So Lady Clara flies from the custody of her tyrant, but to what a

rescue! The very man who loves her, and gives her asylum, pities and

deplores her. She scarce dares to look out of the windows of her new

home upon the world, lest it should know and reproach her. All the

sisterhood of friendship is cut off from her. If she dares to go abroad

she feels the sneer of the world as she goes through it; and knows that

malice and scorn whisper behind her. People, as criminal but

undiscovered, make room for her, as if her touch were pollution. She

knows she has darkened the lot and made wretched the home of the man

whom she loves best; that his friends who see her, treat her with but a

doubtful respect; and the domestics who attend her, with a suspicious

obedience. In the country lanes, or the streets of the county town,

neighbours look aside as the carriage passes in which she sits splendid

and lonely. Rough hunting companions of her husband’s come to her

table: he is driven perforce to the company of flatterers and men of

inferior sort; his equals, at least in his own home, will not live with

him. She would be kind, perhaps, and charitable to the cottagers round

about her, but she fears to visit them lest they too should scorn her.

The clergyman who distributes her charities, blushes and looks awkward

on passing her in the village, if he should be walking with his wife or

one of his children. Shall they go to the Continent, and set up a grand

house at Paris or at Florence? There they can get society, but of what

a sort! Our acquaintances of Baden,—Madame Schlangenbad, and Madame de

Cruchecassée, and Madame d’Ivry, and Messrs. Loder, and Punter, and

Blackball, and Deuceace, will come, and dance, and flirt, and quarrel,

and gamble, and feast round about her; but what in common with such

wild people has this poor, timid, shrinking soul? Even these scorn her.

The leers and laughter on those painted faces are quite unlike her own

sad countenance. She has no reply to their wit. Their infernal gaiety

scares her more than the solitude at home. No wonder that her husband

does not like home, except for a short while in the hunting season. No

wonder that he is away all day; how can he like a home which she has

made so wretched? In the midst of her sorrow, and doubt, and misery, a

child comes to her: how she clings to it! how her whole being, and

hope, and passion centres itself on this feeble infant!——but she no

more belongs to our story; with the new name she has taken, the poor

lady passes out of the history of the Newcomes.

If Barnes Newcome’s children meet yonder solitary lady, do they know

her? If her once-husband thinks upon the unhappy young creature whom

his cruelty drove from him, does his conscience affect his sleep at

night? Why should Sir Barnes Newcome’s conscience be more squeamish

than his country’s, which has put money in his pocket for having

trampled on the poor weak young thing, and scorned her, and driven her

to ruin? When the whole of the accounts of that wretched bankruptcy are

brought up for final Audit, which of the unhappy partners shall be

shown to be most guilty? Does the Right Reverend Prelate who did the

benedictory business for Barnes and Clara his wife repent in secret? Do

the parents who pressed the marriage, and the fine folks who signed the

book, and ate the breakfast, and applauded the bridegroom’s speech,

feel a little ashamed? O Hymen Hymenæe! The bishops, beadles, clergy,

pew-openers, and other officers of the temple dedicated to Heaven under

the invocation of St. George, will officiate in the same place at

scores and scores more of such marriages: and St. George of England may

behold virgin after virgin offered up to the devouring monster, Mammon

(with many most respectable female dragons looking on)—may see virgin

after virgin given away, just as in the Soldan of Babylon’s time, but

with never a champion to come to the rescue!

CHAPTER LIX.

In which Achilles loses Briseis

Although the years of the Marquis of Farintosh were few, he had spent

most of them in the habit of command; and, from his childhood upwards,

had been obeyed by all persons round about him. As an infant he had but

to roar, and his mother and nurses were as much frightened as though he

had been a Libyan lion. What he willed and ordered was law amongst his

clan and family. During the period of his London and Parisian

dissipations his poor mother did not venture to remonstrate with her

young prodigal, but shut her eyes, not daring to open them on his wild

courses. As for the friends of his person and house, many of whom were

portly elderly gentlemen, their affection for the young Marquis was so

extreme that there was no company into which their fidelity would not

lead them to follow him; and you might see him dancing at Mabille with

veteran aides-de-camp looking on, or disporting with opera-dancers at a

Trois Freres banquet, which some old gentleman of his father’s age had

taken the pains to order. If his lordship Count Almaviva wants a friend

to carry the lanthorn or to hold the ladder; do you suppose there are

not many most respectable men in society who will act Figaro? When

Farintosh thought fit, in the fulness of time and the blooming pride of

manhood, to select a spouse, and to elevate a marchioness to his

throne, no one dared gainsay him. When he called upon his mother and

sisters, and their ladyships’ hangers-on and attendants; upon his own

particular kinsmen, led captains, and toadies; to bow the knee and do

homage to the woman whom he delighted to honour, those duteous subjects

trembled and obeyed; in fact, he thought that the position of a

Marchioness of Farintosh was under heaven, and before men, so splendid,

that, had he elevated a beggar-maid to that sublime rank, the inferior

world was bound to worship her.

So my lord’s lady-mother, and my lord’s sisters, and his captains, and

his players of billiards, and the toadies of his august person, all

performed obeisance to his bride-elect, and never questioned the will

of the young chieftain. What were the private comments of the ladies of

the family we had no means of knowing; but it may naturally be supposed

that his lordship’s gentlemen-in-waiting, Captain Henchman, Jack

Todhunter, and the rest, had many misgivings of their own respecting

their patron’s change in life, and could not view without anxiety the

advent of a mistress who might reign over him and them, who might

possibly not like their company, and might exert her influence over her

husband to oust these honest fellows from places in which they were

very comfortable. The jovial rogues had the run of my lord’s kitchen,

stables, cellars, and cigar-boxes. A new marchioness might hate

hunting, smoking, jolly parties, and toad-eaters in general, or might

bring into the house favourites of her own. I am sure any kind-hearted

man of the world must feel for the position of these faithful,

doubtful, disconsolate vassals, and have a sympathy for their rueful

looks and demeanour as they eye the splendid preparations for the

ensuing marriage, the grand furniture sent to my lord’s castles and

houses, the magnificent plate provided for his tables—tables at which

they may never have a knife and fork; castles and houses of which the

poor rogues may never be allowed to pass the doors.

When, then, “the elopement in High Life,” which has been described in

the previous pages, burst upon the town in the morning papers, I can

fancy the agitation which the news occasioned in the faithful bosoms of

the generous Todhunter, and the attached Henchman. My lord was not in

his own house as yet. He and his friends still lingered on in the

little house in Mayfair, the dear little bachelor’s quarters, where

they had enjoyed such good dinners, such good suppers, such rare

doings, such a jolly time. I fancy Hench coming down to breakfast, and

reading the _Morning Post_. I imagine Tod dropping in from his bedroom

over the way, and Hench handing the paper over to Tod, and the

conversation which ensued between those worthy men. Elopement in high

life—excitement in N—come, and flight of Lady Cl— N—come, daughter of

the late and sister of the present Earl of D-rking, with Lord H—gate;

personal rencontre between Lord H—gate and Sir B—nes N—come.

Extraordinary disclosures. I say, I can fancy Hench and Tod over this

awful piece of news.

“Pretty news, ain’t it, Toddy?” says Henchman, looking up from a

Perigord-pie, which the faithful creature is discussing.

“Always expected it,” remarks the other. “Anybody who saw them together

last season must have known it. The Chief himself spoke of it to me.”

“It’ll cut him up awfully when he reads it. Is it in the _Morning

Post?_ He has the _Post_ in his bedroom. I know he has rung his bell: I

heard it. Bowman, has his lordship read his paper yet?”

Bowman, the valet, said, “I believe you, he _have_ read his paper. When

he read it, he jumped out of bed and swore most awful. I cut as soon as

I could,” continued Mr. Bowman, who was on familiar—nay contemptuous

terms with the other two gentlemen.

“Enough to make any man swear,” says Toddy to Henchman; and both were

alarmed in their noble souls, reflecting that their chieftain was now

actually getting up and dressing himself; that he would speedily, and

in course of nature, come downstairs; and, then, most probably, would

begin swearing at _them_.

The most noble Mungo Malcolm Angus was in an awful state of mind when,

at length, he appeared in the breakfast-room. “Why the dash do you make

a taproom of this?” he cries. The trembling Henchman, who has begun to

smoke—as he has done a hundred times before in this bachelor’s

hall—flings his cigar into the fire.

“There you go—nothing like it! Why don’t you fling some more in? You

can get ’em at Hudson’s for five guineas a pound.” bursts out the

youthful peer.

“I understand why you are out of sorts, old boy,” says Henchman,

stretching out his manly hand. A tear of compassion twinkled in his

eyelid, and coursed down his mottled cheek. “Cut away at old Frank,

Farintosh,—a fellow who has been attached to you since before you could

speak. It’s not when a fellow’s down and cut up, and riled—naturally

riled—as you are—I know you are, Marquis; it’s not then that I’m going

to be angry with you. Pitch into old Frank Henchman—hit away, my young

one.” And Frank put himself into an attitude as of one prepared to

receive a pugilistic assault. He bared his breast, as it were, and

showed his scars, and said, “Strike!” Frank Henchman was a florid

toady. My uncle, Major Pendennis, has often laughed with me about the

fellow’s pompous flatteries and ebullient fidelity.

“You have read this confounded paragraph?” says the Marquis.

“We _have_ read it: and were deucedly cut up, too,” says Henchman, “for

your sake, my dear boy.”

“I remembered what you said, last year, Marquis,” cries Todhunter (not

unadroitly). “You, yourself, pointed out, in this very room, I

recollect, at this very table—that night Coralie and the little Spanish

dancer and her mother supped here, and there was a talk about

Highgate—you, yourself, pointed out what was likely to happen. I

doubted it; for I have dined at the Newcomes’, and seen Highgate and

her together in society often. But though you are a younger bird, you

have better eyes than I have—and you saw the thing at once—at once,

don’t you remember I and Coralie said how glad she was, because Sir

Barnes ill-treated her friend. What was the name of Coralie’s friend,

Hench?”

“How should _I_ know her confounded name?” Henchman briskly answers.

“What do I care for Sir Barnes Newcome and his private affairs? He is

no friend of mine. I never said he was a friend of mine. I never said I

liked him. Out of respect for the Chief here, I held my tongue about

him, and shall hold my tongue. Have some of this pate, Chief! No? Poor

old boy! I know you haven’t got an appetite. I know this news cuts you

up. I say nothing, and make no pretence of condolence; though I feel

for you—and you know you can count on old Frank Henchman—don’t you,

Malcolm?” And again he turns away to conceal his gallant sensibility

and generous emotion.

“What does it matter to me?” bursts out the Marquis, garnishing his

conversation with the usual expletives which adorned his eloquence when

he was strongly moved. “What do I care for Barnes Newcome, and his

confounded affairs and family? I never want to see him again, but in

the light of a banker, when I go to the City, where he keeps my

account. I say, I have nothing to do with him, or all the Newcomes

under the sun. Why, one of them is a painter, and will paint my dog,

Ratcatcher, by Jove! or my horse, or my groom, if I give him the order.

Do you think I care for any one of the pack? It’s not the fault of the

Marchioness of Farintosh that her family is not equal to mine. Besides

two others in England and Scotland, I should like to know what family

is? I tell you what, Hench. I bet you five to two, that before an hour

is over my mother will be here, and down on her knees to me, begging me

to break off this engagement.”

“And what will you do, Farintosh?” asks Henchman, slowly, “Will you

break it off?”

“No!” shouts the Marquis. “Why shall I break off with the finest girl

in England—and the best-plucked one, and the cleverest and wittiest,

and the most beautiful creature, by Jove, that ever stepped, for no

fault of hers, and because her sister-in-law leaves her brother, who I

know treated her infernally? We have talked this matter over at home

before. I wouldn’t dine with the fellow; though he was always asking

me; nor meet, except just out of civility, any of his confounded

family. Lady Anne is different. She is a lady, she is. She is a good

woman: and Kew is a most respectable man, though he is only a peer of

George III.’s creation, and you should hear how _he_ speaks of Miss

Newcome, though she refused him. I should like to know who is to

prevent me marrying Lady Anne Newcome’s daughter?”

“By Jove, you are a good-plucked fellow, Farintosh—give me your hand,

old boy,” says Henchman.

“Heh! am I? You would have said, give me your hand, old boy, whichever

way I determined, Hench! I tell you, I ain’t intellectual, and that

sort of thing. But I know my rank, and I know my place; and when a man

of my station gives his word, he sticks to it, sir; and my lady, and my

sisters, may go on their knees all round; and, by Jove, I won’t

flinch.”

The justice of Lord Farintosh’s views was speedily proved by the

appearance of his lordship’s mother, Lady Glenlivat, whose arrival put

a stop to a conversation which Captain Francis Henchman has often

subsequently narrated. She besought to see her son in terms so urgent,

that the young nobleman could not be denied to his parent; and, no

doubt, a long and interesting interview took place, in which Lord

Farintosh’s mother passionately implored him to break off a match upon

which he was as resolutely bent.

