LIX. In which Achilles loses Briseis…

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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LXIV. Absit Omen

At the first of the Blackwall festivals, Hobson Newcome was present, in spite of the quarrel which had taken place between his elder brother and the chief of the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. But it was the individual Barnes and the individual Thomas who had had a difference together; the Bundelcund Bank was not at variance with its chief house of commission in London; no man drank prosperity to the B. B. C., upon occasion of this festival, with greater fervour than Hobson Newcome, and the manner in which he just slightly alluded, in his own little speech of thanks, to the notorious differences between Colonel Newcome and his nephew, praying that these might cease some day, and, meanwhile, that the confidence between the great Indian establishment and its London agents might never diminish, was appreciated and admired by six-and-thirty gentlemen, all brimful of claret and enthusiasm, and in that happy state of mind in which men appreciate and admire everything.

At the second dinner, when the testimonial was presented, Hobson was not present. Nor did his name figure amongst those engraven on the trunk of Mr. Newcome’s allegorical silver cocoa-nut tree. As we travelled homewards in the omnibus, Fred Bayham noticed the circumstance to me. “I have looked over the list of names,” says he, “not merely that on the trunk, sir, but the printed list; it was rolled up and placed in one of the nests on the top of the tree. Why is Hobson’s name not there?—Ha! it mislikes me, Pendennis.”

F. B., who was now very great about City affairs, discoursed about stocks and companies with immense learning, and gave me to understand that he had transacted one or two little operations in Capel Court on his own account, with great present, and still larger prospective, advantages to himself. It is a fact that Mr. Ridley was paid, and that F. B.’s costume, though still eccentric, was comfortable, cleanly, and variegated. He occupied the apartments once tenanted by the amiable Honeyman. He lived in ease and comfort there. “You don’t suppose,” says he, “that the wretched stipend I draw from the Pall Mall Gazette enables me to maintain this kind of thing? F. B., sir, has a station in the world; F. B. moves among moneyers and City nobs, and eats cabobs with wealthy nabobs. He may marry, sir, and settle in life.” We cordially wished every worldly prosperity to the brave F. B.

Happening to descry him one day in the Park, I remarked that his countenance wore an ominous and tragic appearance, which seemed to deepen as he neared me. I thought he had been toying affably with a nursery-maid the moment before, who stood with some of her little charges watching the yachts upon the Serpentine. Howbeit, espying my approach, F. B. strode away from the maiden and her innocent companions, and advanced to greet his old acquaintance, enveloping his face with shades of funereal gloom.

“Yon were the children of my good friend Colonel Huckaback of the Bombay Marines! Alas! unconscious of their doom, the little infants play. I was watching them at their sports. There is a pleasing young woman in attendance upon the poor children. They were sailing their little boats upon the Serpentine; racing and laughing, and making merry; and as I looked on, Master Hastings Huckaback’s boat went down! Absit omen, Pendennis! I was moved by the circumstance. F. B. hopes that the child’s father’s argosy may not meet with shipwreck!”

“You mean the little yellow-faced man whom we met at Colonel Newcome’s?” says Mr. Pendennis.

“I do, sir,” growled F. B. “You know that he is a brother director with our Colonel in the Bundelcund Bank?”

“Gracious Heavens!” I cried, in sincere anxiety, “nothin has happened, I hope, to the Bundelcund Bank?”

“No,” answers the other, “nothing has happened, the good ship is safe, sir, as yet. But she has narrowly escaped a great danger, Pendennis,” cries F. B., gripping my arm with great energy, “there was a traitor in her crew—she has weathered the storm nobly—who would have sent her on the rocks, sir, who would have scuttled her at midnight.”

“Pray drop your nautical metaphors, and tell me what you mean,” cries F. B.’s companion, and Bayham continued his narration.

“Were you in the least conversant with City affairs,” he said, “or did you deign to visit the spot where merchants mostly congregate, you would have heard the story, which was over the whole City yesterday, and spread dismay from Threadneedle Street to Leadenhall. The story is, that the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, yesterday refused acceptance of thirty thousand pounds’ worth of bills of the Bundelcund Banking Company of India.

“The news came like a thunderclap upon the London Board of Directors, who had received no notice of the intentions of Hobson Brothers, and caused a dreadful panic amongst the shareholders of the concern. The board-room was besieged by colonels and captains, widows and orphans; within an hour after protest of bills were taken up, and you will see, in the City article of the Globe this very evening, an announcement that henceforward the house of Baines and Jolly, of Job Court, will meet engagements of the Bundelcund Banking Company of India, being provided with ample funds to do honour to every possible liability of that Company. But the shares fell, sir, in consequence of the panic. I hope they will rally. I trust and believe they will rally. For our good Colonel’s sake and that of his friends, for the sake of the innocent children sporting by the Serpentine yonder.

“I had my suspicions when they gave that testimonial,” said F. B. “In my experience of life, sir, I always feel rather shy about testimonials, and when a party gets one, somehow look out to hear of his smashing the next month. Absit omen! I will say again. I like not the going down of yonder little yacht.”

