes through Guildford Street and Russell Square," says
Clive. "Will you walk, Pen?"

"Oh, pray don't let us detain you," says Mrs. Mackenzie, with a toss of
her head: and when she retreated Clive whispered that she would not want
me; for she looked to the roasting of the beef and the making of the
pudding and the mince-pie.

"I thought she might have a finger in it," I said; and we set forth to
meet the dear old father, who presently came, walking very slowly, along
the line by which we expected him. His stick trembled as it fell on the
pavement: so did his voice, as he called out Clive's name: so did his
hand, as he stretched it to me. His body was bent, and feeble. Twenty
years had not weakened him so much as the last score of months. I walked
by the side of my two friends as they went onwards, linked lovingly
together. How I longed for the morrow, and hoped they might be united
once more! Thomas Newcome's voice, once so grave, went up to a treble,
and became almost childish, as he asked after Boy. His white hair hung
over his collar. I could see it by the gas under which we walked--and
Clive's great back and arm, as his father leaned on it, and his brave
face turned towards the old man. Oh, Barnes Newcome, Barnes Newcome! Be
an honest man for once, and help your kinsfolk! thought I.

The Christmas meal went off in a friendly manner enough. The Campaigner's
eyes were everywhere: it was evident that the little maid who served the
dinner, and had cooked a portion of it under their keen supervision,
cowered under them, as well as other folks. Mrs. Mack did not make more
than ten allusions to former splendours during the entertainment, or half
as many apologies to me for sitting down to a table very different from
that to which I was accustomed. Good, faithful F. Bayham was the only
other guest. He complimented the mince-pies, so that Mrs. Mackenzie owned
she had made them. The Colonel was very silent, but he tried to feed Boy,
and was only once or twice sternly corrected by the Campaigner. Boy, in
the best little words he could muster, asked why grandpapa wore a black
cloak? Clive nudged my foot under the table. The secret of the Poor
Brothership was very nearly out. The Colonel blushed, and with great
presence of mind said he wore a cloak to keep him warm in winter.

Rosey did not say much. She had grown lean and languid: the light of her
eyes had gone out: all her pretty freshness had faded. She ate scarce
anything, though her mother pressed her eagerly, and whispered loudly
that a woman in her situation ought to strengthen herself. Poor Rosey was
always in a situation.

When the cloth was withdrawn, the Colonel bending his head said, "Thank
God for what we have received," so reverently, and with an accent so
touching, that Fred Bayham's big eyes as he turned towards the old man
filled up with tears. When his mother and grandmother rose to go away,
poor little Boy cried to stay longer, and the Colonel would have meekly
interposed, but the domineering Campaigner cried, "Nonsense, let him go
to bed!" and flounced him out of the room: and nobody appealed against
that sentence. Then we three remained, and strove to talk as cheerfully
as we might, speaking now of old times, and presently of new. Without the
slightest affectation, Thomas Newcome told us that his life was
comfortable, and that he was happy in it. He wished that many others of
the old gentlemen, he said, were as contented as himself, but some of
them grumbled sadly, he owned and quarrelled with their bread-and-butter.
He, for his part, had everything he could desire: all the officers of the
Establishment were most kind to him; an excellent physician came to him
when wanted; a most attentive woman waited on him. "And if I wear a black
gown," said he, "is not that uniform as good as another, and if we have
to go to church every day, at which some of the Poor Brothers grumble, I
think an old fellow can't do better; and I can say my prayers with a
thankful heart, Clivey my boy, and should be quite happy but for my--for
my past imprudence, God forgive me. Think of Bayham here coming to our
chapel to-day!--he often comes--that was very right, sir--very right."

Clive, filling a glass of wine, looked at F. B. with eyes that said God
bless you. F. B. gulped down another bumper. "It is almost a merry
Christmas," said I; "and oh, I hope it will be a happy New Year!"

Shortly after nine o'clock the Colonel rose to depart, saying he must be
"in barracks" by ten; and Clive and F. B. went a part of the way with
him. I would have followed them, but he whispered me to stay and talk to
Mrs. Mack, for Heaven's sake, and that he would be back ere long. So I
went and took tea with the two ladies; and as we drank it, Mrs. Mackenzie
took occasion to tell me she did not know what amount of income the
Colonel had from his wealthy brother, but that they never received any
benefit from it; and again she computed to me all the sums, principal and
interest, which ought at that moment to belong to her darling Rosey.
Rosey now and again made a feeble remark. She did not seem pleased or
sorry when her husband came in; and presently, dropping me a little
curtsey, went to bed under charge of the Campaigner. So Bayham and I and
Clive retired to the studio, where smoking was allowed, and where we
brought that Christmas day to an end.

At the appointed time on the next forenoon I called upon Miss Newcome at
her brother's house. Sir Barnes Newcome was quitting his own door as I
entered it, and he eyed me with such a severe countenance, as made me
augur but ill of the business upon which I came. The expression of
Ethel's face was scarcely more cheering: she was standing at the window,
sternly looking at Sir Barnes, who yet lingered at his own threshold,
having some altercation with his cab-boy ere he mounted his vehicle to
drive into the City.

Miss Newcome was very pale when she advanced and gave me her hand. I
looked with some alarm into her face, and inquired what news?

"It is as you expected, Mr. Pendennis," she said--"not as I did. My
brother is averse to making restitution. He just now parted from me in
some anger. But it does not matter; the restitution must be made, if not
by Barnes, by one of our family--must it not?"

"God bless you for a noble creature, my dear, dear Miss Newcome!" was all
I could say.

"For doing what is right? Ought I not to do it? I am the eldest of our
family after Barnes: I am the richest after him. Our father left all his
younger children the very sum of money which Mrs. Newcome here devises to
Clive; and you know, besides, I have all my grandmother's, Lady Kew's,
property. Why, I don't think I could sleep if this act of justice were
not done. Will you come with me to my lawyer's? He and my brother Barnes
are trustees of my property; and I have been thinking, dear Mr.
Pendennis--and you are very good to be so kind, and to express so kind an
opinion of me, and you and Laura have always, always been the best
friends to me"--(she says this, taking one of my hands and placing her
other hand over it)--"I have been thinking, you know, that this transfer
had better be made through Mr. Luce, you understand, and as coming from
the family, and then I need not appear in it at all, you see; and--and my
dear good uncle's pride need not be wounded." She fairly gave way to
tears as she spoke--and for me, I longed to kiss the hem of her robe, or
anything else she would let me embrace, I was so happy, and so touched by
the simple demeanour and affection of the noble young lady.

"Dear Ethel," I said, "did I not say I would go to the end of the world
with you--and won't I go to Lincoln's Inn?"

A cab was straightway sent for, and in another half-hour we were in the
presence of the courtly little old Mr. Luce in his chambers in Lincoln's
Inn Fields.

He knew the late Mrs. Newcome's handwriting at once. He remembered having
seen the little boy at the Hermitage, had talked with Mr. Newcome
regarding his son in India, and had even encouraged Mrs. Newcome in her
idea of leaving some token of goodwill to the latter. "I was to have
dined with your grandmamma on the Saturday, with my poor wife. Why, bless
my soul! I remember the circumstance perfectly well, my dear young lady.
There can't be a doubt about the letter, but of course the bequest is no
bequest at all, and Colonel Newcome has behaved so ill to your brother
that I suppose Sir Barnes will not go out of his way to benefit the
Colonel."

"What would you do, Mr. Luce?" asks the young lady.