Was it a sense of honour, a longing desire to possess this young

beauty, and call her his own, or a fierce and profound dislike to being

balked in any object of his wishes, which actuated the young lord?

Certainly he had borne, very philosophically, delay after delay which

had taken place in the devised union; and being quite sure of his

mistress, had not cared to press on the marriage, but lingered over the

dregs of his bachelor cup complacently still. We all know in what an

affecting farewell he took leave of the associates of his _vie de

garçon:_ the speeches made (in both languages), the presents

distributed, the tears and hysterics of some of the guests assembled;

the cigar-boxes given over to this friend, the _écrin_ of diamonds to

that, et cætera, et cætera, et cætera. Don’t we know? If we don’t it is

not Henchman’s fault, who has told the story of Farintosh’s betrothals

a thousand and one times at his clubs, at the houses where he is asked

to dine, on account of his intimacy with the nobility, among the young

men of fashion, or no fashion, whom this two-bottle Mentor, and burly

admirer of youth, has since taken upon himself to form. The farewell at

Greenwich was so affecting that all “traversed the cart,” and took

another farewell at Richmond, where there was crying too, but it was

Eucharis cried because fair Calypso wanted to tear her eyes out; and

where not only Telemachus (as was natural to his age), but Mentor

likewise, quaffed the wine-cup too freely. You are virtuous, O reader!

but there are still cakes and ale, Ask Henchman if there be not. You

will find him in the Park any afternoon; he will dine with you if no

better man ask him in the interval. He will tell you story upon story

regarding young Lord Farintosh, and his marriage, and what happened

before his marriage, and afterwards; and he will sigh, weep almost at

some moments, as he narrates their subsequent quarrel, and Farintosh’s

unworthy conduct, and tells you how he formed that young man. My uncle

and Captain Henchman disliked each other very much, I am sorry to

say—sorry to add that it was very amusing to hear either one of them

speak of the other.

Lady Glenlivat, according to the Captain, then, had no success in the

interview with her son; who, unmoved by the maternal tears, commands,

and entreaties, swore he would marry Miss Newcome, and that no power on

earth should prevent him. “As if trying to thwart that man—_could_ ever

prevent his having his way!” ejaculated his quondam friend.

But on the next day, after ten thousand men in clubs and coteries had

talked the news over; after the evening had repeated and improved the

delightful theme of our “morning contemporaries;” after Calypso and

Eucharis driving together in the Park, and reconciled now, had kissed

their hands to Lord Farintosh, and made him their compliments—after a

night of natural doubt, disturbance, defiance, fury—as men whispered to

each other at the club where his lordship dined, and at the theatre

where he took his recreation—after an awful time at breakfast in which

Messrs. Bowman, valet, and Todhunter and Henchman, captains of the

Farintosh bodyguard, all got their share of kicks and growling—behold

Lady Glenlivat came back to the charge again; and this time with such

force that poor Lord Farintosh was shaken indeed.

Her ladyship’s ally was no other than Miss Newcome herself; from whom

Lord Farintosh’s mother received, by that day’s post, a letter, which

she was commissioned to read to her son:—

“Dear Madam” (wrote the young lady in her firmest handwriting)—“Mamma

is at this moment in a state of such _grief and dismay_ at the _cruel_

misfortune and _humiliation_ which has just befallen our family, that

she is really not able to write to you as she _ought_, and this task,

painful as it is, must be _mine_. Dear Lady Glenlivat, the kindness and

confidence which I have ever received from you and _yours_, merit

truth, and most grateful respect and regard from _me_. And I feel after

the late fatal occurrence, what I have often and often owned to myself

though I did not _dare_ to acknowledge it, that I ought to release Lord

F., _at once and for ever_, from an engagement _which he could never

think_ of maintaining with a family _so unfortunate as ours_. I thank

him with all my heart for his goodness in bearing with my humours so

long; if I have given him pain, as I _know_ I have sometimes, I beg his

pardon, and would do so _on my knees_. I hope and pray he may be happy,

as I feared he never could be with me. He has many good and noble

qualities; and, in bidding him farewell, I trust I may retain his

friendship, and that he will believe in the esteem and gratitude of

your most sincere,

Ethel Newcome.”

A copy of this farewell letter was seen by a lady who happened to be a

neighbour of Miss Newcome’s when the family misfortune occurred, and to

whom, in her natural dismay and grief, the young lady fled for comfort

and consolation. “Dearest Mrs. Pendennis,” wrote Miss Ethel to my wife,

“I hear you are at Rosebury; do, do come to your affectionate E. N.”

The next day, it was—“Dearest Laura—If you can, pray, pray come to

Newcome this morning. I want very much to speak to you about the poor

children, to consult you about something most important.” Madame de

Moncontour’s pony-carriage was constantly trotting between Rosebury and

Newcome in these days of calamity.

And my wife, as in duty bound, gave me full reports of all that

happened in that house of mourning. On the very day of the flight, Lady

Anne, her daughter, and some others of her family arrived at Newcome.

The deserted little girl, Barnes’s eldest child, ran, with tears and

cries of joy, to her Aunt Ethel, whom she had always loved better than

her mother; and clung to her and embraced her; and, in her artless

little words, told her that mamma had gone away, and that Ethel should

be her mamma now. Very strongly moved by the misfortune, as by the

caresses and affection of the poor orphaned creature, Ethel took the

little girl to her heart, and promised to be a mother to her, and that

she would not leave her; in which pious resolve I scarcely need say

Laura strengthened her, when, at her young friend’s urgent summons, my

wife came to her.

The household at Newcome was in a state of disorganisation after the

catastrophe. Two of Lady Clara’s servants; it has been stated already,

went away with her. The luckless master of the house was lying wounded

in the neighbouring town. Lady Anne Newcome, his mother, was terribly

agitated by the news, which was abruptly broken to her, of the flight

of her daughter-in-law and her son’s danger. Now she thought of flying

to Newcome to nurse him; and then feared lest she should be ill

received by the invalid—indeed, ordered by Sir Barnes to go home, and

not to bother him. So at home Lady Anne remained, where the thoughts of

the sufferings she had already undergone in that house, of Sir Barnes’s

cruel behaviour to her at her last visit, which he had abruptly

requested her to shorten, of the happy days which she had passed as

mistress of that house and wife of the defunct Sir Brian; the sight of

that departed angel’s picture in the dining-room and wheel-chair in the

gallery; the recollection of little Barnes as a cherub of a child in

that very gallery, and pulled out of the fire by a nurse in the second

year of his age, when he was all that a fond mother could wish—these

incidents and reminiscences so agitated Lady Anne Newcome, that she,

for her part, went off in a series of hysterical fits, and acted as one

distraught: her second daughter screamed in sympathy with her and Miss

Newcome had to take the command of the whole of this demented

household, hysterical mamma and sister, mutineering servants, and

shrieking abandoned nursery, and bring young people and old to peace

and quiet.

On the morrow after his little concussion Sir Barnes Newcome came home,

not much hurt in body, but woefully afflicted in temper, and venting

his wrath upon everybody round about him in that strong language which

he employed when displeased; and under which his valet, his

housekeeper, his butler, his farm-bailiff, his lawyer, his doctor, his

dishevelled mother herself—who rose from her couch and her sal-volatile

to fling herself round her dear boy’s knees—all had to suffer. Ethel

Newcome, the Baronet’s sister, was the only person in his house to whom

Sir Barnes did not utter oaths or proffer rude speeches. He was afraid

of offending her or encountering that resolute spirit, and lapsed into

a surly silence in her presence. Indistinct maledictions growled about

Sir Barnes’s chair when he beheld my wife’s pony-carriage drive up; and

he asked what brought _her_ here? But Ethel sternly told her brother

that Mrs. Pendennis came at her particular request, and asked him

whether he supposed anybody could come into that house for pleasure

now, or for any other motive but kindness? Upon which, Sir Barnes

fairly burst out into tears, intermingled with execrations against his

enemies and his own fate, and assertions that he was the most miserable

beggar alive. He would not see his children: but with more tears he

would implore Ethel never to leave them, and, anon, would ask what he

should do when she married, and he was left alone in that infernal

house?

T. Potts, Esq., of the _Newcome Independent_, used to say afterwards

that the Baronet was in the direst terror of another meeting with Lord

Highgate, and kept a policeman at the lodge-gate, and a second in the

kitchen, to interpose in event of a collision. But Mr. Potts made this

statement in after days, when the quarrel between his party and paper

and Sir Barnes Newcome was flagrant. Five or six days after the meeting

of the two rivals in Newcome market-place, Sir Barnes received a letter

from the friend of Lord Highgate, informing him that his lordship,

having waited for him according to promise, had now left England, and

presumed that the differences between them were to be settled by their

respective lawyers—infamous behaviour on a par with the rest of Lord

Highgate’s villainy, the Baronet said. “When the scoundrel knew I could

lift my pistol arm,” Barnes said, “Lord Highgate fled the

country;”—thus hinting that death, and not damages, were what he

intended to seek from his enemy.

After that interview in which Ethel communicated to Laura her farewell

letter to Lord Farintosh, my wife returned to Rosebury with an

extraordinary brightness and gaiety in her face and her demeanour. She

pressed Madame de Moncontour’s hands with such warmth, she blushed and

looked so handsome, she sang and talked so gaily, that our host was

struck by her behaviour, and paid her husband more compliments

regarding her beauty, amiability, and other good qualities, than need

be set down here. It may be that I like Paul de Florac so much, in

spite of certain undeniable faults of character, because of his

admiration for my wife. She was in such a hurry to talk to me, that

night, that Paul’s game and Nicotian amusements were cut short by her

visit to the billiard-room; and when we were alone by the cosy

dressing-room fire, she told me what had happened during the day. Why

should Ethel’s refusal of Lord Farintosh have so much elated my wife?

“Ah!” cries Mrs. Pendennis, “she has a generous nature, and the world

has not had time to spoil it. Do you know there are many points that

she never has thought of—I would say problems that she has to work out

for herself, only you, Pen, do not like us poor ignorant women to use

such a learned word as problems? Life and experience force things upon

her mind which others learn from their parents or those who educate

them, but, for which she has never had any teachers. Nobody has ever

told her, Arthur, that it was wrong to marry without love, or pronounce

lightly those awful vows which we utter before God at the altar. I

believe, if she knew that her life was futile, it is but of late she

has thought it could be otherwise, and that she might mend it. I have

read (besides that poem of Goethe of which you are so fond) in books of

Indian travels of Bayaderes, dancing-girls brought up by troops round

about the temples, whose calling is to dance, and wear jewels, and look

beautiful; I believe they are quite respected in—in Pagoda-land. They

perform before the priests in the pagodas; and the Brahmins and the

Indian princes marry them. Can we cry out against these poor creatures,

or against the custom of their country? It seems to me that young women

in our world are bred up in a way not very different. What they do they

scarcely know to be wrong. They are educated for the world, and taught

to display: their mothers will give them to the richest suitor, as they

themselves were given before. How can these think seriously, Arthur, of

souls to be saved, weak hearts to be kept out of temptation, prayers to

be uttered, and a better world to be held always in view, when the

vanities of this one are all their thought and scheme? Ethel’s simple

talk made me smile sometimes, do you know, and her _strenuous_ way of

imparting her discoveries. I thought of the shepherd boy who made a

watch, and found on taking it into the town how very many watches there

were, and how much better than his. But the poor child has had to make

hers for herself, such as it is; and, indeed, is employed now in

working on it. She told me very artlessly her little history, Arthur;

it affected me to hear her simple talk, and—and I blessed God for our

mother, my dear, and that my early days had had a better guide.

“You know that for a long time it was settled that she was to marry her

cousin, Lord Kew. She was bred to that notion from her earliest youth;

about which she spoke as we all can about our early days. They were

spent, she said, in the nursery and schoolroom for the most part. She

was allowed to come to her mother’s dressing-room, and sometimes to see

more of her during the winter at Newcome. She describes her mother as

always the kindest of the kind: but from very early times the daughter

must have felt her own superiority, I think, though she does not speak

of it. You should see her at home now in their dreadful calamity. She

seems the only person of the house who keeps her head.

“She told very nicely and modestly how it was Lord Kew who parted from

her, not she who had dismissed him, as you know the Newcomes used to

say. I have heard that—oh—that man Sir Barnes say so myself. She says

humbly that her cousin Kew was a great deal too good for her; and so is

every one almost, she adds, poor thing!”

“Poor every one! Did you ask about him, Laura?” said Mr. Pendennis.

“No; I did not venture. She looked at me out of her downright eyes, and

went on with her little tale. ‘I was scarcely more than a child then,’

she continued, ‘and though I liked Kew very much—who would not like

such a generous honest creature? I felt somehow that I was _taller_

than my cousin, and as if I ought not to marry him, or should make him

unhappy if I did. When poor papa used to talk, we children remarked

that mamma hardly listened to him; and so we did not respect him as we

should, and Barnes was especially scoffing and odious with him. Why,

when he was a boy, he used to sneer at papa openly before us younger

ones. Now Harriet admires everything that Kew says, and that makes her

a great deal happier at being with him.’ And then,” added Mrs.