The Globe sure enough contained a paragraph that evening announcing the occurrence which Mr. Bayham had described, and the temporary panic which it had occasioned, and containing an advertisement stating that Messrs. Baines and Jolly would henceforth act as agents of the Indian Company. Legal proceedings were presently threatened by the solicitors of the Company against the banking firm which had caused so much mischief. Mr. Hobson Newcome was absent abroad when the circumstance took place, and it was known that the protest of the bills was solely attributable to his nephew and partner. But after the break between the two firms, there was a rupture between Hobson’s family and Colonel Newcome. The exasperated Colonel vowed that his brother and his nephew were traitors alike, and would have no further dealings with one or the other. Even poor innocent Sam Newcome, coming up to London from Oxford, where he had been plucked, and offering a hand to Clive, was frowned away by our Colonel, who spoke in terms of great displeasure to his son for taking the least notice of the young traitor.

Our Colonel was changed, changed in his heart, changed in his whole demeanour towards the world, and above all towards his son, for whom he had made so many kind sacrifices in his old days. We have said how, ever since Clive’s marriage, a tacit strife had been growing up between father and son. The boy’s evident unhappiness was like a reproach to his father. His very silence angered the old man. His want of confidence daily chafed and annoyed him. At the head of a large fortune, which he rightly persisted in spending, he felt angry with himself because he could not enjoy it, angry with his son, who should have helped him in the administration of his new estate, and who was but a listless, useless member of the little confederacy, a living protest against all the schemes of the good man’s past life. The catastrophe in the City again brought father and son together somewhat, and the vindictiveness of both was roused by Barnes’s treason. Time was when the Colonel himself would have viewed his kinsman more charitably, but fate and circumstance had angered that originally friendly and gentle disposition; hate and suspicion had mastered him, and if it cannot be said that his new life had changed him, at least it had brought out faults for which there had hitherto been no occasion, and qualities latent before. Do we know ourselves, or what good or evil circumstance may bring from us? Did Cain know, as he and his younger brother played round their mother’s knee, that the little hand which caressed Abel should one day grow larger, and seize a brand to slay him? Thrice fortunate he, to whom circumstance is made easy: whom fate visits with gentle trial, and kindly Heaven keeps out of temptation.

In the stage which the family feud now reached, and which the biographer of the Newcomes is bound to describe, there is one gentle moralist who gives her sentence decidedly against Clive’s father; whilst on the other hand a rough philosopher and friend of mine, whose opinions used to have some weight with me, stoutly declares that they were right. “War and justice are good things,” says George Warrington, rattling his clenched fist on the table. “I maintain them, and the common sense of the world maintains them, against the preaching of all the Honeymans that ever puled from the pulpit. I have not the least objection in life to a rogue being hung. When a scoundrel is whipped I am pleased, and say, serve him right. If any gentleman will horsewhip Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet, I shall not be shocked, but, on the contrary, go home and order an extra mutton-chop for dinner.”

“Ah! revenge is wrong, Pen,” pleads the other counsellor.

“Let alone that the wisest and best of all Judges has condemned it. It blackens the hearts of men. It distorts their views of right. It sets them to devise evil. It causes them to think unjustly of others. It is not the noblest return for injury, not even the bravest way of meeting it. The greatest courage is to bear persecution, not to answer when you are reviled, and when wrong has been done you to forgive. I am sorry for what you call the Colonel’s triumph and his enemy’s humiliation. Let Barnes be as odious as you will, he ought never to have humiliated Ethel’s brother; but he is weak. Other gentlemen as well are weak, Mr. Pen, although you are so much cleverer than women. I have no patience with the Colonel, and I beg you to tell him, whether he asks you or not that he has lost my good graces, and that I for one will not huzzah at what his friends and flatterers call his triumphs, and that I don’t think in this instance he has acted like the dear Colonel, and the good Colonel, and the good Christian that I once thought him.”

We must now tell what the Colonel and Clive had been doing, and what caused two such different opinions respecting their conduct from the two critics just named. The refusal of the London Banking House to accept the bills of the Great Indian Company of course affected very much the credit of that Company in this country. Sedative announcements were issued by the Directors in London; brilliant accounts of the Company’s affairs abroad were published; proof incontrovertible was given that the B. B. C. was never in so flourishing a state as at that time when Hobson Brothers had refused its drafts; there could be no question that the Company had received a severe wound and was deeply if not vitally injured by the conduct of the London firm.

The propensity to sell out became quite epidemic amongst the shareholders. Everybody was anxious to realise. Why, out of the thirty names inscribed on poor Mrs. Clive’s cocoa-nut tree no less than twenty deserters might be mentioned, or at least who would desert could they find an opportunity of doing so with arms and baggage. Wrathfully the good Colonel scratched the names of those faithless ones out of his daughter’s visiting-book: haughtily he met them in the street; to desert the B. B. C. at the hour of peril was, in his idea, like applying for leave of absence on the eve of an action. He would not see that the question was not one of sentiment at all, but of chances and arithmetic; he would not hear with patience of men quitting the ship, as he called it. “They may go, sir,” says he, “but let them never more be officers of mine.” With scorn and indignation he paid off one or two timid friends, who were anxious to fly, and purchased their shares out of his own pocket. But his purse was not long enough for this kind of amusement. What money he had was invested in the Company already, and his name further pledged for meeting the engagements from which their late London bankers had withdrawn.

Those gentlemen, in the meanwhile, spoke of their differences with the Indian Bank as quite natural, and laughed at the absurd charges of personal hostility which poor Thomas Newcome publicly preferred. “Here is a hot-headed old Indian dragoon,” says Sir Barnes, “who knows no more about business than I do about cavalry tactics or Hindostanee; who gets into a partnership along with other dragoons and Indian wiseacres, with some uncommonly wily old native practitioners; and they pay great dividends, and they set up a bank. Of course we will do these people’s business as long as we are covered, but I have always told their manager that we would run no risks whatever, and close the account the very moment it did not suit us to keep it: and so we parted company six weeks ago, since when there has been a panic in the Company, a panic which has been increased by Colonel Newcome’s absurd swagger and folly. He says I am his enemy; enemy indeed! So I am in private life, but what has that to do with business? In business, begad, there are no friends and no enemies at all. I leave all my sentiment on the other side of Temple Bar.”