"H'm! And pray why should I tell you what I should do under the
circumstances?" replied the little lawyer. "Upon my word, Miss Newcome, I
think I should leave matters as they stand. Sir Barnes and I, you are
aware, are not the very best of friends--as your father's, your
grandmother's old friend and adviser, your own too, my dear young lady, I
and Sir Barnes Newcome remain on civil terms. But neither is over much
pleased with the other, to say the truth; and, at any rate, I cannot be
accused--nor can any one else that I know of--of being a very warm
partisan of your brother's. But candidly, were his case mine--had I a
relation who had called me unpleasant names, and threatened me I don't
know with what, with sword and pistol--who had put me to five or six
thousand pounds' expense in contesting an election which I had lost,--I
should give him, I think, no more than the law obliged me to give him;
and that, my dear Miss Newcome, is not one farthing."

"I am very glad you say so," said Miss Newcome, rather to my
astonishment.

"Of course, my dear young lady; and so you need not be alarmed at showing
your brother this document. Is not that the point about which you came to
consult me? You wished that I should prepare him for the awful
disclosure, did you not? You know, perhaps, that he does not like to part
with his money, and thought the appearance of this note might agitate
him? It has been a long time coming to its address, but nothing can be
done, don't you see? and be sure Sir Barnes Newcome will not be the least
agitated when I tell him its contents."

"I mean I am very glad you think my brother is not called upon to obey
Mrs. Newcome's wishes, because I need not think so hardly of him as I was
disposed to do," Miss Newcome said. "I showed him the paper this morning,
and he repelled it with scorn; and not kind words passed between us, Mr.
Luce, and unkind thoughts remained in my mind. But if he, you think, is
justified, it is I who have been in the wrong for saying that he was
self--for upbraiding him as I own I did."

"You called him selfish!--You had words with him! Such things have
happened before, my dear Miss Newcome, in the best-regulated families."

"But if he is not wrong, sir, holding his opinions, surely I should be
wrong, sir, with mine, not to do as my conscience tells me; and having
found this paper only yesterday at Newcome, in the library there, in one
of my grandmother's books, I consulted with this gentleman, the husband
of my dearest friend, Mrs. Pendennis--the most intimate friend of my
uncle and cousin Clive; and I wish, and I desire and insist, that my
share of what my poor father left us girls should be given to my cousin,
Mr. Clive Newcome, in accordance with my grandmother's dying wishes."

"My dear, you gave away your portion to your brothers and sisters ever so
long ago!" cried the lawyer.

"I desire, sir, that six thousand pounds may be given to my cousin," Miss
Newcome said, blushing deeply. "My dear uncle, the best man in the world,
whom I love with all my heart, sir, is in the most dreadful poverty. Do
you know where he is, sir? My dear, kind, generous uncle!"--and, kindling
as she spoke, and with eyes beaming a bright kindness, and flushing
cheeks, and a voice that thrilled to the heart of those two who heard
her, Miss Newcome went on to tell of her uncle's and cousin's
misfortunes, and of her wish, under God, to relieve them. I see before me
now the figure of the noble girl as she speaks; the pleased little old
lawyer, bobbing his white head, looking up at her with his twinkling
eyes--patting his knees, patting his snuff-box--as he sits before his
tapes and his deeds, surrounded by a great background of tin boxes.

"And I understand you want this money paid as coming from the family, and
not from Miss Newcome?" says Mr. Luce.

"Coming from the family--exactly," answers Miss Newcome.

Mr. Luce rose up from his old chair--his worn-out old horsehair chair--
where he had sat for half a century and listened to many a speaker, very
different from this one. "Mr. Pendennis," he said, "I envy you your
journey along with this young lady. I envy you the good news you are
going to carry to your friends--and, Miss Newcome, as I am an old--old
gentleman who have known your family these sixty years, and saw your
father in his long-clothes, may I tell you how heartily and sincerely I--
I love and respect you, my dear? When should you wish Mr. Clive Newcome
to have his legacy?"

"I think I should like Mr. Pendennis to have it this instant, Mr. Luce,
please," said the young lady--and her veil dropped over her face as she
bent her head down, and clasped her hands together for a moment, as if
she was praying.

Mr. Luce laughed at her impetuosity; but said that if she was bent upon
having the money, it was at her instant service; and before we left the
room, Mr. Luce prepared a letter, addressed to Clive Newcome, Esquire, in
which he stated, that amongst the books of the late Mrs. Newcome a paper
had only just been found, of which a copy was enclosed, and that the
family of the late Sir Brian Newcome, desirous to do honour to the wishes
of the late Mrs. Newcome, had placed the sum of 6000 pounds at the bank
of Messrs. H. W----, at the disposal of Mr. Clive Newcome, of whom Mr.
Luce had the honour to sign himself the most obedient servant, etc. And,
the letter approved and copied, Mr. Luce said Mr. Pendennis might be the
postman thereof; if Miss Newcome so willed it; and, with this document in
my pocket, I quitted the lawyer's chambers, with my good and beautiful
young companion.

Our cab had been waiting several hours in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I
asked Miss Ethel whither I now should conduct her?

"Where is Grey Friars?" she said. "Mayn't I go to see my uncle?"




CHAPTER LXXIX

In which Old Friends come together


We made the descent of Snowhill, we passed by the miry pens of
Smithfield; we travel through the street of St. John, and presently reach
the ancient gateway, in Cistercian Square, where lies the old Hospital of
Grey Friars. I passed through the gate, my fair young companion on my
arm, and made my way to the rooms occupied by brother Newcome.

As we traversed the court the Poor Brothers were coming from dinner. A
couple of score, or more, of old gentlemen in black gowns, issued from
the door of their refectory, and separated over the court, betaking
themselves to their chambers. Ethel's arm trembled under mine as she
looked at one and another, expecting to behold her dear uncle's familiar
features. But he was not among the brethren. We went to his chamber, of
which the door was open: a female attendant was arranging the room; she
told us Colonel Newcome was out for the day, and thus our journey had
been made in vain.

Ethel went round the apartment and surveyed its simple decorations; she
looked at the pictures of Clive and his boy; the two sabres crossed over
the mantelpiece, the Bible laid on the table, by the old latticed window.
She walked slowly up to the humble bed, and sat down on a chair near it.
No doubt her heart prayed for him who slept there; she turned round where
his black pensioner's cloak was hanging on the wall, and lifted up the
homely garment, and kissed it. The servant looked on admiring, I should
think, her melancholy and her gracious beauty. I whispered to the woman
that the young lady was the Colonel's niece. "He has a son who comes
here, and is very handsome, too," said the attendant.

The two women spoke together for a while. "Oh, miss!" cried the elder and
humbler, evidently astonished at some gratuity which Miss Newcome
bestowed upon her, "I didn't want this to be good to him. Everybody here
loves him for himself; and I would sit up for him for weeks--that I
would."

My companion took a pencil from her bag, and wrote "Ethel" on a piece of
paper, and laid the paper on the Bible. Darkness had again fallen by this
time, feeble lights were twinkling in the chamber windows of the Poor
Brethren as we issued into the courts;--feeble lights illumining a dim,
grey, melancholy old scene. Many a career, once bright, was flickering
out here in the darkness; many a night was closing in. We went away
silently from that quiet place; and in another minute were in the flare
and din and tumult of London.