Pendennis, “Ethel said, ‘I hope you respect your husband, Laura: depend

on it, you will be happier if you do.’ Was not that a fine discovery of

Ethel’s, Mr. Pen?

“‘Clara’s terror of Barnes frightened me when I stayed in the house,’

Ethel went on. ‘I am sure _I_ would not tremble before any man in the

world as she did. I saw early that she used to deceive him, and tell

him lies, Laura. I do not mean lies of words alone, but lies of looks

and actions. Oh! I do not wonder at her flying from him. He was

dreadful to be with: cruel, and selfish, and cold. He was made worse by

marrying a woman he did not love; as she was, by that unfortunate union

with him. Suppose he had found a clever woman who could have controlled

him, and amused him, and whom he and his friends could have admired,

instead of poor Clara, who made his home wearisome, and trembled when

he entered it? Suppose she could have married that unhappy man to whom

she was attached early? I was frightened, Laura, to think how ill this

worldly marriage had prospered.

“‘My poor grandmother, whenever I spoke upon such a subject, would

break out into a thousand gibes and sarcasms, and point to many of our

friends who had made love-matches, and were quarrelling now as fiercely

as though they had never loved each other. You remember that dreadful

case in France Duc de ——, who murdered his duchess? That was a

love-match, and I can remember the sort of screech with which Lady Kew

used to speak about it; and of the journal which the poor duchess kept,

and in which she noted down all her husband’s ill-behaviour.’”

“Hush, Laura! Do you remember where we are? If the Princess were to put

down all Florac’s culpabilities in an album, what a ledger it would

be—as big as Dr. Portman’s Chrysostom!” But this was parenthetical: and

after a smile, and a little respite, the young woman proceeded in her

narration of her friend’s history.

“‘I was willing enough to listen,’ Ethel said, ‘to grandmamma then: for

we are glad of an excuse to do what we like; and I liked admiration,

and rank, and great wealth, Laura; and Lord Farintosh offered me these.

I liked to surpass my companions, and I saw _them_ so eager in pursuing

him! You cannot think, Laura, what meannesses women in the world will

commit—mothers and daughters too, in the pursuit of a person of his

great rank. Those Miss Burrs, you should have seen them at the

country-houses where we visited together, and how they followed him;

how they would meet him in the parks and shrubberies; how they liked

smoking though I knew it made them ill; how they were always finding

pretexts for getting near him! Oh, it was odious!’”

I would not willingly interrupt the narrative, but let the reporter be

allowed here to state that at this point of Miss Newcome’s story (which

my wife gave with a very pretty imitation of the girl’s manner), we

both burst out laughing so loud that little Madame de Moncontour put

her head into the drawing-room and asked what we was a-laughing at? We

did not tell our hostess that poor Ethel and her grandmother had been

accused of doing the very same thing for which she found fault with the

Misses Burr. Miss Newcome thought _herself_ quite innocent, or how

should she have cried out at the naughty behaviour of other people?

“‘Wherever we went, however,’ resumed my wife’s young penitent, ‘it was

easy to see, I think I may say so without vanity, who was the object of

Lord Farintosh’s attention. He followed us everywhere; and we could not

go upon any visit in England or Scotland but he was in the same house.

Grandmamma’s whole heart was bent upon that marriage, and when he

proposed for me I do not disown that I was very pleased and vain.

“‘It is in these last months that I have heard about him more, and

learned to know him better—him and myself too, Laura. Some one—some one

you know, and whom I shall always love as a brother—reproached me in

former days for a worldliness about which you talk too sometimes. But

it is not worldly to give yourself up for your family, is it? One

cannot help the rank in which one is born, and surely it is but natural

and proper to marry in it. Not that Lord Farintosh thinks me or any one

of his rank.’ (Here Miss Ethel laughed.) ‘He is the Sultan, and we,

every unmarried girl in society, is his humblest slave. His Majesty’s

opinions upon this subject did not suit me, I can assure you: I have no

notion of such pride!

“‘But I do not disguise from you, dear Laura, that after accepting him,

as I came to know him better, and heard him, and heard of him, and

talked with him daily, and understood Lord Farintosh’s character, I

looked forward with more and more doubt to the day when I was to become

his wife. I have not learned to respect him in these months that I have

known him, and during which there has been mourning in our families. I

will not talk to you about him; I have no right, have I?—to hear him

speak out his heart, and tell it to any friend. He said he liked me

because I did not flatter him. Poor Malcolm! they all do. What was my

acceptance of him, Laura, but flattery? Yes, flattery, and servility to

rank, and a desire to possess it. Would I have accepted plain Malcolm

Roy? I sent away a better than him, Laura.

“‘These things have been brooding in my mind for some months past. I

must have been but an ill companion for him, and indeed he bore with my

waywardness much more kindly than I ever thought possible; and when

four days since we came to this sad house, where he was to have joined

us, and I found only dismay and wretchedness, and these poor children

deprived of a mother, whom I pity, God help her, for she has been made

so miserable—and is now and must be to the end of her days; as I lay

awake, thinking of my own future life, and that I was going to marry,

as poor Clara had married, but for an establishment and a position in

life; I, my own mistress, and not obedient by nature, or a slave to

others as that poor creature was—I thought to myself, why shall I do

this? Now Clara has left us, and is, as it were, dead to us who made

her so unhappy, let me be the mother to her orphans. I love the little

girl, and she has always loved me, and came crying to me that day when

we arrived, and put her dear little arms round my neck, and said,

‘_You_ won’t go away, will you, Aunt Ethel?’ in her sweet voice. And I

will stay with her; and will try and learn myself that I may teach her;

and learn to be good too—better than I have been. Will praying help me,

Laura? I did. I am sure I was right, and that it is my duty to stay

here.’”

Laura was greatly moved as she told her friend’s confession; and when

the next day at church the clergyman read the opening words of the

service I thought a peculiar radiance and happiness beamed from her

bright face.

Some subsequent occurrences in the history of this branch of the

Newcome family I am enabled to report from the testimony of the same

informant who has just given us an account of her own feelings and

life. Miss Ethel and my wife were now in daily communication, and

“my-dearesting” each other with that female fervour, which, cold men of

the world as we are—not only chary of warm expressions of friendship,

but averse to entertaining warm feelings at all—we surely must admire

in persons of the inferior sex, whose loves grow up and reach the skies

in a night; who kiss, embrace, console, call each other by Christian

names, in that sweet, kindly sisterhood of Misfortune and Compassion

who are always entering into partnership here in life. I say the world

is full of Miss Nightingales; and we, sick and wounded in our private

Scutaris, have countless nurse-tenders. I did not see my wife

ministering to the afflicted family at Newcome Park; but I can fancy

her there amongst the women and children, her prudent counsel, her

thousand gentle offices, her apt pity and cheerfulness, the love and

truth glowing in her face, and inspiring her words, movements,

demeanour.

Mrs. Pendennis’s husband for his part did not attempt to console Sir

Barnes Newcome Newcome, Baronet. I never professed to have a

halfpennyworth of pity at that gentleman’s command. Florac, who owed

Barnes his principality and his present comforts in life, did make some

futile efforts at condolence, but was received by the Baronet with such

fierceness, and evident ill-humour, that he did not care to repeat his

visits, and allowed him to vent his curses and peevishness on his own

immediate dependents. We used to ask Laura on her return to Rosebury

from her charity visits to Newcome about the poor suffering master of

the house. She faltered and stammered in describing him and what she

heard of him; she smiled, I grieve to say, for this unfortunate lady

cannot help having a sense of humour; and we could not help laughing

outright sometimes at the idea of that discomfited wretch, that

overbearing creature overborne in his turn—which laughter Mrs. Laura

used to chide as very naughty and unfeeling. When we went into Newcome

the landlord of the King’s Arms looked knowing and quizzical: Tom Potts

grinned at me and rubbed his hands. “This business serves the paper

better than Mr. Warrington’s articles,” says Mr. Potts. “We have sold

no end of _Independents;_ and if you polled the whole borough, I bet

that five to one would say Sir Screwcome Screwcome was served right. By

the way, what’s up about the Marquis of Farintosh, Mr. Pendennis? He

arrived at the Arms last night; went over to the Park this morning, and

is gone back to town by the afternoon train.”

What had happened between the Marquis of Farintosh and Miss Newcome I

am enabled to know from the report of Miss Newcome’s confidante. On the

receipt of that letter of _congé_ which has been mentioned in a former

chapter, his lordship must have been very much excited, for he left

town straightway by that evening’s mail, and on the next morning, after

a few hours of rest at his inn, was at Newcome lodge-gate demanding to

see the Baronet.

On that morning it chanced that Sir Barnes had left home with Mr. Speer,

his legal adviser; and hereupon the Marquis asked to see Miss Newcome;

nor could the lodge-keeper venture to exclude so distinguished a person

from the Park. His lordship drove up to the house, and his name was

taken to Miss Ethel. She turned very pale when she heard it; and my

wife divined at once who was her visitor. Lady Anne had not left her

room as yet. Laura Pendennis remained in command of the little conclave

of children, with whom the two ladies were sitting when Lord Farintosh

arrived. Little Clara wanted to go with her aunt as she rose to leave

the room—the child could scarcely be got to part from her now.

At the end of an hour the carriage was seen driving away, and Ethel

returned looking as pale as before, and red about the eyes. Miss

Clara’s mutton-chop for dinner coming in at the same time, the child

was not so presently eager for her aunt’s company. Aunt Ethel cut up

the mutton-chop very neatly, and then, having seen the child

comfortably seated at her meal, went with her friend into a

neighbouring apartment (of course, with some pretext of showing Laura a

picture, or a piece of china, or a new child’s frock, or with some

other hypocritical pretence by which the ingenuous female attendants

pretended to be utterly blinded), and there, I have no doubt, before

beginning her story, dearest Laura embraced dearest Ethel, and vice

versa.

“He is gone!” at length gasps dearest Ethel.

“Pour toujours? poor young man!” sighs dearest Laura. “Was he very

unhappy, Ethel?”

“He was more angry,” Ethel answers. “He had a right to be hurt, but not

to speak as he did. He lost his temper quite at last, and broke out in

the most frantic reproaches. He forgot all respect and even

gentlemanlike behaviour. Do you know he used words—words such as Barnes

uses sometimes when he is angry! and dared this language to me! I was

sorry till then, very sorry, and very much moved; but I know more than

ever, now, that I was right in refusing Lord Farintosh.”

Dearest Laura now pressed for an account of all that had happened,

which may be briefly told as follows. Feeling very deeply upon the

subject which brought him to Miss Newcome, it was no wonder that Lord

Farintosh spoke at first in a way which moved her. He said he thought

her letter to his mother was very rightly written under the

circumstances, and thanked her for her generosity in offering to

release him from his engagement. But the affair—the painful

circumstance of Highgate, and that—which had happened in the Newcome

family, was no fault of Miss Newcome’s, and Lord Farintosh could not

think of holding her accountable. His friends had long urged him to

marry, and it was by his mother’s own wish that the engagement was

formed, which he was determined to maintain. In his course through the

world (of which he was getting very tired), he had never seen a woman,

a lady who was so—you understand, Ethel—whom he admired so much, who

was likely to make so good a wife for him as you are. “You allude,” he

continued, “to differences we have had—and we have had them—but many of

them, I own, have been from my fault. I have been bred up in a way

different to most young men. I cannot help it if I have had temptations

to which other men are not exposed; and have been placed by—by

Providence—in a high rank of life; I am sure if you share it with me

you will adorn it, and be in every way worthy of it, and make me much

better than I have been. If you knew what a night of agony I passed

after my mother read that letter to me—I know you’d pity me, Ethel,—I

know you would. The idea of losing you makes me wild. My mother was

dreadfully alarmed when she saw the state I was in; so was the doctor—I

assure you he was. And I had no rest at all, and no peace of mind,

until I determined to come down to you; and say that I adored you, and

you only; and that I would hold to my engagement in spite of

everything—and prove to you that—that no man in the world could love

you more sincerely than I do.” Here the young gentleman was so overcome

that he paused in his speech, and gave way to an emotion, for which,

surely no man who has been in the same condition with Lord Farintosh

will blame him.

Miss Newcome was also much touched by this exhibition of natural

feeling; and, I dare say, it was at this time that her eyes showed the

first symptoms of that malady of which the traces were visible an hour

after.

“You are very generous and kind to me, Lord Farintosh,” she said. “Your

constancy honours me very much, and proves how good and loyal you are;

but—but do not think hardly of me for saying that the more I have

thought of what has happened here,—of the wretched consequences of

interested marriages; the long union growing each day so miserable,

that at last it becomes intolerable and is burst asunder, as in poor

Clara’s case;—the more I am resolved not to commit that first fatal

step of entering into a marriage without—without the degree of

affection which people who take that vow ought to feel for one

another.”