So Thomas Newcome, and Clive the son of Thomas, had wrath in their hearts against Barnes, their kinsman, and desired to be revenged upon him, and were eager after his undoing, and longed for an opportunity when they might meet him and overcome him, and put him to shame.

When men are in this frame of mind, a certain personage is said always to be at hand to help them and give them occasion for indulging in their pretty little passion. What is sheer hate seems to the individual entertaining the sentiment so like indignant virtue, that he often indulges in the propensity to the full, nay, lauds himself for the exercise of it. I am sure if Thomas Newcome in his present desire for retaliation against Barnes, had known the real nature of his sentiments towards that worthy, his conduct would have been different, and we should have heard of no such active hostilities as ensued.

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LXV. In which Mrs. Clive comes into her Fortune

Speaking of the affairs of B. B. C., Sir Barnes Newcome always took care to maintain his candid surprise relating to the proceedings of that Company. He set about evil reports against it! He endeavour to do it a wrong—absurd! If a friend were to ask him (and it was quite curious what a number did manage to ask him) whether he thought the Company was an advantageous investment, of course he would give an answer. He could not say conscientiously he thought so—never once had said so—in the time of their connexion, which had been formed solely with a view of obliging his amiable uncle. It was a quarrelsome Company; a dragoon Company; a Company of gentlemen accustomed to gunpowder, and fed on mulligatawny. He, forsooth, be hostile to it! There were some Companies that required no enemies at all, and would be pretty sure to go to the deuce their own way.

Thus, and with this amiable candour, spake Barnes, about a commercial speculation, the merits of which he had a right to canvass as well as any other citizen. As for Uncle Hobson, his conduct was characterised by a timidity which one would scarcely have expected from a gentleman of his florid, jolly countenance, active habits, and generally manly demeanour. He kept away from the cocoa-nut feast, as we have seen: he protested privily to the Colonel that his private goodwill continued undiminished but he was deeply grieved at the B. B. C. affair, which took place while he was on the Continent—confound the Continent, my wife would go—and which was entirely without his cognisance. The Colonel received his brother’s excuses, first with awful bows and ceremony, and finally with laughter. “My good Hobson,” said he, with the most insufferable kindness, “of course you intended to be friendly; of course the affair was done without your knowledge. We understand that sort of thing. London bankers have no hearts—for these last fifty years past that I have known you and your brother, and my amiable nephew, the present commanding officer, has there been anything in your conduct that has led me to suppose you had?” and herewith Colonel Newcome burst out into a laugh. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. Worthy Hobson took his hat, and walked away, brushing it round and round, and looking very confused. The Colonel strode after him downstairs, and made him an awful bow at the hall door. Never again did Hobson Newcome set foot in that Tyburnian mansion.

During the whole of that season of the testimonial the cocoa-nut figured in an extraordinary number of banquets. The Colonel’s hospitalities were more profuse than ever, and Mrs. Clive’s toilettes more brilliant. Clive, in his confidential conversations with his friends, was very dismal and gloomy. When I asked City news of our well-informed friend F. B., I am sorry to say, his countenance became funereal. The B. B. C. shares, which had been at an immense premium twelve months since, were now slowly falling, falling.

“I wish,” said Mr. Sherrick to me, “the Colonel would realise, even now, like that Mr. Ratray who has just come out of the ship, and brought a hundred thousand pounds with him.”

“Come out of the ship! You little know the Colonel, Mr. Sherrick, if you think he will ever do that.”

Mr. Ratray, though he had returned to Europe, gave the most cheering accounts of the B. B. C. It was in the most flourishing state. Shares sure to get up again. He had sold out entirely on account of his liver. Must come home—the doctor said so.

Some months afterwards, another director, Mr. Hedges, came home. Both of these gentlemen, as we know, entertained the fashionable world, got seats in Parliament, purchased places in the country, and were greatly respected. Mr. Hedges came out, but his wealthy partner, Mr. M’Gaspey, entered into the B. B. C. The entry of Mr. M’Gaspey into the affairs of the Company did not seem to produce very great excitement in England. The shares slowly fell. However, there was a prodigious indigo crop. The London manager was in perfect good-humour. In spite of this and that, of defections, of unpleasantries, of unfavourable whispers, and doubtful friends—Thomas Newcome kept his head high, and his face was always kind and smiling, except when certain family enemies were mentioned, and he frowned like Jove in anger.

We have seen how very fond little Rosey was of her mamma, of her uncle, James Binnie, and now of her papa, as she affectionately styled Thomas Newcome. This affection, I am sure, the two gentlemen returned with all their hearts, and but that they were much too generous and simple-minded to entertain such a feeling, it may be wondered that the two good old boys were not a little jealous of one another. Howbeit it does not appear that they entertained such a feeling; at least it never interrupted the kindly friendship between them, and Clive was regarded in the light of a son by both of them, and each contented himself with his moiety of the smiling little girl’s affection.