"The Colonel is most likely gone to Clive's," I said. Would not Miss
Newcome follow him thither? We consulted whether she should go. She took
heart and said yes. "Drive, cabman, to Howland Street!" The horse was, no
doubt, tired, for the journey seemed extraordinarily long; I think
neither of us spoke a word on the way.

I ran upstairs to prepare our friends for the visit. Clive, his wife, his
father, and his mother-in-law were seated by a dim light in Mrs. Clive's
sitting-room. Rosey on the sofa, as usual; the little boy on his
grandfather's knees.

I hardly made a bow to the ladies, so eager was I to communicate with
Colonel Newcome. "I have just been to your quarters at Grey Friars, sir,"
said I. "That is----"

"You have been to the Hospital, sir! You need not be ashamed to mention
it, as Colonel Newcome is not ashamed to go there," cried out the
Campaigner. "Pray speak in your own language, Clive, unless there is
something not fit for ladies to hear." Clive was growling out to me in
German that there had just been a terrible scene, his father having, a
quarter of an hour previously, let slip the secret about Grey Friars.

"Say at once, Clive!" the Campaigner cried, rising in her might, and
extending a great strong arm over her helpless child, "that Colonel
Newcome owns that he has gone to live as a pauper in a hospital! He who
has squandered his own money. He who has squandered my money. He who has
squandered the money of that darling helpless child--compose yourself,
Rosey my love!--has completed the disgrace of the family, by his present
mean and unworthy--yes, I say, mean and unworthy and degraded conduct.
Oh, my child, my blessed child! to think that your husband's father
should have come to a workhouse!" Whilst this maternal agony bursts over
her, Rosa, on the sofa, bleats and whimpers amongst the faded chintz
cushions.

I took Clive's hand, which was cast up to his head striking his forehead
with mad impotent rage, whilst this fiend of a woman lashed his good
father. The veins of his great fist were swollen, his whole body was
throbbing and trembling with the helpless pain under which he writhed.
"Colonel Newcome's friends, ma'am,", I said, "think very differently from
you; and that he is a better judge than you, or any one else, of his own
honour. We. all, who loved him in his prosperity, love and respect him
more than ever for the manner in which he bears his misfortune. Do you
suppose that his noble friend, the Earl of H----, would have counselled
him to a step unworthy of a gentleman; that the Prince de Moncontour
would applaud his conduct as he does, if he did not think it admirable?"
I can hardly say with what scorn I used this argument, or what depth of
contempt I felt for the woman whom I knew it would influence. "And at
this minute," I added, "I have come from visiting the Gray Friars with
one of the Colonel's relatives, whose love and respect for him is
boundless; who longs to be reconciled to him, and who is waiting below,
eager to shake his hand, and embrace Clive's wife."

"Who is that?" says the Colonel, looking gently up, as he pats Boy's
head.

"Who is it, Pen?" says Clive. I said in a low voice, "Ethel;" and
starting up and crying "Ethel! Ethel!" he ran from the room.

Little Mrs. Rosa started up too on her sofa, clutching hold of the
table-cover with her lean hand, and the two red spots on her cheeks
burning more fiercely than ever. I could see what passion was beating in
that poor little heart. Heaven help us! what a resting-place had friends
and parents prepared for it! for shame!"

"Miss Newcome, is it? My darling Rosa, get on your shawl!" cried the
Campaigner, a grim smile lighting her face.

"It is Ethel; Ethel is my niece. I used to love her when she was quite a
little girl," says the Colonel, patting Boy on the head; "and she is a
very good, beautiful little child--a very good child." The torture had
been too much for that kind old heart: there were times when Thomas
Newcome passed beyond it. What still maddened Clive, excited his father
no more; the pain yonder woman inflicted, only felled and stupefied him.

As the door opened, the little white-headed child trotted forward towards
the visitor, and Ethel entered on Clive's arm, who was as haggard and
pale as death. Little Boy, looking up at the stately lady, still followed
beside her, as she approached her uncle, who remained sitting, his head
bent to the ground. His thoughts were elsewhere. Indeed he was following
the child, and about to caress it again.

"Here is a friend, father!" says Clive, laying a hand on the old man's
shoulder. "It is I, Ethel, uncle! "the young lady said, taking his hand;
and kneeling down between his knees, she flung her arms round him, and
kissed him, and wept on his shoulder.

His consciousness had quite returned ere an instant was over. He embraced
her with the warmth of his old affection, uttering many brief words of
love, kindness, and tenderness, such as men speak when strongly moved.

The little boy had come wondering up to the chair whilst this embrace
took place, and Clive's tall figure bent over the three. Rosa's eyes were
not good to look at, as she stared at the group with a ghastly smile.
Mrs. Mackenzie surveyed the scene in haughty state, from behind the sofa
cushions. She tried to take one of Rosa's lean hot hands. The poor child
tore it away, leaving her rings behind her; lifted her hands to her face:
and cried, cried as if her little heart would break. Ah me! what a story
was there! what an outburst of pent-up feeling! what a passion of pain!
The ring had fallen to the ground; the little boy crept towards it, and
picked it up, and came towards his mother, fixing on her his large
wondering eyes. "Mamma crying. Mamma's ring!" he said, holding up the
circle of gold. With more feeling than I had ever seen her exhibit, she
clasped the boy in her wasted arms. Great Heaven! what passion, jealousy,
grief, despair, were tearing and trying all these hearts, that but for
fate might have been happy?

Clive went round, and with the utmost sweetness and tenderness hanging
round his child and wife, soothed her with words of consolation, that in
truth I scarce heard, being ashamed almost of being present at this
sudden scene. No one, however, took notice of the witnesses; and even
Mrs. Mackenzie's voice was silent for the moment. I dare say Clive's
words were incoherent; but women have more presence of mind; and now
Ethel, with a noble grace which I cannot attempt to describe, going up to
Rosa, seated herself by her, spoke of her long grief at the differences
between her dearest uncle and herself; of her early days, when he had
been as a father to her; of her wish, her hope that Rosa should love her
as a sister; and of her belief that better days and happiness were in
store for them all. And she spoke to the mother about her boy so
beautiful and intelligent, and told her how she had brought up her
brother's children, and hoped that this one too would call her Aunt
Ethel. She would not stay now, might she come again? Would Rosa come to
her with her little boy? Would he kiss her? He did so with a very good
grace; but when Ethel at parting embraced the child's mother, Rosa's face
wore a smile ghastly to look at, and the lips that touched Ethel's
cheeks, were quite white.

"I shall come and see you again to-morrow, uncle, may I not? I saw your
room to-day, sir, and your housekeeper; such a nice old lady, and your
black gown. And you shall put it on to-morrow, and walk with me, and show
me the beautiful old buildings of that old hospital. And I shall come and
make tea for you, the housekeeper says I may. Will you come down with me
to my carriage? No, Mr. Pendennis must come;" and she quitted the room,
beckoning me after her. "You will speak to Clive now, won't you?" she
said, "and come to me this evening, and tell me all before you go to
bed?" I went back, anxious in truth to the messenger of good tidings to
my dear old friends.

Brief as my absence had been, Mrs. Mackenzie had taken advantage of that
moment again to outrage Clive and his father, and to announce that Rosa
might go to see this Miss Newcome, whom people respected because she was
rich, but whom she would never visit; no, never! "An insolent, proud,
impertinent thing! Does she take me for a housemaid?" Mrs. Mackenzie had
inquired.