“Affection! Can you doubt it? Gracious heavens, I adore you! Isn’t my

being here a proof that I do?” cries the young lady’s lover.

“But I?” answered the girl. “I have asked my own heart that question

before now. I have thought to myself,—If he comes after all,—if his

affection for me survives this disgrace of our family, as it has, and

every one of us should be thankful to you—ought I not to show at least

gratitude for so much kindness and honour, and devote myself to one who

makes such sacrifices for me? But, before all things I owe you the

truth, Lord Farintosh. I never could make you happy; I know I could

not: nor obey you as you are accustomed to be obeyed; nor give you such

a devotion as you have a right to expect from your wife. I thought I

might once. I can’t now! I know that I took you because you were rich,

and had a great name; not because you were honest, and attached to me

as you show yourself to be. I ask your pardon for the deceit I

practised on you.—Look at Clara, poor child, and her misery! My pride,

I know, would never have let me fall as far as she has done; but oh! I

am humiliated to think that I could have been made to say I would take

the first step in that awful career.”

“What career, in God’s name?” cries the astonished suitor. “Humiliated,

Ethel? Who’s going to humiliate you? I suppose there is no woman in

England who need be humiliated by becoming my wife. I should like to

see the one that I can’t pretend to—or to royal blood if I like: it’s

not better than mine. Humiliated, indeed! That _is_ news. Ha! ha! You

don’t suppose that your pedigree, which I know all about, and the

Newcome family, with your barber-surgeon to Edward the Confessor, are

equal to——”

“To yours? No. It is not very long that I have learned to disbelieve in

that story altogether. I fancy it was an odd whim of my poor father’s,

and that our family were quite poor people.

“I knew it,” said Lord Farintosh. “Do you suppose there was not plenty

of women to tell it me?”

“It was not because we were poor that I am ashamed,” Ethel went on.

“That cannot be our fault, though some of us seem think it is, as they

hide the truth so. One of my uncles used to tell me that my

grandfather’s father was a labourer in Newcome: but I was a child then,

and liked to believe the prettiest story best.”

“As if it matters!” cries Lord Farintosh.

“As if it matters in your wife? _n’est-ce pas?_ I never thought that it

would. I should have told you, as it was my duty to tell you all. It

was not my ancestors you cared for; and it is you yourself that your

wife must swear before heaven to love.”

“Of course it’s me,” answers the young man, not quite understanding the

train of ideas in his companion’s mind. “And I’ve given up

everything—everything—and have broken off with my old habits and—and

things, you know—and intend to lead a regular life—and will never go to

Tattersall’s again; nor bet a shilling; nor touch another cigar if you

like—that is, if you don’t like; for I love you so, Ethel—I do, with

all my heart I do!”

“You are very generous and kind, Lord Farintosh,” Ethel said. “It is

myself, not you, I doubt. Oh, I am humiliated to make such a

confession!”

“How humiliated?” Ethel withdrew the hand which the young nobleman

endeavoured to seize.

“If,” she continued, “if I found it was your birth, and your name, and

your wealth that I coveted, and had nearly taken, ought I not to feel

humiliated, and ask pardon of you and of God? Oh, what perjuries poor

Clara was made to speak,—and see what has befallen her! We stood by and

heard her without being shocked. We applauded even. And to what shame

and misery we brought her! Why did her parents and mine consign her to

such ruin! She might have lived pure and happy but for us. With her

example before me—not her flight, poor child—I am not afraid of _that_

happening to me—but her long solitude, the misery of her wasted

years,—my brother’s own wretchedness and faults aggravated a

hundredfold by his unhappy union with her—I must pause while it is yet

time, and recall a promise which I know I should make you unhappy if I

fulfilled. I ask your pardon that I deceived you, Lord Farintosh, and

feel ashamed for myself that I could have consented to do so.”

“Do you mean,” cried the young Marquis, “that after my conduct to

you—after my loving you, so that even this—this disgrace in your family

don’t prevent my going on—after my mother has been down on her knees to

me to break off, and I wouldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—after all White’s

sneering at me and laughing at me, and all my friends, friends of my

family, who would go to—go anywhere for me, advising me, and saying,

‘Farintosh, what a fool you are! break off this match,’—and I wouldn’t

back out, because I loved you so, by Heaven, and because, as a man and

a gentleman, when I give my word I keep it—do you mean that you throw

me over? It’s a shame—it’s a shame!” And again there were tears of rage

and anguish in Farintosh’s eyes.

“What I did was a shame, my lord,” Ethel said, humbly; “and again I ask

your pardon for it. What I do now is only to tell you the truth, and to

grieve with all my soul for the falsehood—yes the falsehood—which I

told you, and which has given your kind heart such cruel pain.”

“Yes, it was a falsehood!” the poor lad cried out. “You follow a

fellow, and you make a fool of him, and you make him frantic in love

with you, and then you fling him over! I wonder you can look me in the

face after such an infernal treason. You’ve done it to twenty fellows

before, I know you have. Everybody said so, and warned me. You draw

them on, and get them to be in love, and then you fling them away. Am I

to go back to London and be made the laughing-stock of the whole

town—I, who might marry any woman in Europe, and who am at the head of

the nobility of England?”

“Upon my word, if you will believe me after deceiving you once,” Ethel

interposed, still very humbly, “I will never say that it was I who

withdrew from you, and that it was not you who refused me. What has

happened here fully authorises you. Let the rupture of the engagement

come from you, my lord. Indeed, indeed, I would spare you all the pain

I can. I have done you wrong enough already, Lord Farintosh.”

And now the Marquis burst forth with tears and imprecations, wild cries

of anger, love, and disappointment, so fierce and incoherent that the

lady to whom they were addressed did not repeat them to her confidante.

Only she generously charged Laura to remember, if ever she heard the

matter talked of in the world, that it was Lord Farintosh’s family

which broke off the marriage; but that his lordship had acted most

kindly and generously throughout the whole affair.

He went back to London in such a state of fury, and raved so wildly

amongst his friends against the whole Newcome family, that many men

knew what the case really was. But all women averred that that

intriguing worldly Ethel Newcome, the apt pupil of her wicked old

grandmother, had met with a deserved rebuff; that, after doing

everything in her power to catch the great _parti_, Lord Farintosh, who

had long been tired of her, flung her over, not liking the connexion;

and that she was living out of the world now at Newcome, under the

pretence of taking care of that unfortunate Lady Clara’s children, but

really because she was pining away for Lord Farintosh, who, as we all

know, married six months afterwards.

CHAPTER LX.

In which we write to the Colonel

Deeming that her brother Barnes had cares enough of his own presently

at hand, Ethel did not think fit to confide to him the particulars of

her interview with Lord Farintosh; nor even was poor Lady Anne informed

that she had lost a noble son-in-law. The news would come to both of

them soon enough, Ethel thought; and indeed, before many hours were

over, it reached Sir Barnes Newcome in a very abrupt and unpleasant

way. He had dismal occasion now to see his lawyers every day; and on

the day after Lord Farintosh’s abrupt visit and departure, Sir Barnes,

going into Newcome upon his own unfortunate affairs, was told by his

attorney, Mr. Speers, how the Marquis of Farintosh had slept for a few

hours at the King’s Arms, and returned to town the same evening by the

train. We may add, that his lordship had occupied the very room in

which Lord Highgate had previously slept; and Mr. Taplow recommends the

bed accordingly, and shows pride it with to this very day.

Much disturbed by this intelligence, Sir Barnes was making his way to

his cheerless home in the evening, when near his own gate he overtook

another messenger. This was the railway porter, who daily brought

telegraphic messages from his uncle and the London bank. The message of

that day was,—“Consols, so-and-so. French Rentes, so much. _Highgate’s

and Farintosh’s accounts withdrawn_.” The wretched keeper of the lodge

owned, with trembling, in reply to the curses and queries of his

employer, that a gentleman, calling himself the Marquis of Farintosh,

had gone up to the house the day before, and come away an hour

afterwards,—did not like to speak to Sir Barnes when he came home, Sir

Barnes looked so bad like.

Now, of course, there could be no concealment from her brother, and

Ethel and Barnes had a conversation, in which the latter expressed

himself with that freedom of language which characterised the head of

the house of Newcome. Madame de Moncontour’s pony-chaise was in waiting

at the hall door, when the owner of the house entered it; and my wife

was just taking leave of Ethel and her little people when Sir Barnes

Newcome entered the lady’s sitting-room.

The livid scowl with which Barnes greeted my wife surprised that lady,

though it did not induce her to prolong her visit to her friend. As

Laura took leave, she heard Sir Barnes screaming to the nurses to “take

those little beggars away,” and she rightly conjectured that some more

unpleasantries had occurred to disturb this luckless gentleman’s

temper.

On the morrow, dearest Ethel’s usual courier, one of the boys from the

lodge, trotted over on his donkey to dearest Laura at Rosebury, with

one of those missives which were daily passing between the ladies. This

letter said:—

“Barnes m’a fait une scène terrible hier. I was obliged to tell him

everything about Lord F., and _to use the plainest language_. At first,

he forbade you the house. He thinks that you have been the cause of

F.’s dismissal, and charged me, _most unjustly_, with a desire to bring

back poor C. N. I replied _as became me_, and told him fairly I would

leave the house if _odious insulting charges_ were made against me, if

my friends were not received. He stormed, he cried, he employed_ his

usual language_,—he was in a dreadful state. He relented and asked

pardon. He goes to town to-night by the mail-train. _Of course_ you

come as usual, dear, dear Laura. I am miserable without you; and you

know I cannot leave poor mamma. Clarykin sends a _thousand kisses_ to

little Arty; and I am _his mother’s_ always affectionate—E. N.

“Will the gentlemen like to shoot our pheasants? Please ask the Prince

to let Warren know when. I sent a brace to poor dear old Mrs. Mason,

and had such a nice letter from her!”

“And who is poor dear Mrs. Mason” asks Mr. Pendennis, as yet but

imperfectly acquainted with the history of the Newcomes.

And Laura told me—perhaps I had heard before, and forgotten—that Mrs.

Mason was an old nurse and pensioner of the Colonel’s, and how he had

been to see her for the sake of old times; and how she was a great

favourite with Ethel; and Laura kissed her little son, and was

exceedingly bright, cheerful, and hilarious that evening, in spite of

the affliction under which her dear friends at Newcome were labouring.

People in country-houses should be exceedingly careful about their

blotting-paper. They should bring their own portfolios with them. If

any kind readers will bear this simple little hint in mind, how much

mischief may they save themselves,—nay, enjoy possibly, by looking at

the pages of the next portfolio in the next friend’s bedroom in which

they sleep. From such a book I once cut out, in Charles Slyboots’

well-known and perfectly clear handwriting, the words, “Miss Emily

Hartington, James Street, Backingham Gate, London,” and produced as

legibly on the blotting-paper as on the envelope which the postman

delivered. After showing the paper round to the company, I enclosed it

in a note and sent it to Mr. Slyboots, who married Miss Hartington

three months afterwards. In such a book at the club I read, as plainly

as you may read this page, a holograph page of the Right Honourable the

Earl of Bareacres, which informed the whole club of a painful and

private circumstance, and said, “My dear Green,—I am truly sorry that I

shall not be able to take up the bill for eight hundred and fifty-six

pounds, which becomes due next Tu——” and upon such a book, going to

write a note in Madame de Moncontour’s drawing-room at Rosebury, what

should I find but proofs that my own wife was engaged in a clandestine

correspondence with a gentleman residing abroad!

“Colonel Newcome, C.B., Montagne de la Cour, Brussels,” I read, in this

young woman’s handwriting; and asked, turning round upon Laura, who

entered the room just as I discovered her guilt: “What have you been

writing to Colonel Newcome about, miss?”

“I wanted him to get me some lace,” she said.

“To lace some nightcaps for me, didn’t you, my dear? He is such a fine

judge of lace! If I had known you had been writing, I would have asked

you to send him a message. I want something from Brussels. Is the

letter—ahem—gone?” (In this artful way, you see, I just hinted that I

should like to see letter.).

“The letter is—ahem—gone,” says Laura. “What do you want from Brussels,

Pen?”

“I want some Brussels sprouts, my love—they are so fine in their native

country.”

“Shall I write to him to send the letter back?” palpitates poor little

Laura; for she thought her husband was offended, by using the ironic

method.

“No, you dear little woman! You need not send for letter the back: and

you need not tell me what was in it: and I will bet you a hundred yards

of lace to a cotton nightcap—and you know whether _I_, madam, am a man

_à bonnet-de-coton_—I will let you that I know what you have been

writing about, under pretence of a message about lace, to our Colonel.”

“He promised to send it me. He really did. Lady Rockminster gave me

twenty pounds——” gasps Laura.