As long as they were with her, the truth is, little Mrs. Clive was very fond of people, very docile, obedient, easily pleased, brisk, kind, and good-humoured. She charmed her two old friends with little songs, little smiles,—little kind offices, little caresses; and having administered Thomas Newcome’s cigar to him in the daintiest, prettiest way, she would trip off to drive with James Binnie, or sit at his dinner, if he was indisposed, and be as gay, neat-handed, watchful, and attentive a child as any old gentleman could desire.

She did not seem to be very sorry to part with mamma, a want of feeling which that lady bitterly deplored in her subsequent conversation with her friends about Mrs. Clive Newcome. Possibly there were reasons why Rosey should not be very much vexed at quitting mamma; but surely she might have dropped a little tear as she took leave of kind, good old James Binnie. Not she. The gentleman’s voice faltered, but hers did not in the least. She kissed him on the face, all smiles, blushes, and happiness, and tripped into the railway carriage with her husband and father-in-law, leaving the poor old uncle very sad. Our women said, I know not why, that little Rosey had no heart at all. Women are accustomed to give such opinions respecting the wives of their newly married friends. I am bound to add (and I do so during Mr. Clive Newcome’s absence from England, otherwise I should not like to venture upon the statement), that some men concur with the ladies’ opinion of Mrs. Clive. For instance, Captains Goby and Hoby declare that her treatment of the latter, her encouragement, and desertion of him when Clive made his proposals, were shameful.

At this time Rosey was in a pupillary state. A good, obedient little girl, her duty was to obey the wishes of her dear mamma. How show her sense of virtue and obedience better than by promptly and cheerfully obeying mamma, and at the orders of that experienced Campaigner, giving up Bobby Hoby, and going to England to a fine house, to be presented at Court, to have all sorts of pleasure with a handsome young husband and a kind father-in-law by her side? No wonder Rosey was not in a very active state of grief at parting from Uncle James. He strove to console himself with these considerations when he had returned to the empty house, where she had danced, and smiled, and warbled; and he looked at the chair she sat in; and at the great mirror which had so often reflected her fresh pretty face;—the great callous mirror, which now only framed upon its shining sheet the turban, and the ringlets, and the plump person, and the resolute smile of the old Campaigner.

After that parting with her uncle at the Brussels railway, Rosey never again beheld him. He passed into the Campaigner’s keeping, from which alone he was rescued by the summons of pallid death. He met that summons like a philosopher; rejected rather testily all the mortuary consolations which his nephew-in-law, Josey’s husband, thought proper to bring to his bedside; and uttered opinions which scandalised that divine. But as he left Mrs. M’Craw only 500 pounds, thrice that sum to his sister, and the remainder of his property to his beloved niece, Rosa Mackenzie, now Rosa Newcome, let us trust that Mr. M’Craw, hurt and angry at the ill-favour shown to his wife, his third young wife, his best-beloved Josey, at the impatience with which the deceased had always received his, Mr. M’Craw’s, own sermons;—let us hope, I say, that the reverend gentleman was mistaken in his views respecting the present position of Mr. James Binnie’s soul; and that Heaven may have some regions yet accessible to James, which Mr. M’Craw’s intellect has not yet explored. Look, gentlemen! Does a week pass without the announcement of the discovery of a new comet in the sky, a new star in the heaven, twinkling dimly out of a yet farther distance, and only now becoming visible to human ken though existent for ever and ever? So let us hope divine truths may be shining, and regions of light and love extant, which Geneva glasses cannot yet perceive, and are beyond the focus of Roman telescopes.

I think Clive and the Colonel were more affected by the news of James’s death than Rosey, concerning whose wonderful strength of mind good Thomas Newcome discoursed to my Laura and me, when, fancying that my friend’s wife needed comfort and consolation, Mrs. Pendennis went to visit her. “Of course we shall have no more parties this year,” sighed Rosey. She looked very pretty in her black dress. Clive, in his hearty way, said a hundred kind feeling things about the departed friend. Thomas Newcome’s recollections of him, and regret, were no less tender and sincere. “See,” says he, “how that dear child’s sense of duty makes her hide her feelings! Her grief is most deep, but she wears a calm countenance. I see her looking sad in private, but I no sooner speak than she smiles.” “I think,” said Laura, as we came away, “that Colonel Newcome performs all the courtship part in the marriage, and Clive, poor Clive, though he spoke very nobly and generously about Mr. Binnie, I am sure it is not his old friend’s death merely, which makes him so unhappy.”

Poor Clive, by right of his wife, was now rich Clive; the little lady having inherited from her kind relative no inconsiderable sum of money. In a very early part of this story, mention has been made of a small sum producing one hundred pounds a year, which Clive’s father had made over to the lad when he sent him from India. This little sum Mr. Clive had settled upon his wife before his marriage, being indeed all he had of his own; for the famous bank shares which his father presented to him, were only made over formally when the young man came to London after his marriage, and at the paternal request and order appeared as a most inefficient director of the B. B. C. Now Mrs. Newcome, of her inheritance, possessed not only B. B. C. shares, but moneys in bank, and shares in East India Stock, so that Clive in the right of his wife had a seat in the assembly of East India shareholders, and a voice in the election of directors of that famous company. I promise you Mrs. Clive was a personage of no little importance. She carried her little head with an aplomb and gravity which amused some of us. F. B. bent his most respectfully down before her; she sent him on messages, and deigned to ask him to dinner. He once more wore a cheerful countenance; the clouds which gathered o’er the sun of Newcome were in the bosom of the ocean buried, Bayham said, by James Binnie’s brilliant behaviour to his niece.