"Am I dust to be trampled beneath her feet? Am I a dog that she can't
throw me a word?" Her arms were stretched out, and she was making this
inquiry as to her own canine qualities as I re-entered the room, and
remembered that Ethel had never once addressed a single word to Mrs.
Mackenzie in the course of her visit.

I affected not to perceive the incident, and presently said that I wanted
to speak to Clive in his studio. Knowing that I had brought my friend one
or two commissions for drawings, Mrs. Mackenzie was civil to me, and did
not object to our colloquies.

"Will you come too, and smoke a pipe, father?" says Clive.

"Of course your father intends to stay to dinner?" says the Campaigner,
with a scornful toss of her head. Clive groaned out as we were on the
stair, "that he could not bear this much longer, by heavens he could
not."

"Give the Colonel his pipe, Clive," said I. "Now, sir, down with you in
the sitter's chair, and smoke the sweetest cheroot you ever smoked in
your life! My dear, dear old Clive! you need not bear with the Campaigner
any longer; you may go to bed without this nightmare to-night if you
like; you may have your father back under your roof again."

"My dear Arthur! I must be back at ten, sir, back at ten, military time;
drum beats; no--bell tolls at ten, and gates close;" and he laughed and
shook his old head. "Besides, I am to see a young lady, sir; and she is
coming to make tea for me, and I must speak to Mrs. Jones to have all
things ready--all things ready;" and again the old man laughed as he
spoke.

His son looked at him and then at me with eyes full of sad meaning. "How
do you mean, Arthur," Clive said, "that he can come and stay with me, and
that that woman can go?"

Then feeling in my pocket for Mr. Luce's letter, I grasped my dear Clive
by the hand and bade him prepare for good news. I told him how
providentially, two days since, Ethel, in the library at Newcome, looking
into Orme's History of India, a book which old Mrs. Newcome had been
reading on the night of her death, had discovered a paper, of which the
accompanying letter enclosed a copy, and I gave my friend the letter.

He opened it, and read it through. I cannot say that I saw any particular
expression of wonder in his countenance, for somehow, all the while Clive
perused this document, I was looking at the Colonel's sweet kind face.
"It--it is Ethel's doing," said Clive, in a hurried voice. "There was no
such letter."

"Upon my honour," I answered, "there was. We came up to London with it
last night, a few hours after she had found it. We showed it to Sir
Barnes Newcome, who--who could not disown it. We took it to Mr. Luce, who
recognised it at once, who was old Mrs. Newcome's man of business, and
continues to be the family lawyer, and the family recognises the legacy
and has paid it, and you may draw for it to-morrow, as you see. What a
piece of good luck it is that it did not come before the B. B. C. time!
That confounded Bundelcund Bank would have swallowed up this like all the
rest."

"Father! father! do you remember Orme's History of India?" cries Clive.

"Orme's History! of course I do, I could repeat whole pages of it when I
was a boy," says the old man, and began forthwith. "'The two battalions
advanced against each other cannonading, until the French, coming to a
hollow way, imagined that the English would not venture to pass it. But
Major Lawrence ordered the sepoys and artillery--the sepoys and artillery
to halt and defend the convoy against the Morattoes"--Morattoes Orme
calls 'em. Ho! ho! I could repeat whole pages, sir."

"It is the best book that ever was written," calls out Clive. The Colonel
said he had not read it, but he was informed Mr. Mill's was a very
learned history; he intended to read it. "Eh! there is plenty of time
now," said the good Colonel. "I have all day long at Grey Friars,--after
chapel, you know. Do you know, sir, when I was a boy I used what they
call to tib out and run down to a public-house in Cistercian Lane--the
Red Cowl sir,--and buy rum there? I was a terrible wild boy, Clivy. You
weren't so, sir, thank Heaven! A terrible wild boy, and my poor father
flogged me, though I think it was very hard on me. It wasn't the pain,
you know: it wasn't the pain, but----" Here tears came into his eyes and
he dropped his head on his hand, and the cigar from it fell on to the
floor, burnt almost out, and scattering white ashes.

Clive looked sadly at me. "He was often so at Boulogne, Arthur," he
whispered; "after a scene with that--that woman yonder, his head would
go: he never replied to her taunts; he bore her infernal cruelty without
an unkind word--Oh! I pay her back, thank God I can pay her! But who
shall pay her," he said, trembling in every limb, "for what she has made
that good man suffer?"

He turned to his father, who still sate lost in his meditations. "You
need never go back to Grey Friars, father!" he cried out."

"Not go back, Clivy? Must go back, boy, to say Adsum, when my name is
called. Newcome! Adsum! Hey! that is what we used to say--we used to
say!"

"You need not go back, except to pack your things, and return and live
with me and Boy," Clive continued, and he told Colonel Newcome rapidly
the story of the legacy. The old man seemed hardly to comprehend it. When
he did, the news scarcely elated him; when Clive said "they could now pay
Mrs. Mackenzie," the Colonel replied, "Quite right, quite right," and
added up the sum, principal and interest, in which they were indebted to
her--he knew it well enough, the good old man. "Of course we shall pay
her, Clivy, when we can!" But in spite of what Clive had said he did not
appear to understand the fact that the debt to Mrs. Mackenzie was now
actually to be paid.

As we were talking, a knock came to the studio door, and that summons was
followed by the entrance of the maid, who said to Clive, "If you please,
sir, Mrs. Mackenzie says, how long are you a-going to keep the dinner
waiting?"

"Come, father, come to dinner!" cries Clive; "and, Pen, you will come
too, won't you?" he added; "it may be the last time you dine in such
pleasant company. Come along," he whispered hurriedly. "I should like you
to be there, it will keep her tongue quiet." As we proceeded to the
dining-room, I gave the Colonel my arm; and the good man prattled to me
something about Mrs. Mackenzie having taken shares in the Bundelcund
Banking Company, and about her not being a woman of business, and
fancying we had spent her money. "And I have always felt a wish that
Clivy should pay her, and he will pay her, I know he will," says the
Colonel; "and then we shall lead a quiet life, Arthur; for, between
ourselves, some women are the deuce when they are angry, sir." And again
he laughed, as he told me this sly news, and he bowed meekly his gentle
old head as we entered the dining-room.

That apartment was occupied by little Boy already seated in his high
chair, and by the Campaigner only, who stood at the mantelpiece in a
majestic attitude. On parting with her, before we adjourned to Clive's
studio, I had made my bow and taken my leave in form, not supposing that
I was about to enjoy her hospitality yet once again. My return did not
seem to please her. "Does Mr. Pendennis favour us with his company to
dinner again, Clive?" she said, turning to her son-in-law. Clive curtly
said, Yes, he had asked Mr. Pendennis to stay.

"You might at least have been so kind as to give me notice," says the
Campaigner, still majestic, but ironical. "You will have but a poor meal,
Mr. Pendennis; and one such as I'm not accustomed to give my guests."

"Cold beef! what the deuce does it matter;" says Clive, beginning to
carve the joint, which, hot, had served our yesterday's Christmas table.

"It does matter, sir! I am not accustomed to treat my guests in this way
Maria! who had been cutting that beef? Three pounds of that beef have been
cut away since one o'clock to-day," and with flashing eyes, and a finger
twinkling all over with rings, she pointed towards the guilty joint.

Whether Maria had been dispensing secret charities, or kept company with
an occult policeman partial to roast-beef, I do not know; but she looked
very much alarmed, and said, Indeed, and indeed, mum, she had not touched
a morsel of it!--not she.

"Confound the beef!" says Clive, carving on.