“Under pretence of lace, you have been sending over a love-message. You

want to see whether Clive is still of his old mind. You think the coast

is now clear, and that dearest Ethel may like him. You think Mrs. Mason

is growing very old and infirm, and the sight of her dear boy would——”

“Pen! Pen! _did you open my letter?_” cries Laura; and a laugh which

could afford to be good-humoured (followed by yet another expression of

the lips) ended this colloquy. No; Mr. Pendennis did not see the

letter—but he knew the writer;—flattered himself that he knew women in

general.

“Where did you get your experience of them, sir?” asks Mrs. Laura.

Question answered in the same manner as the previous demand.

“Well, my dear; and why should not the poor boy be made happy?” Laura

continues, standing very close up to her husband. “It is evident to me

that Ethel is fond of him. I would rather see her married to a good

young man whom she loves, than the mistress of a thousand palaces and

coronets. Suppose—suppose you had married Miss Amory, sir, what a

wretched worldly creature you would have been by this time; whereas

now——”

“Now that I am the humble slave of a good woman there is some chance

for me,” cries this model of husbands. “And all good women are

match-makers, as we know very well; and you have had this match in your

heart ever since you saw the two young people together. Now; madam,

since I did not see your letter to the Colonel—though I have guessed

part of it—tell me, what have you said in it? Have you by any chance

told the Colonel that the Farintosh alliance was broken off?”

Laura owned that she had hinted as much.

“You have not ventured to say that Ethel is well inclined to Clive?”

“Oh, no—oh _dear_, no!” But after much cross-examining and a little

blushing on Laura’s part, she is brought to confess that she has asked

the Colonel whether he will not come and see Mrs. Mason, who is pining

to see him, and is growing very old. And I find out that she has been

to see this Mrs. Mason; that she and Miss Newcome visited the old lady

the day before yesterday; and Laura thought from the manner in which

Ethel looked at Clive’s picture, hanging up in the parlour of his

father’s old friend, that she really was very much, etc. etc. So, the

letter being gone, Mrs. Pendennis is most eager about the answer to it,

and day after day examines the bag, and is provoked that it brings no

letter bearing the Brussels post-mark.

Madame de Moncontour seems perfectly well to know what Mrs. Laura has

been doing and is hoping. “What, no letters again to-day? Ain’t it

provoking?” she cries. She is in the conspiracy too; and presently

Florac is one of the initiated. “These women wish to _bacler_ a

marriage between the belle miss and le petit Claive,” Florac announces

to me. He pays the highest compliments to Miss Newcome’s person, as he

speaks regarding the marriage. “I continue to adore your Anglaises,” he

is pleased to say. “What of freshness, what of beauty, what roses! And

then they are so adorably good! Go, Pendennis, thou art a happy

_coquin!_” Mr. Pendennis does not say No. He has won the

twenty-thousand-pound prize; and we know there are worse blanks in that

lottery.

CHAPTER LXI.

In which we are introduced to a New Newcome

No answer came to Mrs. Pendennis’s letter to Colonel Newcome at

Brussels, for the Colonel was absent from that city, and at the time

when Laura wrote was actually in London, whither affairs of his own had

called him. A note from George Warrington acquainted me with this

circumstance; he mentioned that he and the Colonel had dined together

at Bays’s on the day previous, and that the Colonel seemed to be in the

highest spirits. High spirits about what? This news put Laura in a sad

perplexity. Should she write and tell him to get his letters from

Brussels? She would in five minutes have found some other pretext for

writing to Colonel Newcome, had not her husband sternly cautioned the

young woman to leave the matter alone.

The more readily perhaps because he had quarrelled with his nephew Sir

Barnes, Thomas Newcome went to visit his brother Hobson and his

sister-in-law; bent on showing that there was no division between him

and this branch of his family. And you may suppose that the admirable

woman just named had a fine occasion for her virtuous conversational

powers in discoursing upon the painful event which had just happened to

Sir Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson’s

homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have

groaned and lamented, gathered its children about its knees, wept over

them and washed them; gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the

knocker; confabulated with its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces

to its husband; and bored the whole house! The punishment of

worldliness and vanity, the evil of marrying out of one’s station, how

these points must have been explained and enlarged on! Surely the

Peerage was taken off the drawing-room table and removed to papa’s

study, where it could not open, as it used naturally once, to Highgate,

Baron, or Farintosh, Marquis of, being shut behind wires and closely

jammed in on an upper shelf between Blackstone’s Commentaries and the

Farmer’s Magazine! The breaking of the engagement with the Marquis of

Farintosh was known in Bryanstone Square; and you may be sure

interpreted by Mrs. Hobson in the light the most disadvantageous to

Ethel Newcome. A young nobleman—with grief and pain Ethel’s aunt must

own the fact—a young man of notoriously dissipated habits but of great

wealth and rank, had been pursued by the unhappy Lady Kew—Mrs. Hobson

would not say by her _niece_, that were _too_ dreadful—had been

pursued, and followed, and hunted down in the most notorious manner,

and finally made to propose! Let Ethel’s _conduct_ and _punishment_ be

a warning to my dearest girls, and let them bless _Heaven_ they have

parents who are not worldly! After all the trouble and pains, Mrs.

Hobson did not say _disgrace_, the Marquis takes _the very first

pretext_ to break off the match, and leaves the unfortunate girl for

ever!

And now we have to tell of the hardest blow which fell upon poor Ethel,

and this was that her good uncle Thomas Newcome believed the charges

against her. He was willing enough to listen now to anything which was

said against that branch of the family. With such a traitor,

double-dealer, dastard as Barnes at its head, what could the rest of

the race be? When the Colonel offered to endow Ethel and Clive with

every shilling he had in the world, had not Barnes, the arch-traitor,

temporised and told him falsehoods, and hesitated about throwing him

off until the Marquis had declared himself? Yes. The girl he and poor

Clive loved so was ruined by her artful relatives, was unworthy of his

affection and his boy’s, was to be banished, like her worthless

brother, out of his regard for ever. And the man she had chosen in

preference to his Clive!—a roue, a libertine, whose extravagances and

dissipations were the talk of every club, who had no wit, nor talents,

not even constancy (for had he not taken the first opportunity to throw

her off?) to recommend him—only a great title and a fortune wherewith

to bribe her! For shame, for shame! Her engagement to this man was a

blot upon her—the rupture only a just punishment and humiliation. Poor

unhappy girl! let her take care of her wretched brother’s abandoned

children, give up the world, and amend her life.

This was the sentence Thomas Newcome delivered: a righteous and

tender-hearted man, as we know, but judging in this case wrongly, and

bearing much too hardly, as we who know her better must think, upon

one who had her faults certainly, but whose errors were not all of her

own making. Who set her on the path she walked in? It was her parents’

hands which led her, and her parents’ voices which commanded her to

accept the temptation set before her. What did she know of the

character of the man selected to be her husband? Those who should have

known better brought him to her, and vouched for him. Noble, unhappy

young creature! are you the first of your sisterhood who has been

bidden to traffic your beauty, to crush and slay your honest natural

affections, to sell your truth and your life for rank and title? But

the Judge who sees not the outward acts merely, but their causes, and

views not the wrong alone, but the temptations, struggles, ignorance of

erring creatures, we know has a different code to ours—to ours, who

fall upon the fallen, who fawn upon the prosperous so, who administer

our praises and punishments so prematurely, who now strike so hard,

and, anon, spare so shamelessly.

Our stay with our hospitable friends at Rosebury was perforce coming to

a close, for indeed weeks after weeks had passed since we had been

under their pleasant roof; and in spite of dearest Ethel’s

remonstrances it was clear that dearest Laura must take her farewell.

In these last days, besides the visits which daily took place between

one and other, the young messenger was put in ceaseless requisition,

and his donkey must have been worn off his little legs with trotting to

and fro between the two houses, Laura was quite anxious and hurt at not

hearing from the Colonel; it was a shame that he did not have over his

letters from Belgium and answer that one which she had honoured him by

writing. By some information, received who knows how? our host was

aware of the intrigue which Mrs. Pendennis was carrying on; and his

little wife almost as much interested in it as my own. She whispered to

me in her kind way that she would give a guinea, that she would, to see

a certain couple made happy together; that they were born for one

another, that they were; she was for having me go off to fetch Clive:

but who was I to act as Hymen’s messenger, or to interpose in such

delicate family affairs?

All this while Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., remained absent in London,

attending to his banking duties there, and pursuing the dismal

inquiries which ended, in the ensuing Michaelmas term, in the famous

suit of Newcome _v_. Lord Highgate. Ethel, pursuing the plan which she

had laid down for herself from the first, took entire charge of his

children and house: Lady Anne returned to her own family: never indeed

having been of much use in her son’s dismal household. My wife talked

to me of course about her pursuits and amusements at Newcome, in the

ancestral hall which we have mentioned. The children played and ate

their dinner (mine often partook of his infantine mutton, in company

with little Clara and the poor young heir of Newcome) in the room which

had been called my lady’s own, and in which her husband had locked her,

forgetting that the conservatories were open, through which the hapless

woman had fled. Next to this was the baronial library, a side of which

was fitted with the gloomy books from Clapham, which old Mrs. Newcome

had amassed; rows of tracts, and missionary magazines, and dingy quarto

volumes of worldly travel and history which that lady had admitted into

her collection.

Almost on the last day of our stay at Rosebury, the two young ladies

bethought them of paying a visit to the neighbouring town of Newcome,

to that old Mrs. Mason who has been mentioned in a foregoing page in

some yet earlier chapter of our history. She was very old now, very

faithful to the recollections of her own early time, and oblivious of

yesterday. Thanks to Colonel Newcome’s bounty, she had lived in comfort

for many a long year past; and he was as much her boy now as in those

early days of which we have given but an outline. There were Clive’s

pictures of himself and his father over her little mantelpiece, near

which she sat in comfort and warmth by the winter fire which his bounty

supplied.

Mrs. Mason remembered Miss Newcome, prompted thereto by the hints of

her little maid, who was much younger, and had a more faithful memory

than her mistress. Why, Sarah Mason would have forgotten the pheasants

whose very tails decorated the chimney-glass, had not Keziah, the maid,

reminded her that the young lady was the donor. Then she recollected

her benefactor, and asked after her father, the Baronet; and wondered,

for her part, why her boy, the Colonel, was not made baronet, and why

his brother had the property? Her father was a very good man; though

Mrs. Mason had heard he was not much liked in those parts. “Dead and

gone, was he, poor man?” (This came in reply to a hint from Keziah, the

attendant, bawled in the old lady’s ears, who was very deaf.) “Well,

well, we must all go; and if we were all good, like the Colonel, what

was the use of staying? I hope his wife will be good. I am sure such a

good man deserves one,” added Mrs. Mason.

The ladies thought the old woman doting, led thereto by the remark of

Keziah, the maid, that Mrs. Mason have a lost her memory. And she asked

who the other bonny lady was, and Ethel told her that Mrs. Pendennis

was a friend of the Colonel’s and Clive’s.

“Oh, Clive’s friend! Well, she was a pretty lady, and he was a dear

pretty boy. He drew those pictures; and he took off me in my cap, with

my old cat and all—my poor old cat that’s buried this ever so long

ago.”

“She has had a letter from the Colonel, miss,” cries out Keziah.

“Haven’t you had a letter from the Colonel, mum? It came only

yesterday.” And Keziah takes out the letter and shows it to the ladies.

They read as follows:—

“London, Feb. 12, 184-.

“My Dear Old Mason—I have just heard from a friend of mine who has been

staying in your neighbourhood, that you are well and happy, and that

you have been making inquiries after _your young scapegrace_, Tom

Newcome, who is well and happy too, and who proposes to be _happier

still_ before any very long time is over.

“The letter which was written to me about you was sent to me _in

Belgium_, at Brussels, where I have been living—a town near the place

where the famous _Battle of Waterloo_ was fought; and as I had run away

from Waterloo it _followed me to England_.

“I cannot come to Newcome just now to shake my dear old friend and

nurse _by the hand_. I have business in London; and there are those of

my name _living in Newcome_ who would not be very happy to see me and

mine.

“But I promise you a visit before very long, and Clive will come with

me; and when we come I shall introduce a new friend to you, a very

pretty little _daughter-in-law_, whom you must promise to love very

much. She is a _Scotch lassie_, niece of my oldest friend, James

Binnie, Esquire, of the Bengal Civil Service, who will give her a

_pretty bit of siller_, and her present name is Miss Rosa Mackenzie.

“We shall send you a _wedding cake_ soon, and a new gown for Keziah (to

whom remember me), and when I am gone, my grandchildren after me will

hear what a dear friend you were to your affectionate Thomas Newcome.”

Keziah must have thought that there was something between Clive and my

wife, for when Laura had read the letter she laid it down on the table,

and sitting down by it, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into

tears.

Ethel looked steadily at the two pictures of Clive and his father. Then

she put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Come, my dear,” she said,

“it is growing late, and I must go back to my children.” And she

saluted Mrs. Mason and her maid in a very stately manner, and left

them, leading my wife away, who was still exceedingly overcome.