Clive was a proprietor of East India Stock, and had a vote in electing the directors of that Company; and who so fit to be a director of his affairs as Thomas Newcome, Esq., Companion of the Bath, and so long a distinguished officer in its army? To hold this position of director, used, up to very late days, to be the natural ambition of many East Indian gentlemen. Colonel Newcome had often thought of offering himself as a candidate, and now openly placed himself on the lists, and publicly announced his intention. His interest was rather powerful through the Indian bank, of which he was a director, and many of the shareholders of which were proprietors of the East India Company. To have a director of the B. B. C. also a member of the parliament in Leadenhall Street, would naturally be beneficial to the former institution. Thomas Newcome’s prospectuses were issued accordingly, and his canvass received with tolerable favour.

Within a very short time another candidate appeared in the field—a retired Bombay lawyer, of considerable repute and large means—and at the head of this gentleman’s committee appeared the names of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, very formidable personages at the East India House, with which the bank of Hobson Brothers have had dealings for half a century past, and where the old lady, who founded or consolidated that family, had had three stars before her own venerable name, which had descended upon her son Sir Brian, and her grandson, Sir Barnes.

War was thus openly declared between Thomas Newcome and his nephew. The canvass on both sides was very hot and eager. The number of promises was pretty equal. The election was not to come off yet for a while; for aspirants to the honourable office of director used to announce their wishes years before they could be fulfilled, and returned again and again to the contest before they finally won it. Howbeit, the Colonel’s prospects were very fair, and a prodigious indigo crop came in to favour the B. B. C., with the most brilliant report from the board at Calcutta. The shares, still somewhat sluggish, rose again, the Colonel’s hopes with them, and the courage of gentlemen at home who had invested their money in the transaction.

We were sitting one day round the Colonel’s dinner-table; it was not one of the cocoa-nut-tree days; that emblem was locked up in the butler’s pantry, and only beheld the lamps on occasions of state. It was a snug family party in the early part of the year, when scarcely anybody was in town; only George Warrington, and F. B., and Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis; and the ladies having retired, we were having such a talk as we used to enjoy in quiet old days, before marriages and cares and divisions had separated us.

F. B. led the conversation. The Colonel received his remarks with great gravity, and thought him an instructive personage. Others considered him rather as amusing than instructive, and so his eloquence was generally welcome. The canvass for the directorship was talked over. The improved affairs of a certain great Banking Company, which shall be nameless, but one which F. B. would take the liberty to state, would, in his opinion, for ever unite the mother country to our great Indian possessions;—the prosperity of this great Company was enthusiastically drunk by Mr. Bayham in some of the very best claret. The conduct of the enemies of that Company was characterised in terms of bitter, but not undeserved, satire. F. B. rather liked to air his oratory, and neglected few opportunities for making speeches after dinners.

The Colonel admired his voice and sentiments not the less, perhaps, because the latter were highly laudatory of the good man. And not from interest, at least, as far as he himself knew—not from any mean or selfish motives, did F. B. speak. He called Colonel Newcome his friend, his benefactor: kissed the hem of his garment: he wished fervently that he could have been the Colonel’s son: he expressed, repeatedly, a desire that some one would speak ill of the Colonel, so that he, F. B., might have the opportunity of polishing that individual off in about two seconds. He covered the Colonel with all his heart; nor is any gentleman proof altogether against this constant regard and devotion from another.

The Colonel used to wag his head wisely, and say Mr. Bayham’s suggestions were often exceedingly valuable, as indeed the fact was, though his conduct was no more of a piece with his opinions than those of some other folks occasionally are.

“What the Colonel ought to do, sir, to help him in the direction,” says F. B., “is to get into Parliament. The House of Commons would aid him into the Court of Directors, and the Court of Directors would help him in the House of Commons.”

“Most wisely said,” says Warrington.

The Colonel declined. “I have long had the House of Commons in my eye,” he said; “but not for me. I wanted my boy to go there. It would be a proud day for me if I could see him there.”

“I can’t speak,” says Clive, from his end of the table. “I don’t understand about parties, like F. B. here.”

“I believe I do know a thing or two,” Mr. Bayham here interposes.

“And politics do not interest me in the least,” Clive sighs out, drawing pictures with his fork on his napkin, and not heeding the other’s interruption.

“I wish I knew what would interest him,” his father whispers to me, who happened to be at his side. “He never cares to be out of his painting-room; and he doesn’t seem to be very happy even in there. I wish to God, Pen, I knew what had come over the boy.” I thought I knew; but what was the use of telling, now there was no remedy?

“A dissolution is expected every day,” continued F. B. “The papers are full of it. Ministers cannot go on with this majority—cannot possibly go on, sir. I have it on the best authority; and men who are anxious about their seats are writing to their constituents, or are subscribing at missionary meetings, or are gone down to lecturing at Athenæums, and that sort of thing.”

Here Warrington burst out into a laughter much louder than the occasion of the speech of F. B. seemed to warrant; and the Colonel, turning round with some dignity, asked the cause of George’s amusement.