"She has been cutting it!" cries the Campaigner, bringing her fist down
with a thump upon the table. "Mr. Pendennis! you saw the beef yesterday;
eighteen pounds it weighed, and this is what comes up of it! As if there
was not already ruin enough in the house!"

"D--n the beef!" cries out Clive.

"No! no! Thank God for our good dinner! Benedicti benedicamus, Clivy my
boy," says the Colonel, in a tremulous voice.

"Swear on, sir! let the child hear your oaths! Let my blessed child, who
is too ill to sit at table and picks her bite! sweetbread on her sofa,--
which her poor mother prepares for her, Mr. Pendennis,--which I cooked
it, and gave it to her with these hands,--let her hear your curses and
blasphemies, Clive Newcome! They are loud enough."

"Do let us have a quiet life," groans out Clive; and for me, I must
confess, I kept my eyes steadily down upon my plate, nor dared to lift
them until my portion of cold beef had vanished.

No further outbreak took place until the appearance of the second
course, which consisted, as the ingenious reader may suppose, of the
plum-pudding, now in a grilled state, and the remanent of mince-pies from
yesterday's meal. Maria, I thought, looked particularly guilty as these
delicacies were placed on the table: she set them down hastily, and was
for operating an instant retreat.

But the Campaigner shrieked after her, "Who has eaten that pudding? I
insist upon knowing who has eaten it. I saw it at two o'clock when I went
down to the kitchen and fried a bit for my darling child, and there's
pounds of it gone since then! There were five mince-pies! Mr. Pendennis!
you saw yourself there were five that went away from table yesterday--
where's the other two Maria? You leave the house this night, you
thieving, wicked wretch--and I'll thank you to come back to me afterwards
for a character. Thirteen servants have we had in nine months, Mr.
Pendennis, and this girl is the worst of them all, and the greatest liar
and the greatest thief."

At this charge the outraged Maria stood up in arms, and as the phrase is,
gave the Campaigner as good as she got. Go! wouldn't she go? Pay her her
wages, and let her go out of that ell upon hearth, was Maria's prayer.
"It isn't you, sir," she said, turning to Clive. "You are good enough,
and works hard enough to git the guineas which you give out to pay that
doctor; and she don't pay him--and I see five of them in her purse
wrapped up in paper, myself I did, and she abuses you to him--and I heard
her, and Jane Black, who was here before, told me she heard her. Go!
won't I just go, I dispises your puddens and pies!" and with a laugh of
scorn this rude Maria snapped her black fingers in the immediate vicinity
of the Campaigner's nose.

"I will pay her her wages, and she shall go this instant!" says Mrs.
Mackenzie, taking her purse out.

"Pay me with them suvverings that you have got in it, wrapped up in
paper. See if she haven't, Mr. Newcome," the refractory waiting-woman
cried out, and again she laughed a strident laugh.

Mrs. Mackenzie briskly shut her portemonnaie, and rose up from table,
quivering with indignant virtue. "Go!" she exclaimed, "go and pack your
trunks this instant! you quit the house this night, and a policeman shall
see to your boxes before you leave it!"

Whilst uttering this sentence against the guilty Maria, the Campaigner
had intended, no doubt, to replace her purse in her pocket,--a handsome
filagree gimcrack of poor Ross's, one of the relics of former
splendours,--but, agitated by Maria's insolence, the trembling hand
missed the mark, and the purse fell to the ground.

Maria dashed at the purse in a moment, with a scream of laughter shook
its contents upon the table, and sure enough, five little packets wrapped
in paper rolled out upon the cloth, besides bank-notes and silver and
golden coin. "I'm to go, am I? I'm a thief, am I?" screamed the girl,
clapping her hands. "I sor 'em yesterday when I was a-lacing of her; and
thought of that pore young man working night and day to get the money;--
me a thief, indeed!--I despise you, and I give you warning."

"Do you wish to see me any longer insulted by this woman, Clive? Mr.
Pendennis, I am shocked that you should witness such horrible vulgarity,"
cries the Campaigner, turning to her guest. "Does the wretched creature
suppose that I, I who have given thousands, I who have denied myself
everything, I who have spent my all in support of this house; and Colonel
Newcome knows whether I have given thousands or not, and who has spent
them, and who has been robbed, I say, and----"

"Here! you! Maria! go about your business," shouted out Clive Newcome,
starting up; "go and pack your trunks if you like, and pack this woman's
trunks too. Mrs. Mackenzie, I can bear you no more; go in peace, and if
you wish to see your daughter she shall come to you; but I will never, so
help me God! sleep under the same roof with you; or break the same crust
with you; or bear your infernal cruelty; or sit to hear my father
insulted; or listen to your wicked pride and folly more. There has not
been a day since you thrust your cursed foot into our wretched house, but
you have tortured one and all of us. Look here, at the best gentleman,
and the kindest heart in all the world, you fiend! and see to what a
condition you have brought him! Dearest father! she is going, do you
hear? She leaves us, and you will come back to me, won't you? Great God,
woman," he gasped out, "do you know what you have made me suffer--what
you have done to this good man? Pardon, father, pardon!"--and he sank
down by his father's side, sobbing with passionate emotion. The old man
even now did not seem to comprehend the scene. When he heard that woman's
voice in anger, a sort of stupor came over him.

"I am a fiend, am I?" cries the lady. "You hear, Mr. Pendennis, this is
the language to which I am accustomed; I am a widow, and I trusted my
child and my all to that old man; he robbed me and my darling of almost
every farthing we had; and what has been my return for such baseness? I
have lived in this house and toiled like a slave; I have acted as servant
to my blessed child; night after night I have sat with her; and month
after month, when her husband has been away, I have nursed that poor
innocent; and the father having robbed me, the son turns me out of
doors!"

A sad thing it was to witness, and a painful proof how frequent were
these battles, that, as this one raged, the poor little boy sat almost
careless, whilst his bewildered grandfather stroked his golden head. "It
is quite clear to me, madam," I said, turning to Mrs. Mackenzie, "that
you and your son-in-law are better apart; and I came to tell him to-day
of a most fortunate legacy, which has been left to him, and which will
enable him to pay you to-morrow morning every shilling, every shilling
which he does NOT owe you?"

"I will not leave this house until I am paid every shilling of which I
have been robbed," hissed out Mrs. Mackenzie; and she sat down, folding
her arms across her chest.

"I am sorry," groaned out Clive, wiping the sweat off his brow, I used a
harsh word; I will never sleep under the same roof with you. To-morrow I
will pay you what you claim; and the best chance I have of forgiving you
the evil which you have done me, is that we never should meet again. Will
you give me a bed at your house, Arthur? Father, will you come out and
walk? Good night, Mrs. Mackenzie; Pendennis will settle with you in the
morning. You will not be here, if you please, when I return; and so God
forgive you, and farewell."

Mrs. Mackenzie in a tragic manner dashed aside the hand which poor Clive
held out to her, and disappeared from the scene of this dismal dinner.
Boy presently fell a-crying; in spite of all the battle and fury, there
was sleep in his eyes.

"Maria is too busy, I suppose, to put him to bed," said Clive, with a sad
smile; "shall we do it, father? Come, Tommy, my son!" and he folded his
arms round the child, and walked with him to the upper regions. The old
man's eyes lighted up; his seared thoughts returned to him; he followed
his two children up the stairs, and saw his grandson in his little bed;
and, as we walked home with him, he told me how sweetly Boy said "Our
Father," and prayed God bless all those who loved him, as they laid him
to rest.