We could not stay long at Rosebury after that. When Madame de

Moncontour heard the news, the good lady cried too. Mrs. Pendennis’s

emotion was renewed as we passed the gates of Newcome Park on our way

to the railroad.

CHAPTER LXII.

Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome

The friendship between Ethel and Laura, which the last narrated

sentimental occurrences had so much increased, subsists very little

impaired up to the present day. A lady with many domestic interests and

increasing family, etc. etc., cannot be supposed to cultivate female

intimacies out of doors with that ardour and eagerness which young

spinsters exhibit in their intercourse; but Laura, whose kind heart

first led her to sympathise with her young friend in the latter’s days

of distress and misfortune, has professed ever since a growing esteem

for Ethel Newcome, and says, that the trials and perhaps grief which

the young lady now had to undergo have brought out the noblest

qualities of her disposition. She is a very different person from the

giddy and worldly girl who compelled our admiration of late in the days

of her triumphant youthful beauty, of her wayward generous humour, of

her frivolities and her flirtations.

Did Ethel shed tears in secret over the marriage which had caused

Laura’s gentle eyes to overflow? We might divine the girl’s grief, but

we respected it. The subject was never mentioned by the ladies between

themselves, and even in her most intimate communications with her

husband that gentleman is bound to say his wife maintained a tender

reserve upon the point, nor cared to speculate upon a subject which her

friend held sacred. I could not for my part but acquiesce in this

reticence; and, if Ethel felt regret and remorse, admire the dignity of

her silence, and the sweet composure of her now changed and saddened

demeanour.

The interchange of letters between the two friends was constant, and in

these the younger lady described at length the duties, occupations, and

pleasures of her new life. She had quite broken with the world, and

devoted herself entirely to the nurture and education of her brother’s

orphan children. She educated herself in order to teach them. Her

letters contain droll yet touching confessions of her own ignorance and

her determination to overcome it. There was no lack of masters of all

kinds in Newcome. She set herself to work like a schoolgirl. The little

piano in the room near the conservatory was thumped by Aunt Ethel until

it became quite obedient to her, and yielded the sweetest music under

her fingers. When she came to pay us a visit at Fairoaks some two years

afterwards she played for our dancing children (our third is named

Ethel, our second Helen, after one still more dear), and we were in

admiration of her skill. There must have been the labour of many lonely

nights when her little charges were at rest, and she and her sad

thoughts sat up together, before she overcame the difficulties of the

instrument so as to be able to soothe herself and to charm and delight

her children.

When the divorce was pronounced, which came in due form, though we know

that Lady Highgate was not much happier than the luckless Lady Clara

Newcome had been, Ethel’s dread was lest Sir Barnes should marry again,

and by introducing a new mistress into his house should deprive her of

the care of her children.

Miss Newcome judged her brother rightly in that he would try to marry,

but a noble young lady to whom he offered himself rejected him, to his

surprise and indignation, for a beggarly clergyman with a small living,

on which she elected to starve; and the wealthy daughter of a

neighbouring manufacturer whom he next proposed to honour with his

gracious hand, fled from him with horror to the arms of her father,

wondering how such a man as that should ever dare to propose marriage

to an honest girl. Sir Barnes Newcome was much surprised at this

outbreak of anger; he thought himself a very ill-used and unfortunate

man, a victim of most cruel persecutions, which we may be sure did not

improve his temper or tend to the happiness of his circle at home.

Peevishness, and selfish rage, quarrels with servants and governesses,

and other domestic disquiet, Ethel had of course to bear from her

brother, but not actual personal ill-usage. The fiery temper of former

days was subdued in her, but the haughty resolution remained, which was

more than a match for her brother’s cowardly tyranny: besides, she was

the mistress of sixty thousand pounds, and by many wily hints and

piteous appeals to his sister Sir Barnes sought to secure this

desirable sum of money for his poor dear unfortunate children.

He professed to think that she was ruining herself for her younger

brothers, whose expenses the young lady was defraying, this one at

college, that in the army, and whose maintenance he thought might be

amply defrayed out of their own little fortunes and his mother’s

jointure: and, by ingeniously proving that a vast number of his

household expenses were personal to Miss Newcome and would never have

been incurred but for her residence in his house, he subtracted for his

own benefit no inconsiderable portion of her income. Thus the

carriage-horses were hers, for what need had he, a miserable bachelor,

of anything more than a riding-horse and a brougham? A certain number

of the domestics were hers, and as he could get no scoundrel of his own

to stay with him, he took Miss Newcome’s servants. He would have had

her pay the coals which burned in his grate, and the taxes due to our

sovereign lady the Queen; but in truth, at the end of the year, with

her domestic bounties and her charities round about Newcome, which

daily increased as she became acquainted with her indigent neighbours,

Miss Ethel, the heiress, was as poor as many poorer persons.

Her charities increased daily with her means of knowing the people

round about her. She gave much time to them and thought; visited from

house to house, without ostentation; was awestricken by that spectacle

of the poverty which we have with us always, of which the sight rebukes

our selfish griefs into silence, the thought compels us to charity,

humility, and devotion. The priests of our various creeds, who

elsewhere are doing battle together continually, lay down their arms in

its presence and kneel before it; subjugated by that overpowering

master. Death, never dying out; hunger always crying; and children born

to it day after day,—our young London lady, flying from the splendours

and follies in which her life had been past, found herself in the

presence of these; threading darkling alleys which swarmed with

wretched life; sitting by naked beds, whither by God’s blessing she was

sometimes enabled to carry a little comfort and consolation; or whence

she came heart-stricken by the overpowering misery, or touched by the

patient resignation of the new friends to whom fate had directed her.

And here she met the priest upon his shrift, the homely missionary

bearing his words of consolation, the quiet curate pacing his round;

and was known to all these, and enabled now and again to help their

people in trouble. “Oh! what good there is in this woman!” my wife

would say to me, as she laid one of Miss Ethel’s letters aside; “who

would have thought this was the girl of your glaring London ballroom?

If she has had grief to bear, how it has chastened and improved her!”

And now I have to confess that all this time, whilst Ethel Newcome has

been growing in grace with my wife, poor Clive has been lapsing sadly

out of favour. She has no patience with Clive. She drubs her little

foot when his name is mentioned and turns the subject. Whither are all

the tears and pities fled now? Mrs. Laura has transferred all her

regard to Ethel, and when that lady’s ex-suitor writes to his old

friend, or other news is had of him, Laura flies out in her usual

tirades against the world, the horrid wicked selfish world, which

spoils everybody who comes near it. What has Clive done, in vain his

apologist asks, that an old friend should be so angry with him?

She is not angry with him—not she. She only does not care about him.

She wishes him no manner of harm—not the least, only she has lost all

interest in him. And the Colonel too, the poor good old Colonel, was

actually in Mrs. Pendennis’ black books, and when he sent her the

Brussels veil which we have heard of, she did not think it was a

bargain at all—not particularly pretty, in fact, rather dear at the

money. When we met Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome in London, whither they

came a few months after their marriage, and where Rosey appeared as

pretty, happy, good-humoured a little blushing bride as eyes need

behold, Mrs. Pendennis’s reception of her was quite a curiosity of

decorum. “I, not receive her well?” cried Laura. “How on earth would

you have me receive her? I talked to her about everything, and she only

answered yes or no. I showed her the children, and she did not seem to

care. Her only conversation was about millinery and Brussels balls, and

about her dress at the drawing-room. The drawing-room! What business

has she with such follies?”

The fact is, that the drawing-room was Tom Newcome’s affair, not his

son’s, who was heartily ashamed of the figure he cut in that astounding

costume, which English private gentlemen are made to sport when they

bend the knee before their gracious Sovereign.

Warrington roasted poor Clive upon the occasion, and complimented him

with his usual gravity, until the young fellow blushed and his father

somewhat testily signified to our friend that his irony was not

agreeable. “I suppose,” says the Colonel, with great hauteur, “that

there is nothing ridiculous in an English gentleman entertaining

feelings of loyalty and testifying his respect to his Queen: and I

presume that Her Majesty knows best, and has a right to order in what

dress her subjects shall appear before her and I don’t think it’s kind

of you, George, I say, I don’t think it’s kind of you to quiz my boy

for doing his duty to his Queen and to his father too, sir,—for it was

at my request that Clive went, and we went together, sir—to the levee

and then to the drawing-room afterwards with Rosey, who was presented

by the lady of my old friend, Sir George Tufto, a lady of rank herself,

and the wife of as brave an officer as ever drew a sword.”

Warrington stammered an apology for his levity, but no explanations

were satisfactory, and it was clear George had wounded the feelings of

our dear simple old friend.

After Clive’s marriage, which was performed at Brussels, Uncle James

and the lady, his sister, whom we have sometimes flippantly ventured to

call the Campaigner, went off to perform that journey to Scotland which

James had meditated for ten years past; and, now little Rosey was made

happy for life, to renew acquaintance with little Josey. The Colonel

and his son and daughter-in-law came to London, not to the bachelor

quarters, where we have seen them, but to an hotel, which they occupied

until their new house could be provided for them, a sumptuous mansion

in the Tyburnian district, and one which became people of their

station.

We have been informed already what the Colonel’s income was, and have

the gratification of knowing that it was very considerable. The simple

gentleman who would dine off a crust, and wear a coat for ten years,

desired that his children should have the best of everything: ordered

about upholsterers, painters, carriage-makers, in his splendid Indian

way; presented pretty Rosey with brilliant jewels for her introduction

at Court, and was made happy by the sight of the blooming young

creature decked in these magnificences, and admired by all his little

circle. The old boys, the old generals, the old colonels, the old

qui-his from the club, came and paid her their homage; the directors’

ladies, and the generals’ ladies, called upon her, and feasted her at

vast banquets served on sumptuous plate. Newcome purchased plate and

gave banquets in return for these hospitalities. Mrs. Clive had a neat

close carriage for evenings, and a splendid barouche to drive in the

Park. It was pleasant to see this equipage at four o’clock of an

afternoon, driving up to Bays’s, with Rosey most gorgeously attired

reclining within; and to behold the stately grace of the old gentleman

as he stepped out to welcome his daughter-in-law, and the bow he made

before he entered her carriage. Then they would drive round the Park;

round and round and round; and the old generals, and the old colonels,

and old fogies, and their ladies and daughters, would nod and smile out

of _their_ carriages as they crossed each other upon this charming

career of pleasure.

I confess that a dinner at the Colonel’s, now he appeared in all his

magnificence, was awfully slow. No peaches could look fresher than

Rosey’s cheeks,—no damask was fairer than her pretty little shoulders.

No one, I am sure, could be happier than she, but she did not impart

her happiness to her friends; and replied chiefly by smiles to the

conversation of the gentlemen at her side. It is true that these were

for the most part elderly dignitaries, distinguished military officers

with blue-black whiskers, retired old Indian judges, and the like,

occupied with their victuals, and generally careless to please. But

that solemn happiness of the Colonel, who shall depict it:—that look of

affection with which he greeted his daughter as she entered, flounced

to the waist, twinkling with innumerable jewels, holding a dainty

pocket-handkerchief, with smiling eyes, dimpled cheeks, and golden

ringlets! He would take her hand, or follow her about from group to

group, exchanging precious observations about the weather, the Park,

the exhibition, nay, the opera, for the old man actually went to the

opera with his little girl, and solemnly snoozed by her side in a white

waistcoat.

Very likely this was the happiest period of Thomas Newcome’s life. No

woman (save one perhaps fifty years ago) had ever seemed so fond of him

as that little girl. What pride he had in her, and what care he took of

her! If she was a little ailing, what anxiety and hurrying for doctors!

What droll letters came from James Binnie, and how they laughed over

them: with what respectful attention he acquainted Mrs. Mack with

everything that took place: with what enthusiasm that Campaigner

replied! Josey’s husband called a special blessing upon his head in the

church at Musselburgh; and little Jo herself sent a tinful of Scotch

bun to her darling sister, with a request from her husband that he

might have a few shares in the famous Indian Company.

The Company was in a highly flourishing condition, as you may suppose,

when one of its directors, who at the same time was one of the

honestest men alive, thought it was his duty to live in the splendour

in which we now behold him. Many wealthy City men did homage to him.

His brother Hobson, though the Colonel had quarrelled with the chief of

the firm, yet remained on amiable terms with Thomas Newcome, and shared

and returned his banquets for a while. Charles Honeyman we may be sure

was present at many of them, and smirked a blessing over the plenteous

meal. The Colonel’s influence was such with Mr. Sherrick that he

pleaded Charles’s cause with that gentleman, and actually brought to a

successful termination that little love-affair in which we have seen

Miss Sherrick and Charles engaged. Mr. Sherrick was not disposed to

part with much money during his lifetime—indeed, he proved to Colonel

Newcome that he was not so rich as the world supposed him. But, by the

Colonel’s interest, the chaplaincy of Boggley Wollah was procured for

the Rev. C. Honeyman, who now forms the delight of that flourishing

station.