“What do you think your darling, Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, has been doing during the recess?” cries Warrington. “I had a letter this morning, from my liberal and punctual employer, Thomas Potts, Esquire, of the Newcome Independent, who states, in language scarcely respectful, that Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome is trying to come the religious dodge, as Mr. Potts calls it. He professes to be stricken down by grief on account of late family circumstances; wears black, and puts on the most piteous aspect, and asks ministers of various denominations to tea with him; and the last announcement is the most stupendous of all. Stop, I have it in my greatcoat;” and, ringing the bell, George orders a servant to bring him a newspaper from his great-coat pocket. “Here it is, actually in print,” Warrington continues, and reads to us:—“‘Newcome Athenæum. 1, for the benefit of the Newcome Orphan Children’s Home, and 2, for the benefit of the Newcome Soup Association, without distinction of denomination. Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., proposes to give two lectures, on Friday the 23rd, and Friday the 30th, instant. No. 1, The Poetry of Childhood: Doctor Watts, Mrs. Barbauld, Jane Taylor, No. 2, The Poetry of Womanhood, and the Affections: Mrs. Hemans, L. E. L. Threepence will be charged at the doors, which will go to the use of the above two admirable Societies.’ Potts wants me to go down and hear him. He has an eye to business. He has had a quarrel with Sir Barnes, and wants me to go down and hear him, and smash him, he kindly says. Let us go down, Clive. You shall draw your cousin as you have drawn his villainous little mug a hundred times before; and I will do the smashing part, and we will have some fun out of the transaction.”

“Besides, Florac will be in the country; going to Rosebury is a journey worth the taking, I can tell you; and we have old Mrs. Mason to go and see, who sighs after you, Colonel. My wife went to see her,” remarks Mr. Pendennis, “and——”

“And Miss Newcome, I know,” says the Colonel.

“She is away at Brighton, with her little charges, for sea air. My wife heard from her to-day.”

“Oh, indeed. Mrs. Pendennis corresponds with her?” says our host, darkling under his eyebrows; and, at this moment, my neighbour, F. B., is kind enough to scrunch my foot under the table with the weight of his heel, as much as to warn me, by an appeal to my own corns, to avoid treading on so delicate a subject in that house. “Yes,” said I, in spite, perhaps in consequence, of this interruption. “My wife does correspond with Miss Ethel, who is a noble creature, and whom those who know her know how to love and admire. She is very much changed since you knew her, Colonel Newcome; since the misfortunes in Sir Barnes’s family, and the differences between you and him. Very much changed and very much improved. Ask my wife about her, who knows her most intimately, and hears from her constantly.”

“Very likely, very likely,” cried the Colonel, hurriedly, “I hope she is improved, with all my heart. I am sure there was room for it. Gentlemen, shall we go up to the ladies and have some coffee?” And herewith the colloquy ended, and the party ascended to the drawing-room.

The party ascended to the drawing-room, where no doubt both the ladies were pleased by the invasion which ended their talk. My wife and the Colonel talked apart, and I saw the latter looking gloomy, and the former pleading very eagerly, and using a great deal of action, as the little hands are wont to do, when the mistress’s heart is very much moved. I was sure she was pleading Ethel’s cause with her uncle.

So indeed she was. And Mr. George, too, knew what her thoughts were. “Look at her!” he said to me. “Don’t you see what she is doing? She believes in that girl whom you all said Clive took a fancy to before he married his present little placid wife; a nice little simple creature, who is worth a dozen Ethels.”

“Simple certainly,” says Mr. P., with a shrug of the shoulders.

“A simpleton of twenty is better than a roue of twenty. It is better not to have thought at all, than to have thought such things as must go through a girl’s mind whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted; whose eyes, as soon as they are opened, are turned to the main chance, and are taught to leer at earl, to languish at a marquis, and to grow blind before a commoner. I don’t know much about fashionable life. Heaven help us (you young Brummell! I see the reproach in your face!) Why, sir, it absolutely appears to me as if this little hop-o’-my-thumb of a creature has begun to give herself airs since her marriage and her carriage. Do you know, I rather thought she patronised me? Are all women spoiled by their contact with the world, and their bloom rubbed off in the market? I know one who seems to me to remain pure! to be sure, I only know her, and this little person, and Mrs. Flanagan our laundress, and my sisters at home, who don’t count. But that Miss Newcome to whom once you introduced me? Oh, the cockatrice! only that poison don’t affect your wife, the other would kill her. I hope the Colonel will not believe a word which Laura says.” And my wife’s tête-à-tête with our host coming to an end about this time, Mr. Warrington in high spirits goes up to the ladies, recapitulates the news of Barnes’s lecture, recites “How doth the little busy bee,” and gives a quasi-satirical comment upon that well-known poem, which bewilders Mrs. Clive, until, set on by the laughter of the rest of the audience, she laughs very freely at that odd man, and calls him “you droll satirical creature you!” and says “she never was so much amused in her life. Were you, Mrs. Pendennis?”

Meanwhile Clive, who has been sitting apart moodily biting his nails, not listening to F. B.’s remarks, has broken into a laugh once or twice, and gone to a writing-book, on which, whilst George is still disserting, Clive is drawing.

At the end of the other’s speech, F. B. goes up to the draughtsman, looks over his shoulder, makes one or two violent efforts as of inward convulsion, and finally explodes in an enormous guffaw. “It’s capital! By Jove, it’s capital! Sir Barnes would never dare to face his constituents with that picture of him hung up in Newcome!”

And F. B. holds up the drawing, at which we all laugh except Laura. As for the Colonel, he paces up and down the room, holding the sketch close to his eyes, holding it away from him, patting it, clapping his son delightedly on the shoulder. “Capital! capital! We’ll have the picture printed, by Jove, sir; show vice its own image; and shame the viper in his own nest, sir. That’s what we will.”