So these three generations had joined in that supplication: the strong
man, humbled by trial and grief, whose loyal heart was yet full of love;
--the child, of the sweet age of those little ones whom the Blessed
Speaker of the prayer first bade to come unto Him;--and the old man,
whose heart was well-nigh as tender and as innocent; and whose day was
approaching, when he should be drawn to the bosom of the Eternal Pity.




CHAPTER LXXX

In which the Colonel says "Adsum" when his Name is called


The vow which Clive had uttered, never to share bread with his
mother-in-law, or sleep under the same roof with her, was broken on the
very next day. A stronger will than the young man's intervened, and he
had to confess the impotence of his wrath before that superior power. In
the forenoon of the day following that unlucky dinner, I went with my
friend to the banking-house whither Mr. Luce's letter directed us, and
carried away with me the principal sum, in which the Campaigner said
Colonel Newcome was indebted to her, with the interest accurately
computed and reimbursed. Clive went off with a pocketful of money to the
dear old Poor Brother of Grey Friars; and he promised to return with his
father, and dine with my wife in Queen Square. I had received a letter
from Laura by the morning's post, announcing her return by the express
train from Newcome, and desiring that a spare bedroom should be got ready
for a friend who accompanied her.

On reaching Howland Street, Clive's door was opened, rather to my
surprise, by the rebellious maid-servant who had received her dismissal
on the previous night; and the doctor's carriage drove up as she was
still speaking to me. The polite practitioner sped upstairs to Mrs.
Newcome's apartment. Mrs. Mackenzie, in a robe-de-chambre and cap very
different from yesterday's, came out eagerly to meet the physician on the
landing. Ere they had been a quarter of an hour together, arrived a cab,
which discharged an elderly person with her bandbox and bundles; I had no
difficulty in recognising a professional nurse in the new-comer. She too
disappeared into the sick-room, and left me sitting in the neighbouring
chamber, the scene of the last night's quarrel.

Hither presently came to me Maria, the maid. She said she had not the
heart to go away now she was wanted; that they had passed a sad night,
and that no one had been to bed. Master Tommy was below, and the landlady
taking care of him: the landlord had gone out for the nurse. Mrs. Clive
had been taken bad after Mr. Clive went away the night before. Mrs.
Mackenzie had gone to the poor young thing, and there she went on,
crying, and screaming, and stamping, as she used to do in her tantrums,
which was most cruel of her, and made Mrs. Clive so ill. And presently
the young lady began: my informant told me. She came screaming into the
sitting-room, her hair over her shoulders, calling out she was deserted,
deserted, and would like to die. She was like a mad woman for some time.
She had fit after fit of hysterics: and there was her mother, kneeling,
and crying, and calling out to her darling child to calm herself;--which
it was all her own doing, and she had much better have held her own
tongue, remarked the resolute Maria. I understood only too well from the
girl's account what had happened, and that Clive, if resolved to part
with his mother-in-law, should not have left her, even for twelve hours,
in possession of his house. The wretched woman, whose Self was always
predominant, and who, though she loved her daughter after her own
fashion, never forgot her own vanity or passion, had improved the
occasion of Clive's absence: worked upon her child's weakness, jealousy,
ill-health, and driven her, no doubt, into the fever which yonder
physician was called to quell.

The doctor presently enters to write a prescription, followed by Clive's
mother-in-law, who had cast Rosa's fine Cashmere shawl over her
shoulders, to hide her disarray. "You here still, Mr. Pendennis!" she
exclaims. She knew I was there. Had not she changed her dress in order to
receive me?

"I have to speak to you for two minutes on important business, and then I
shall go," I replied gravely.

"Oh, sir! to what a scene you have come! To what a state has Clive's
conduct last night driven my darling child!"

As the odious woman spoke so, the doctor's keen eyes, looking up from the
prescription, caught mine. "I declare before Heaven, madam," I said
hotly, "I believe you yourself are the cause of your daughter's present
illness, as you have been of the misery of my friends."

"Is this, sir," she was breaking out, "is this language to be used
to----?"

"Madam, will you be silent?" I said. "I am come to bid you farewell on
the part of those whom your temper has driven into infernal torture. I am
come to pay you every halfpenny of the sum which my friends do not owe
you, but which they restore. Here is the account, and here is the money
to settle it. And I take this gentleman to witness, to whom, no doubt,
you have imparted what you call your wrongs" (the doctor smiled, and
shrugged his shoulders) "that now you are paid."

"A widow--a poor, lonely, insulted widow!" cries the Campaigner, with
trembling hands taking possession of the notes.

"And I wish to know," I continued, "when my friend's house will be free
to him, and he can return in peace."

Here Rosa's voice was heard from the inner apartment, screaming, "Mamma,
mamma!"

"I go to my child, sir," she said. "If Captain Mackenzie had been alive,
you would not have dared to insult me so." And carrying off her money,
she left us.

"Cannot she be got out of the house?" I said to the doctor. "My friend
will never return until she leaves it. It is my belief she is the cause
of her daughter's present illness."

"Not altogether, my dear sir. Mrs. Newcome was in a very, very delicate
state of health. Her mother is a lady of impetuous temper, who expresses
herself very strongly--too strongly, I own. In consequence of unpleasant
family discussions, which no physician can prevent, Mrs. Newcome has been
wrought up to a state of--of agitation. Her fever is, in fact, at
present very high. You know her condition. I am apprehensive of ulterior
consequences. I have recommended an excellent and experienced nurse to
her. Mr. Smith, the medical man at the corner, is a most able
practitioner. I shall myself call again in a few hours, and I trust that,
after the event which I apprehend, everything will go well.

"Cannot Mrs. Mackenzie leave the house, sir?" I asked.

"Her daughter cries out for her at every moment. Mrs. Mackenzie is
certainly not a judicious nurse, but in Mrs. Newcome's present state I
cannot take upon myself to separate them. Mr. Newcome may return, and I
do think and believe that his presence may tend to impose silence and
restore tranquillity."

I had to go back to Clive with these gloomy tidings. The poor fellow must
put up a bed in his studio, and there await the issue of his wife's
illness. I saw Thomas Newcome could not sleep under his son's roof that
night. That dear meeting, which both so desired, was delayed, who could
say for how long?

"The Colonel may come to us," I thought; "our old house is big enough." I
guessed who was the friend coming in my wife's company; and pleased
myself by thinking that two friends so dear should meet in our home. Bent
upon these plans, I repaired to Grey Friars, and to Thomas Newcome's
chamber there.

Bayham opened the door when I knocked, and came towards me with a finger
on his lip, and a sad, sad countenance. He closed the door gently behind
him, and led me into the court. "Clive is with him, and Miss Newcome. He
is very ill. He does not know them," said Bayham with a sob. "He calls
out for both of them: they are sitting there and he does not know them."