All this while we have said little about Clive, who in truth was

somehow in the background in this flourishing Newcome group. To please

the best father in the world; the kindest old friend who endowed his

niece with the best part of his savings; to settle that question about

marriage and have an end of it;—Clive Newcome had taken a pretty and

fond young girl, who respected and admired him beyond all men, and who

heartily desired to make him happy. To do as much would not his father

have stripped his coat from his back,—have put his head under

Juggernaut’s chariot-wheel, have sacrificed any ease, comfort, or

pleasure for the youngster’s benefit? One great passion he had had and

closed the account of it: a worldly ambitious girl—how foolishly

worshipped and passionately beloved no matter—had played with him for

years; had flung him away when a dissolute suitor with a great fortune

and title had offered himself. Was he to whine and despair because a

jilt had fooled him? He had too much pride and courage for any such

submission; he would accept the lot in life which was offered to him,

no undesirable one surely; he would fulfil the wish of his father’s

heart, and cheer his kind declining years. In this way the marriage was

brought about. It was but a whisper to Rosey in the drawing-room, a

start and a blush from the little girl as he took the little willing

hand, a kiss for her from her delighted old father-in-law, a twinkle in

good old James’s eyes, and double embrace from the Campaigner as she

stood over them in a benedictory attitude;—expressing her surprise at

an event for which she had been jockeying ever since she set eyes on

young Newcome; and calling upon Heaven to bless her children. So, as a

good thing when it is to be done had best be done quickly, these worthy

folks went off almost straightway to a clergyman, and were married out

of hand—to the astonishment of Captains Hoby and Goby when they came to

hear of the event. Well, my gallant young painter and friend of my

boyhood! if my wife chooses to be angry at your marriage, shall her

husband not wish you happy?

Suppose we had married our first loves, others of us, were we the

happier now? Ask Mr. Pendennis, who sulked in his tents when his

Costigan, his Briseis, was ravished from him. Ask poor George

Warrington, who had his own way, Heaven help him! There was no need why

Clive should turn monk because number one refused him; and, that

charmer removed, why he should not take to his heart number two. I am

bound to say, that when I expressed these opinions to Mrs. Laura, she

was more angry and provoked than ever.

It is in the nature of such a simple soul as Thomas Newcome, to see but

one side of a question, and having once fixed Ethel’s worldliness in

his mind, and her brother’s treason, to allow no argument of advocates

of the other side to shake his displeasure. Hence the one or two

appeals which Laura ventured to make on behalf of her friend, were

checked by the good Colonel with a stern negation. If Ethel was not

guiltless, she could not make him see at least that she was not guilty.

He dashed away all excuses and palliations. Exasperated as he was, he

persisted in regarding the poor girl’s conduct in its most unfavourable

light. “She was rejected, and deservedly rejected, by the Marquis of

Farintosh,” he broke out to me once, who was not indeed authorised to

tell all I knew regarding the story; “the whole town knows it; all the

clubs ring with it. I blush, sir, to think that my brother’s child

should have brought such a stain upon our name.” In vain, I told him

that my wife, who knew all the circumstances much better, judged Miss

Newcome far more favourably, and indeed greatly esteemed and loved her.

“Pshaw! sir,” breaks out the indignant Colonel, “your wife is an

innocent creature, who does not know the world as we men of experience

do,—as I do, sir;” and would have no more of the discussion. There is

no doubt about it, there was a coolness between my old friend’s father

and us.

As for Barnes Newcome, we gave up that worthy, and the Colonel showed

him no mercy. He recalled words used by Warrington, which I have

recorded in a former page, and vowed that he only watched for an

opportunity to crush the miserable reptile. He hated Barnes as a

loathsome traitor, coward, and criminal; he made no secret of his

opinion; and Clive, with the remembrance of former injuries, of

dreadful heart-pangs; the inheritor of his father’s blood, his honesty

of nature, and his impetuous enmity against wrong; shared to the full

his sire’s antipathy against his cousin, and publicly expressed his

scorn and contempt for him. About Ethel he would not speak. “Perhaps

what you say, Pen, is true,” he said. “I hope it is. Pray God it is.”

But his quivering lips and fierce countenance, when her name was

mentioned or her defence attempted, showed that he too had come to

think ill of her. “As for her brother, as for that scoundrel,” he would

say, clenching his fist, “if ever I can punish him I will. I shouldn’t

have the soul of a dog, if ever I forgot the wrongs that have been done

me by that vagabond. Forgiveness? Pshaw! Are you dangling to sermons,

Pen, at your wife’s leading-strings? Are you preaching that cant? There

are some injuries that no honest man should forgive, and I shall be a

rogue on the day I shake hands with that villain.”

“Clive has adopted the Iroquois ethics,” says George Warrington,

smoking his pipe sententiously, “rather than those which are at present

received among us. I am not sure that something is not to be said, as

against the Eastern, upon the Western, or Tomahawk, or Ojibbeway side

of the question. I should not like,” he added, “to be in a vendetta or

feud, and to have you, Clive, and the old Colonel engaged against me.”

“I would rather,” I said, “for my part, have half a dozen such enemies

as Clive and the Colonel, than one like Barnes. You never know where or

when that villain may hit you.” And before a very short period was

over, Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., hit his two hostile kinsmen such a

blow, as one might expect from such a quarter.

CHAPTER LXIII.

Mrs. Clive at Home

Clive and his father did not think fit to conceal their opinions

regarding their kinsman, Barnes Newcome, and uttered them in many

public places when Sir Barnes’s conduct was brought into question, we

may be sure that their talk came to the Baronet’s ears, and did not

improve his already angry feeling towards those gentlemen. For a while

they had the best of the attack. The Colonel routed Barnes out of his

accustomed club at Bays’s; where also the gallant Sir George Tufto

expressed himself pretty openly with respect to the poor Baronet’s want

of courage: the Colonel had bullied and browbeaten Barnes in the

parlour of his own bank, and the story was naturally well known in the

City; where it certainly was not pleasant for Sir Barnes, as he walked

to ’Change, to meet sometimes the scowls of the angry man of war, his

uncle, striding down to the offices of the Bundelcund Bank, and armed

with that terrible bamboo cane.

But though his wife had undeniably run away after notorious

ill-treatment from her husband; though he had shown two white feathers

in those unpleasant little affairs with his uncle and cousin; though

Sir Barnes Newcome was certainly neither amiable nor popular in the

City of London, his reputation as a most intelligent man of business

still stood; the credit of his house was deservedly high, and people

banked with him, and traded with him, in spite of faithless wives and

hostile colonels.

When the outbreak between Colonel Newcome and his nephew took place, it

may be remembered that Mr. Hobson Newcome, the other partner of the

firm of Hobson Brothers, waited upon Colonel Newcome, as one of the

principal English directors of the B. B. C., and hoped that although

private differences would, of course, oblige Thomas Newcome to cease

all personal dealings with the bank of Hobson, the affairs of the

Company in which he was interested ought not to suffer on this account;

and that the Indian firm should continue dealing with Hobsons on the

same footing as before. Mr. Hobson Newcome represented to the Colonel,

in his jolly frank way, that whatever happened between the latter and

his nephew Barnes, Thomas Newcome had still one friend in the house;

that the transactions between it and the Indian Company were mutually

advantageous; finally, that the manager of the Indian bank might

continue to do business with Hobsons as before. So the B. B. C. sent

its consignments to Hobson Brothers, and drew its bills, which were

duly honoured by that firm.

More than one of Colonel Newcome’s City acquaintances, among them his

agent, Mr. Jolly, and his ingenuous friend, Mr. Sherrick, especially,

hinted to Thomas Newcome to be very cautious in his dealings with

Hobson Brothers, and keep a special care lest that house should play

him an evil turn. They both told him that Barnes Newcome had said more

than once, in answer to reports of the Colonel’s own speeches against

Barnes. “I know that hot-headed, blundering Indian uncle of mine is

furious against me, on account of an absurd private affair and

misunderstanding, which he is too obstinate to see in the proper light.

What is my return for the abuse and rant which he lavishes against me?

I cannot forget that he is my grandfather’s son, an old man, utterly

ignorant both of society and business here; and as he is interested in

this Indian Banking Company, which must be preciously conducted when it

appointed him as the guardian and overseer of its affairs in England, I

do my very best to serve the Company, and I can tell you, its

blundering, muddleheaded managers, black and white, owe no little to

the assistance which they have had from our house. If they don’t like

us, why do they go on dealing with us? We don’t want them and their

bills. We were a leading house fifty years before they were born, and

shall continue to be so long after they come to an end.” Such was

Barnes’s case, as stated by himself. It was not a very bad one, or very

unfairly stated, considering the advocate. I believe he has always

persisted in thinking that he never did his uncle any wrong.

Mr. Jolly and Mr. Sherrick, then, both entreated Thomas Newcome to use

his best endeavours, and bring the connexion of the B. B. C. and Hobson

Brothers to a speedy end. But Jolly was an interested party; he and his

friends would have had the agency of the B. B. C., and the profits

thereof, which Hobsons had taken from them. Mr. Sherrick was an outside

practitioner, a guerilla amongst regular merchants. The opinions of one

and the other, though submitted by Thomas Newcome duly to his

co-partners, the managers and London board of directors of the

Bundelcund Banking Company, were overruled by that assembly.

They had their establishment and apartments in the City; they had their

clerks and messengers, their managers’ room and board-room, their

meetings, where no doubt great quantities of letters were read, vast

ledgers produced; where Tom Newcome was voted into the chair, and voted

out with thanks; where speeches were made, and the affairs of the B. B.

C. properly discussed. These subjects are mysterious, terrifying,

unknown to me. I cannot pretend to describe them. Fred Bayham, I

remember, used to be great in his knowledge of the affairs of the

Bundelcund Banking Company. He talked of cotton, wool, copper, opium,

indigo, Singapore, Manilla, China, Calcutta, Australia, with prodigious

eloquence and fluency. His conversation was about millions. The most

astounding paragraphs used to appear in the _Pall Mall Gazette_,

regarding the annual dinner at Blackwall, which the directors gave, and

to which he, and George, and I, as friends of the court, were invited.

What orations were uttered, what flowing bumpers emptied in the praise

of this great Company; what quantities of turtle and punch did Fred

devour at its expense! Colonel Newcome was the kindly old chairman at

these banquets; the prince, his son, taking but a modest part in the

ceremonies, and sitting with us, his old cronies.

All the gentlemen connected with the board, all those with whom the B.

B. C. traded in London, paid Thomas Newcome extraordinary respect. His

character for wealth was deservedly great, and of course multiplied by

the tongue of Rumour. F. B. knew to a few millions of rupees, more or

less, what the Colonel possessed, and what Clive would inherit. Thomas

Newcome’s distinguished military services, his high bearing, lofty

courtesy, simple but touching garrulity;—for the honest man talked much

more now than he had been accustomed to do in former days, and was not

insensible to the flattery which his wealth brought him,—his reputation

as a keen man of business, who had made his own fortune by operations

equally prudent and spirited, and who might make the fortunes of

hundreds of other people, brought the worthy Colonel a number of

friends, and I promise you that the loudest huzzahs greeted his health

when it was proposed at the Blackwall dinners. At the second annual

dinner after Clive’s marriage some friends presented Mrs. Clive Newcome

with a fine testimonial. There was a superb silver cocoa-nut tree,

whereof the leaves were dexterously arranged for holding candle and

pickles; under the cocoa-nut was an Indian prince on a camel, giving

his hand to a cavalry officer on horseback—a howitzer, a plough, a

loom, a bale of cotton, on which were the East India Company’s arms, a

Brahmin, Britannia, and Commerce with a cornucopia were grouped round

the principal figures: and if you would see a noble account of this

chaste and elegant specimen of British art, you are referred to the

pages of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of that year, as well as to Fred

Bayham’s noble speech in the course of the evening, when it was

exhibited. The East and its wars, and its heroes, Assaye and

Seringapatam (“and Lord Lake and Laswaree too,” calls out the Colonel

greatly elated), tiger-hunting, palanquins, Juggernaut, elephants, the

burning of widows—all passed before us in F. B.’s splendid oration. He

spoke of the product of the Indian forest, the palm-tree, the cocoa-nut

tree, the banyan-tree. Palms the Colonel had already brought back with

him, the palms of valour, won in the field of war (cheers). Cocoa-nut

trees he had never seen, though he had heard wonders related regarding

the milky contents of their fruit. Here at any rate was one tree of the

kind, under the branches of which he humbly trusted often to

repose—and, if he might be so bold as to carry on the Eastern metaphor,

he would say, knowing the excellence of the Colonel’s claret and the

splendour of his hospitality, that he would prefer a cocoa-nut day at

the Colonel’s to a banyan day anywhere else. Whilst F. B.’s speech went

on, I remember J. J. eyeing the trophy, and the queer expression of his

shrewd face. The health of British Artists was drunk a propos of this

splendid specimen of their skill, and poor J. J. Ridley, Esq., A.R.A.,

had scarce a word to say in return. He and Clive sat by one another,

the latter very silent and gloomy. When J. J. and I met in the world,

we talked about our friend, and it was easy for both of us to see that

neither was satisfied with Clive’s condition.