Mrs. Pendennis came away with rather a heavy heart from this party. She chose to interest herself about the right or wrong of her friends; and her mind was disturbed by the Colonel’s vindictive spirit. On the subsequent day we had occasion to visit our friend J. J. (who was completing the sweetest little picture, No. 263 in the Exhibition, “Portrait of a Lady and Child”), and we found that Clive had been with the painter that morning likewise; and that J. J. was acquainted with his scheme. That he did not approve of it we could read in the artist’s grave countenance. “Nor does Clive approve of it either!” cried Ridley, with greater eagerness than he usually displayed, and more openness than he was accustomed to exhibit in judging unfavourably of his friends.

“Among them they have taken him away from his art,” Ridley said. “They don’t understand him when he talks about it; they despise him for pursuing it. Why should I wonder at that? my parents despised it too, and my father was not a grand gentleman like the Colonel, Mrs. Pendennis. Ah! why did the Colonel ever grow rich? Why had not Clive to work for his bread as have? He would have done something that was worthy of him then; now his time must be spent in dancing attendance at balls land operas, and yawning at City board-rooms. They call that business: they think he is idling when he comes here, poor fellow! As if life was long enough for our art; and the best labour we can give, good enough for it! He went away groaning this morning, and quite saddened in spirits. The Colonel wants to set up himself for Parliament, or to set Clive up; but he says he won’t. I hope he won’t; do not you, Mrs. Pendennis?”

The painter turned as he spoke; and the bright northern light which fell upon the sitter’s head was intercepted, and lighted up his own as he addressed us. Out of that bright light looked his pale thoughtful face, and long locks and eager brown eyes. The palette on his arm was a great shield painted of many colours: he carried his mall-stick and a sheaf of brushes along with the weapons of his glorious but harmless war. With these he achieves conquests, wherein none are wounded save the envious: with that he shelters him against how much idleness, ambition, temptations! Occupied over that consoling work, idle thoughts cannot gain mastery over him: selfish wishes or desires are kept at bay. Art is truth: and truth is religion: and its study and practice a daily work of pious duty. What are the world’s struggles, brawls, successes, to that calm recluse pursuing his calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round his chamber, numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories which he has won:—sweet flowers of fancy reared by him:—kind shapes of beauty which he has devised and moulded. The world enters into the artist’s studio, and scornfully bids him a price for his genius, or makes dull pretence to admire it. What know you of his art? You cannot read the alphabet of that sacred book, good old Thomas Newcome! What can you tell of its glories, joys, secrets, consolations? Between his two best-beloved mistresses, poor Clive’s luckless father somehow interposes; and with sorrowful, even angry protests. In place of Art the Colonel brings him a ledger; and in lieu of first love, shows him Rosey.

No wonder that Clive hangs his head; rebels sometimes, desponds always: he has positively determined to refuse to stand for Newcome, Ridley says. Laura is glad of his refusal, and begins to think of him once more as of the Clive of old days.

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LXVI. In which the Colonel and the Newcome Athenæum are both lectured

At breakfast with his family, on the morning after the little entertainment to which we were bidden, in the last chapter, Colonel Newcome was full of the projected invasion of Barnes’s territories, and delighted to think that there was an opportunity of at last humiliating that rascal.

“Clive does not think he is a rascal at all, papa,” cries Rosey, from behind her tea-urn; “that is, you said you thought papa judged him too harshly; you know you did, this morning!” And from her husband’s angry glances, she flies to his father’s for protection. Those were even fiercer than Clive’s. Revenge flashed from beneath Thomas Newcome’s grizzled eyebrows, and glanced in the direction where Clive sat. Then the Colonel’s face flushed up, and he cast his eyes down towards his tea-cup, which he lifted with a trembling hand. The father and son loved each other so, that each was afraid of the other. A war between two such men is dreadful; pretty little pink-faced Rosey, in a sweet little morning cap and ribbons, her pretty little fingers twinkling with a score of rings, sat simpering before her silver tea-urn, which reflected her pretty little pink baby face. Little artless creature! what did she know of the dreadful wounds which her little words inflicted in the one generous breast and the other?

“My boy’s heart is gone from me,” thinks poor Thomas Newcome; “our family is insulted, our enterprises ruined, by that traitor, and my son is not even angry! he does not care for the success of our plans—for the honour of our name even; I make him a position of which any young man in England might be proud, and Clive scarcely deigns to accept it.”

“My wife appeals to my father,” thinks poor Clive; “it is from him she asks counsel, and not from me. Be it about the ribbon in her cap, or any other transaction in our lives, she takes her colour from his opinion, and goes to him for advice, and I have to wait till it is given, and conform myself to it. If I differ from the dear old father, I wound him; if I yield up my opinion, as I do always, it is with a bad grace, and I wound him still. With the best intentions in the world, what a slave’s life it is that he has made for me!”

“How interested you are in your papers!” resumes the sprightly nosey. “What can you find in those horrid politics?” Both gentlemen are looking at their papers with all their might, and no doubt cannot see one single word which those brilliant and witty leading articles contain.

“Clive is like you, Rosey,” says the Colonel, laying his paper down, “and does not care for politics.”

“He only cares for pictures, papa,” says Mrs. Clive. “He would not drive with me yesterday in the Park, but spent hours in his room, while you were toiling in the City, poor papa!—spent hours painting a horrid beggar-man dressed up as a monk. And this morning, he got up quite early, quite early, and has been out ever so long, and only came in for breakfast just now! just before the bell rung.”

