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 à 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

_péniboat_.” 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.

Returns 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, Cruchecassée 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 Gräfinn 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 Gräfinn 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 but 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’école_, 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 soirées, 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 soirées, 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 Café 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 Cæsars, 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 mediæval;

peasants and bagpipemen; Passionists with shaven polls; Capuchins and

the equally hairy frequenters of the Café 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 _délassement:_ 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 Pæstum, 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 Pæstum, 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 his 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 _réunion_. 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 soirée 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 was

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.