The fine house in Tyburnia was completed by this time, as gorgeous as

money could make it. How different it was from the old Fitzroy Square

mansion with its ramshackle furniture, and spoils of brokers’ shops,

and Tottenham Court Road odds and ends! An Oxford Street upholsterer

had been let loose in the yet virgin chambers; and that inventive

genius had decorated them with all the wonders his fancy could devise.

Roses and cupids quivered on the ceilings, up to which golden

arabesques crawled from the walls; your face (handsome or otherwise)

was reflected by countless looking-glasses, so multiplied and arranged

as, as it were, to carry you into the next street. You trod on velvet,

pausing with respect in the centre of the carpet, where Rosey’s cypher

was worked in the sweet flowers which bear her name. What delightful

crooked legs the chairs had! What corner cupboards there were filled

with Dresden gimcracks, which it was a part of this little woman’s

business in life to purchase! What etageres, and bonbonnieres, and

chiffonnieres! What awfully bad pastels there were on the walls! What

frightful Boucher and Lancret shepherds and shepherdesses leered over

the portieres! What velvet-bound volumes, mother-of-pearl albums,

inkstands representing beasts of the field, prie-dieu chairs, and

wonderful knick-knacks I can recollect! There was the most magnificent

piano, though Rosey seldom sang any of her six songs now; and when she

kept her couch at a certain most interesting period, the good Colonel,

ever anxious to procure amusement for his darling, asked whether she

would not like a barrel-organ grinding fifty or sixty favourite pieces,

which a bearer could turn? And he mentioned how Windus, of their

regiment, who loved music exceedingly, had a very fine instrument of

this kind out to Barrackpore in the year 1810, and relays of barrels by

each ship with all the new tunes from Europe. The Testimonial took its

place in the centre of Mrs. Clive’s table, surrounded by satellites of

plate. The delectable parties were constantly gathered together, the

grand barouche rolling in the Park, or stopping at the principal shops.

Little Rosey bloomed in millinery, and was still the smiling little pet

of her father-in-law, and poor Clive, in the midst of all these

splendours, was gaunt, and sad, and silent; listless at most times,

bitter and savage at others, pleased only when he was out of the

society which bored him, and in the company of George and J. J., the

simple friends of his youth.

His careworn look and altered appearance mollified my wife towards

him—who had almost taken him again into favour. But she did not care

for Mrs. Clive, and the Colonel, somehow, grew cool towards us, and to

look askance upon the little band of Clive’s friends. It seemed as if

there were two parties in the house. There was Clive’s set—J. J., the

shrewd, silent little painter; Warrington, the cynic; and the author of

the present biography, who was, I believe, supposed to give himself

contemptuous airs; and to have become very high and mighty since his

marriage. Then there was the great, numerous, and eminently respectable

set, whose names were all registered in little Rosey’s little

visiting-book, and to whose houses she drove round, duly delivering the

cards of Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome, and Colonel Newcome;—the generals

and colonels, the judges and the fogies. The only man who kept well

with both sides of the house was F. Bayham, Esq., who, having got into

clover, remained in the enjoyment of that welcome pasture; who really

loved Clive and the Colonel too, and had a hundred pleasant things and

funny stories (the droll old creature!) to tell to the little lady for

whom we others could scarcely find a word. The old friends of the

student-days were not forgotten, but they did not seem to get on in the

new house. The Miss Gandishes came to one of Mrs. Clive’s balls, still

in blue crape, still with ringlets on their wizened old foreheads,

accompanying papa, with his shirt-collars turned down—who gazed in mute

wonder on the splendid scene. Warrington actually asked Miss Gandish to

dance, making woeful blunders, however, in the quadrille, while Clive,

with something like one of his old smiles on his face, took out Miss

Zoe Gandish, her sister. We made Gandish overeat and overdrink himself

in the supper-room, and Clive cheered him by ordering a full length of

Mrs. Clive Newcome from his distinguished pencil. Never was seen a

grander exhibition of white satin and jewels. Smee, R.A., was furious

at the preference shown to his rival.

We had Sandy M’Collop, too, at the party, who had returned from Rome,

with his red beard, and his picture of the murder of the Red Comyn,

which made but a dim effect in the Octagon Room of the Royal Academy,

where the bleeding agonies of the dying warrior were veiled in an

unkind twilight. On Sandy and his brethren little Rosey looked rather

coldly. She tossed up her little head in conversation with me, and gave

me to understand that this party was only an _omnium gatherum_, not one

of the select parties, from which Heaven defend us. “We are Poins, and

Nym, and Pistol,” growled out George Warrington, as he strode away to

finish the evening in Clive’s painting- and smoking-room. “Now Prince

Hal is married, and shares the paternal throne, his Princess is ashamed

of his brigand associates of former days.” She came and looked at us

with a feeble little smile, as we sat smoking, and let the daylight in

on us from the open door, and hinted to Mr. Clive that it was time to

go to bed.

So Clive Newcome lay in a bed of down and tossed and tumbled there. He

went to fine dinners, and sat silent over them; rode fine horses, and

black Care jumped up behind the moody horseman. He was cut off in a

great measure from the friends of his youth, or saw them by a kind of

stealth and sufferance; was a very lonely, poor fellow, I am afraid,

now that people were testimonialising his wife, and many an old comrade

growling at his haughtiness and prosperity.

In former days, when his good father recognised the difference which

fate, and time, and temper, had set between him and his son, we have

seen with what a gentle acquiescence the old man submitted to his

inevitable fortune, and how humbly he bore that stroke of separation

which afflicted the boy lightly enough, but caused the loving sire so

much pain. Then there was no bitterness between them, in spite of the

fatal division; but now, it seemed as if there was anger on Thomas

Newcome’s part, because, though come together again, they were not

united, though with every outward appliance of happiness Clive was not

happy. What young man on earth could look for more? a sweet young wife,

a handsome home, of which the only encumbrance was an old father, who

would give his last drop of blood in his son’s behalf. And it was to

bring about this end that Thomas Newcome had toiled and had amassed a

fortune. Could not Clive, with his talents and education, go down once

or twice a week to the City and take a decent part in the business by

which his wealth was secured? He appeared at the various board-rooms

and City conclaves, yawned at the meetings, and drew figures on the

blotting-paper of the Company; had no interest in its transactions, no

heart in its affairs; went away and galloped his horse alone; or

returned to his painting-room, put on his old velvet jacket, and worked

with his palettes and brushes. Palettes and brushes! Could he not give

up these toys when he was called to a much higher station in the world?

Could he not go talk with Rosey;—drive with Rosey, kind little soul,

whose whole desire was to make him happy? Such thoughts as these, no

doubt, darkened the Colonel’s mind, and deepened the furrows round his

old eyes. So it is, we judge men by our own standards; judge our

nearest and dearest often wrong.

Many and many a time did Clive try and talk with the little Rosey, who

chirped and prattled so gaily to his father. Many a time would she come

and sit by his easel, and try her little powers to charm him, bring him

little tales about their acquaintances, stories about this ball and

that concert, practise artless smiles upon him, gentle little

bouderies, tears, perhaps, followed by caresses and reconciliation. At

the end of which he would return to his cigar; and she, with a sigh and

a heavy heart, to the good old man who had bidden her to go and talk

with him. He used to feel that his father had sent her; the thought

came across him in their conversations, and straightway his heart would

shut up and his face grew gloomy. They were not made to mate with one

another. This was the truth; the shoe was a very pretty little shoe,

but Clive’s foot was too big for it.

Just before the testimonial, Mr. Clive was in constant attendance at

home, and very careful and kind and happy with his wife, and the whole

family party went very agreeably. Doctors were in constant attendance

at Mrs. Clive Newcome’s door; prodigious care was taken by the good

Colonel in wrapping her and in putting her little feet on sofas, and in

leading her to her carriage. The Campaigner came over in immense flurry

from Edinburgh (where Uncle James was now very comfortably lodged in

Picardy Place with the most agreeable society round about him), and all

this circle was in a word very close and happy and intimate; but woe is

me, Thomas Newcome’s fondest hopes were disappointed this time: his

little grandson lived but to see the light and leave it: and sadly,

sadly, those preparations were put away, those poor little robes and

caps, those delicate muslins and cambrics over which many a care had

been forgotten, many a fond prayer thought, if not uttered. Poor little

Rosey! she felt the grief very keenly; but she rallied from it very

soon. In a very few months, her cheeks were blooming and dimpling with

smiles again, and she was telling us how her party was an _omnium

gatherum_.

The Campaigner had ere this returned to the scene of her northern

exploits; not, I believe, entirely of the worthy woman’s own free will.

Assuming the command of the household, whilst her daughter kept her

sofa, Mrs. Mackenzie had set that establishment into uproar and mutiny.

She had offended the butler, outraged the housekeeper, wounded the

sensibilities of the footmen, insulted the doctor, and trampled on the

inmost corns of the nurse. It was surprising what a change appeared in

the Campaigner’s conduct, and how little, in former days, Colonel

Newcome had known her. What the Emperor Napoleon the First said

respecting our Russian enemies, might be applied to this lady,

Grattez-la, and she appeared a Tartar. Clive and his father had a

little comfort and conversation in conspiring against her. The old man

never dared to try, but was pleased with the younger’s spirit and

gallantry in the series of final actions which, commencing over poor

little Rosey’s prostrate body in the dressing-room, were continued in

the drawing-room, resumed with terrible vigour on the enemy’s part in

the dining-room, and ended, to the triumph of the whole establishment,

at the outside of the hall-door.

When the routed Tartar force had fled back to its native north, Rosey

made a confession, which Clive told me afterwards, bursting with bitter

laughter. “You and papa seem to be very much agitated,” she said.

(Rosey called the Colonel papa in the absence of the Campaigner.) “I do

not mind it a bit, except just at first, when it made me a little

nervous. Mamma used always to be so; she used to scold and scold all

day, both me and Josey, in Scotland, till grandmamma sent her away; and

then in Fitzroy Square, and then in Brussels, she used to box my ears,

and go into such tantrums; and I think,” adds Rosey, with one of her

sweetest smiles, “she had quarrelled with Uncle James before she came

to us.”

“She used to box Rosey’s ears,” roars out poor Clive, “and go into such

tantrums, in Fitzroy Square and Brussels afterwards, and the pair would

come down with their arms round each other’s waists, smirking and

smiling as if they had done nothing but kiss each other all their

mortal lives! This is what we know about women—this is what we get, and

find years afterwards, when we think we have married a smiling, artless

young creature! Are you all such hypocrites, Mrs. Pendennis?” and he

pulled his mustachios in his wrath.

“Poor Clive!” says Laura, very kindly. “You would not have had her tell

tales of her mother, would you?”

“Oh, of course not,” breaks out Clive; “that is what you all say, and

so you are hypocrites out of sheer virtue.”

It was the first time Laura had called him Clive for many a day. She

was becoming reconciled to him. We had our own opinion about the young

fellow’s marriage.

And, to sum up all, upon a casual rencontre with the young gentleman in

question, whom we saw descending from a hansom at the steps of the

Flag, Pall Mall, I opined that dark thoughts of Hoby had entered into

Clive Newcome’s mind. Othello-like, he scowled after that unconscious

Cassio as the other passed into the club in his lacquered boots.

CHAPTER LXIV.

Absit Omen

At the first of the Blackwall festivals, Hobson Newcome was present, in

spite of the quarrel which had taken place between his elder brother

and the chief of the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. But it was

the individual Barnes and the individual Thomas who had had a

difference together; the Bundelcund Bank was not at variance with its

chief house of commission in London; no man drank prosperity to the B.

B. C., upon occasion of this festival, with greater fervour than Hobson

Newcome, and the manner in which he just slightly alluded, in his own

little speech of thanks, to the notorious differences between Colonel

Newcome and his nephew, praying that these might cease some day, and,

meanwhile, that the confidence between the great Indian establishment

and its London agents might never diminish, was appreciated and admired

by six-and-thirty gentlemen, all brimful of claret and enthusiasm, and

in that happy state of mind in which men appreciate and admire

everything.

At the second dinner, when the testimonial was presented, Hobson was

not present. Nor did his name figure amongst those engraven on the

trunk of Mr. Newcome’s allegorical silver cocoa-nut tree. As we

travelled homewards in the omnibus, Fred Bayham noticed the

circumstance to me. “I have looked over the list of names,” says he,

“not merely that on the trunk, sir, but the printed list; it was rolled

up and placed in one of the nests on the top of the tree. Why is

Hobson’s name not there?—Ha! it mislikes me, Pendennis.”