In a brief narrative, broken by more honest tears, Fred Bayham, as we
paced up and down the court, told me what had happened. The old man must
have passed a sleepless night, for on going to his chamber in the
morning, his attendant found him dressed in his chair, and his bed
undisturbed. He must have sat all through the bitter night without a
fire: but his hands were burning hot, and he rambled in his talk. He
spoke of some one coming to drink tea with him, pointed to the fire, and
asked why it was not made; he would not go to bed, though the nurse
pressed him. The bell began to ring for morning chapel; he got up and
went towards his gown, groping towards it as though he could hardly see,
and put it over his shoulders, and would go out, but he would have fallen
in the court if the good nurse had not given him her arm; and the
physician of the hospital, passing fortunately at this moment, who had
always been a great friend of Colonel Newcome's, insisted upon leading
him back to his room again, and got him to bed. "When the bell stopped,
he wanted to rise once more; he fancied he was a boy at school again,"
said the nurse, "and that he was going in to Dr. Raine, who was
schoolmaster here ever so many years ago." So it was, that when happier
days seemed to be dawning for the good man, that reprieve came too late.
Grief, and years, and humiliation, and care, and cruelty had been too
strong for him, and Thomas Newcome was stricken down.

Bayham's story told, I entered the room, over which the twilight was
falling, and saw the figures of Clive and Ethel seated at each end of the
bed. The poor old man within it was calling incoherent sentences. I had
to call Clive from the present grief before him, with intelligence of
further sickness awaiting him at home. Our poor patient did not heed what
I said to his son. "You must go home to Rosa," Ethel said. "She will be
sure to ask for her husband, and forgiveness is best, dear Clive. I will
stay with uncle. I will never leave him. Please God, he will be better in
the morning when you come back." So Clive's duty called him to his own
sad home; and, the bearer of dismal tidings, I returned to mine. The
fires were lit there and the table spread; and kind hearts were waiting
to welcome the friend who never more was to enter my door.

It may be imagined that the intelligence which I brought alarmed and
afflicted my wife and Madame de Florac, our guest. Laura immediately went
away to Rosa's house to offer her services if needed. The accounts which
she brought thence were very bad: Clive came to her for a minute or two,
but Mr. Mackenzie could not see her. Should she not bring the little boy
home to her children? Laura asked; and Clive thankfully accepted that
offer. The little man slept in our nursery that night, and was at play
with our young ones on the morrow--happy and unconscious of the fate
impending over his home.

         *     *     *     *     *     *

Yet two more days passed, and I had to take two advertisements to The
Times newspaper on the part of poor Clive. Among the announcements of
Births was printed, "On the 28th, in Howland Street, Mrs. Clive Newcome
of a son, still-born." And a little lower, in the third division of the
same column, appeared the words, "On the 29th, in Howland Street, aged
26, Rosa, wife of Clive Newcome, Esq." So, one day, shall the names of
all of us be written there; to be deplored by how many?--to be remembered
how long?--to occasion what tears, praises, sympathy, censure?--yet for a
day or two, while the busy world has time to recollect us who have passed
beyond it. So this poor little flower had bloomed for its little day, and
pined, and withered, and perished. There was only one friend by Clive's
side following the humble procession which laid poor Rosa and her child
out of sight of a world that had been but unkind to her. Not many tears
were there to water her lonely little grave. A grief that was akin to
shame and remorse humbled him as he knelt over her. Poor little harmless
lady! no more childish triumphs and vanities, no more hidden griefs are
you to enjoy or suffer; and earth closes over your simple pleasures and
tears! The snow was falling and whitening the coffin as they lowered it
into the ground. It was at the same cemetery in which Lady Kew was
buried. I dare say the same clergyman read the same service over the two
graves, as he will read it for you or any of us to-morrow, and until his
own turn comes. Come away from the place, poor Clive! Come sit with your
orphan little boy; and bear him on your knee, and hug him to your heart.
He seems yours now, and all a father's love may pour out upon him. Until
this hour, Fate uncontrollable and homely tyranny had separated him from
you.

It was touching to see the eagerness and tenderness with which the great
strong man now assumed the guardianship of the child, and endowed him
with his entire wealth of affection. The little boy now ran to Clive
whenever he came in, and sat for hours prattling to him. He would take
the boy out to walk, and from our windows we could see Clive's black
figure striding over the snow in St. James's Park, the little man
trotting beside him, or perched on his father's shoulder. My wife and I
looked at them one morning as they were making their way towards the
City.

"He has inherited that loving heart from his father," Laura said; "and he
is paying over the whole property to his son."

Clive, and the boy sometimes with him, used to go daily to Grey Friars,
where the Colonel still lay ill. After some days the fever which had
attacked him left him, but left him so weak and enfeebled that he could
only go from his bed to the chair by his fireside. The season was
exceedingly bitter, the chamber which he inhabited was warm and spacious;
it was considered unadvisable to move him until he had attained greater
strength, and till warmer weather. The medical men of the House hoped he
might rally in spring. My friend, Dr. Goodenough, came to him; he hoped
too: but not with a hopeful face. A chamber, luckily vacant, hard by the
Colonel's, was assigned to his friends, where we sate when we were too
many for him. Besides his customary attendant, he had two dear and
watchful nurses, who were almost always with him--Ethel and Madame de
Florac, who had passed many a faithful year by an old man's bedside; who
would have come, as to a work of religion, to any sick couch, much more
to this one, where he lay for whose life she would once gladly have given
her own.

But our Colonel, we all were obliged to acknowledge, was no more our
friend of old days. He knew us again, and was good to every one round
him, as his wont was; especially when Boy came, his old eyes lighted up
with simple happiness, and, with eager trembling hands, he would seek
under his bedclothes, or the pockets of his dressing-gown, for toys or
cakes, which he had caused to be purchased for his grandson. There was a
little laughing, red-cheeked, white-headed gown-boy of the school, to
whom the old man had taken a great fancy. One of the symptoms of his
returning consciousness and recovery, as we hoped, was his calling for
this child, who pleased our friend by his archness and merry ways; and
who, to the old gentleman's unfailing delight, used to call him, "Codd
Colonel." "Tell little F----, that Codd Colonel wants to see him;" and
the little gown-boy was brought to him; and the Colonel would listen to
him for hours; and hear all about his lessons and his play; and prattle
almost as childishly about Dr. Raine, and his own early school-days. The
boys of the school, it must be said, had heard the noble old gentleman's
touching history, and had all got to know and love him. They came every
day to hear news of him; sent him in books and papers to amuse him; and
some benevolent young souls,--God's blessing on all honest boys, say I,--
painted theatrical characters, and sent them in to Codd Colonel's
grandson. The little fellow was made free of gown-boys, and once came
thence to his grandfather in a little gown, which delighted the old man
hugely. Boy said he would like to be a little gown-boy; and I make no
doubt, when he is old enough, his father will get him that post, and put
him under the tuition of my friend Dr. Senior.

So, weeks passed away, during which our dear old friend still remained
with us. His mind was gone at intervals, but would rally feebly; and with
his consciousness returned his love, his simplicity, his sweetness. He
would talk French with Madame de Florac, at which time, his memory
appeared to awaken with surprising vividness, his cheek flushed, and he
was a youth again,--a youth all love and hope,--a stricken old man, with
a beard as white as snow covering the noble careworn face. At such times
he called her by her Christian name of Leonore; he addressed courtly old
words of regard and kindness to the aged lady; anon he wandered in his
talk, and spoke to her as if they still were young. Now, as in those
early days, his heart was pure; no anger remained in it; no guile tainted
it; only peace and goodwill dwelt in it.

Rosa's death had seemed to shock him for a while when the unconscious
little boy spoke of it. Before that circumstance, Clive had even forbore
to wear mourning, lest the news should agitate his father. The Colonel
remained silent and was very much disturbed all that day, but he never
appeared to comprehend the fact quite; and, once or twice afterwards,
asked, why she did not come to see him? She was prevented, he supposed--
she was prevented, he said, with a look of terror: he never once
otherwise alluded to that unlucky tyrant of his household, who had made
his last years so unhappy.

The circumstance of Clive's legacy he never understood: but more than
once spoke of Barnes to Ethel, and sent his compliments to him, and said
he should like to shake him by the hand. Barnes Newcome never once
offered to touch that honoured hand, though his sister bore her uncle's
message to him. They came often from Bryanstone Square; Mrs. Hobson even
offered to sit with the Colonel, and read to him, and brought him books
for his improvement. But her presence disturbed him; he cared not for her
books; the two nurses whom he loved faithfully watched him; and my wife
and I were admitted to him sometimes, both of whom he honoured with
regard and recognition. As for F. B., in order to be near his Colonel,
did not that good fellow take up his lodging in Cistercian Lane, at the
Red Cow? He is one whose errors, let us hope, shall be pardoned, quia
multum amavit. I am sure he felt ten times more joy at hearing of Clive's
legacy, than if thousands had been bequeathed to himself. May good health
and good fortune speed him!

The days went on, and our hopes, raised sometimes, began to flicker and
fail. One evening the Colonel left his chair for his bed in pretty good
spirits, but passed a disturbed night, and the next morning was too weak
to rise. Then he remained in his bed, and his friends visited him there.
One afternoon he asked for his little gown-boy, and the child was brought
to him, and sate by the bed with a very awestricken face; and then
gathered courage, and tried to amuse him by telling him how it was a
half-holiday, and they were having a cricket-match with the St. Peter's
boys in the green, and Grey Friars was in and winning. The Colonel quite
understood about it; he would like to see the game; he had played many a
game on that green when he was a boy. He grew excited; Clive dismissed
his father's little friend, and put a sovereign into his hand; and away
he ran to say that Codd Colonel had come into a fortune, and to buy
tarts, and to see the match out. I, curre, little white-haired gown-boy!
Heaven speed you, little friend!

After the child had gone, Thomas Newcome began to wander more and more.
He talked louder; he gave the word of command, spoke Hindustanee as if to
his men. Then he spoke words in French rapidly, seizing a hand that was
near him and crying, "Toujours, toujours!" But it was Ethel's hand which
he took.

Ethel and Clive and the nurse were in the room with him; the latter came
to us, who were sitting in the adjoining apartment; Madame de Florac was
there, with my wife and Bayham.

At the look in the woman's countenance Madame de Florac started up. "He
is very bad, he wanders a great deal," the nurse whispered. The French
lady fell instantly on her knees, and remained rigid in prayer.

Some time afterwards Ethel came in with a scared face to our pale group.
"He is calling for you again, dear lady," she said, going up to Madame de
Florac, who was still kneeling; "and just now he said he wanted Pendennis
to take care of his boy. He will not know you." She hid her tears as she
spoke.

She went into the room, where Clive was at the bed's foot; the old man
within it talked on rapidly for a while: then again he would sigh and be
still: once more I heard him say hurriedly, "Take care of him while I'm
in India;" and then with a heart-rending voice he called out, "Leonore,
Leonore!" She was kneeling by his side now. The patient's voice sank into
faint murmurs; only a moan now and then announced that he was not asleep.

At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas
Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat a time. And just as the last
bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up
his head a little, and quickly said, "Adsum!" and fell back. It was the
word we used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose heart
was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the
presence of The Master.

         *     *     *     *     *     *

Two years ago, walking with my children in some pleasant fields, near to
Berne in Switzerland, I strayed from them into a little wood; and, coming
out of it presently, told them how the story had been revealed to me
somehow, which for three-and-twenty months the reader has been pleased to
follow. As I write the last line with a rather sad heart, Pendennis and
Laura, and Ethel and Clive, fade away into Fable-land. I hardly know
whether they are not true: whether they do not live near us somewhere.
They were alive, and I heard their voices, but five minutes since was
touched by their grief. And have we parted with them here on a sudden,
and without so much as a shake of the hand? Is yonder line (----) which I
drew with my own pen, a barrier between me and Hades as it were, across
which I can see those figures retreating and only dimly glimmering?
Before taking leave of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, might he not have told us
whether Miss Ethel married anybody finally? It was provoking that he
should retire to the shades without answering that sentimental question.

But though he has disappeared as irrevocably as Eurydice, these minor
questions may settle the major one above mentioned. How could Pendennis
have got all that information about Ethel's goings-on at Baden, and with
Lord Kew, unless she had told somebody--her husband, for instance, who,
having made Pendennis an early confidant in his amour, gave him the whole
story? Clive, Pendennis writes expressly, is travelling abroad with his
wife. Who is that wife? By a most monstrous blunder, Mr. Pendennis killed
Lord Farintosh's mother at one page and brought her to life again at
another; but Rosey, who is so lately consigned to Kensal Green, it is not
surely with her that Clive is travelling, for then Mrs. Mackenzie would
probably be with them to a live certainty, and the tour would be by no
means pleasant. How could Pendennis have got all those private letters,
etc., but that the Colonel kept them in a teak box, which Clive inherited
and made over to his friend? My belief then is, that in Fable-land
somewhere Ethel and Clive are living most comfortably together: that she
is immensely fond of his little boy, and a great deal happier now than
they would have been had they married at first, when they took a liking
to each other as young people. That picture of J. J.'s of Mrs. Clive
Newcome (in the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Fable-land), is certainly
not in the least like Rosey, who we read was fair; but it represents a
tall, handsome, dark lady, who must be Mrs. Ethel.

Again, why did Pendennis introduce J. J. with such a flourish, giving us,
as it were, an overture, and no piece to follow it? J. J.'s history, let
me confidentially state, has been revealed to me too, and may be told
some of these fine summer months, or Christmas evenings, when the kind
reader has leisure to hear.

What about Sir Barnes Newcome ultimately? My impression is that he is
married again, and it is my fervent hope that his present wife bullies
him. Mrs. Mackenzie cannot have the face to keep that money which Clive
paid over to her, beyond her lifetime; and will certainly leave it and
her savings to little Tommy. I should not be surprised if Madame de
Moncontour left a smart legacy to the Pendennis children; and Lord Kew
stood godfather in case--in case Mr. and Mrs. Clive wanted such an
article. But have they any children? I, for my part, should like her best
without, and entirely devoted to little Tommy. But for you, dear friend,
it is as you like. You may settle your Fable-land in your own fashion.
Anything you like happens in Fable-land. Wicked folks die a propos (for
instance, that death of Lady Kew was most artful, for if she had not
died, don't you see that Ethel would have married Lord Farintosh the next
week?)--annoying folks are got out of the way; the poor are rewarded--the
upstarts are set down in Fable-land,--the frog bursts with wicked rage,
the fox is caught in his trap, the lamb is rescued from the wolf, and so
forth, just in the nick of time. And the poet of Fable-land rewards and
punishes absolutely. He splendidly deals out bags of sovereigns, which
won't buy anything; belabours wicked backs with awful blows, which do not
hurt; endows heroines with preternatural beauty, and creates heroes, who,
if ugly sometimes, yet possess a thousand good qualities, and usually end
by being immensely rich; makes the hero and heroine happy at last, and
happy ever after. Ah, happy, harmless Fable-land, where these things are!
Friendly reader! may you and the author meet there on some future day. He
hopes so; as he yet keeps a lingering hold of your hand, and bids you
farewell with a kind heart.

Paris, 28th June 1855.

THE END





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