“I like a ride before breakfast,” says Clive.

“A ride! I know where you have been, sir! He goes away morning after morning, to that little Mr. Ridley’s—his chums, papa, and he comes back with his hands all over horrid paint. He did this morning; you know you did, Clive.”

“I did not keep any one waiting, Rosa,” says Clive. “I like to have two or three hours at my painting when I can spare time.” Indeed, the poor fellow used so to run away of summer meetings for Ridley’s instructions, and gallop home again, so as to be in time for the family meal.

“Yes,” cries Rosey, tossing up the cap and ribbons, “he gets up so early in the morning, that at night he falls asleep after dinner; very pleasant and polite, isn’t he, papa?”

“I am up betimes too, my dear,” says the Colonel (many and many a time he must have heard Clive as he left the house); “I have a great many letters to write, affairs of the greatest importance to examine and conduct. Mr. Betts from the City is often with me for hours before I come down to your breakfast-table. A man who has the affairs of such a great bank as ours to look to, must be up with the lark. We are all early risers in India.”

“You dear kind papa!” says little Rosey, with unfeigned admiration; and she puts out one of the plump white little jewelled hands, and pats the lean brown paw of the Colonel which is nearest to her.

“Is Ridley’s picture getting on well, Clive?” asks the Colonel, trying to interest himself about Ridley and his picture.

“Very well; it is beautiful; he has sold it for a great price; they must make him an Academician next year,” replies Clive.

“A most industrious and meritorious young man; he deserves every honour that may happen to him,” says the old soldier. “Rosa, my dear, it is time that you should ask Mr. Ridley to dinner, and Mr. Smee, and some of those gentlemen. We will drive this afternoon and see your portrait.”

“Clive does not go to sleep after dinner when Mr. Ridley comes here,” cries Rosa.

“No; I think it is my turn then,” says the Colonel, with a glance of kindness. The anger has disappeared from under his brows; at that moment the menaced battle is postponed.

“And yet I know that it must come,” says poor Clive, telling me the story as he hangs on my arm, and we pace through the Park. “The Colonel and I are walking on a mine, and that poor little wife of mine is perpetually flinging little shells to fire it. I sometimes wish it were blown up, and I were done for, Pen. I don’t think my widow would break her heart about me. No; I have no right to say that; it’s a shame to say that; she tries her very best to please me, poor little dear. It’s the fault of my temper, perhaps, that she can’t. But they neither understand me, don’t you see? the Colonel can’t help thinking I am a degraded being, because I am fond of painting. Still, dear old boy, he patronises Ridley; a man of genius, whom those sentries ought to salute, by Jove, sir, when he passes. Ridley patronised by an old officer of Indian dragoons, a little bit of a Rosey, and a fellow who is not fit to lay his palette for him! I want sometimes to ask J. J.’s pardon, after the Colonel has been talking to him in his confounded condescending way, uttering some awful bosh about the fine arts. Rosey follows him, and trips round J. J.’s studio, and pretends to admire, and says, ‘How soft; how sweet!’ recalling some of mamma-in-law’s dreadful expressions, which make me shudder when I hear them. If my poor old father had a confidant into whose arm he could hook his own, and whom he could pester with his family griefs as I do you, the dear old boy would have his dreary story to tell too. I hate banks, bankers, Bundelcund, indigo, cotton, and the whole business. I go to that confounded board, and never hear one syllable that the fellows are talking about. I sit there because he wishes me to sit there; don’t you think he sees that my heart is out of the business; that I would rather be at home in my painting-room? We don’t understand each other, but we feel each other, as it were by instinct. Each thinks in his own way, but knows what the other is thinking. We fight mute battles, don’t you see, and, our thoughts, though we don’t express them, are perceptible to one another, and come out from our eyes, or pass out from us somehow, and meet, and fight, and strike, and wound.”

Of course Clive’s confidant saw how sore and unhappy the poor fellow was, and commiserated his fatal but natural condition. The little ills of life are the hardest to bear, as we all very well know. What would the possession of a hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the applause of one’s countrymen, or the loveliest and best-beloved woman,—of any glory, and happiness, or good-fortune avail to a gentleman, for instance, who was allowed to enjoy them only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple of nails or sharp pebbles inside it? All fame and happiness would disappear, and plunge down that shoe. All life would rankle round those little nails. I strove, by such philosophic sedatives as confidants are wont to apply on these occasions, to soothe my poor friend’s anger and pain; and I dare say the little nails hurt the patient just as much as before.

Clive pursued his lugubrious talk through the Park, and continued it as far as the modest-furnished house which we then occupied in the Pimlico region. It so happened that the Colonel and Mrs. Clive also called upon us that day, and found this culprit in Laura’s drawing-room, when they entered it, descending out of that splendid barouche in which we have already shown Mrs. Clive to the public.

“He has not been here for months before; nor have you Rosa; nor have you, Colonel; though we have smothered our indignation, and been to dine with you, and to call, ever so many times!” cries Laura.

The Colonel pleaded his business engagements; Rosa, that little woman of the world, had a thousand calls to make, and who knows how much to do? since she came out. She had been to fetch papa, at Bays’s, and the porter had told the Colonel that Mr. Clive and Mr. Pendennis had just left the club together.

“Clive scarcely ever drives with me,” says Rosa; “papa almost always does.”

“Rosey’s is such a swell carriage, that I feel ashamed,” says Clive.

“I don’t understand you young men. I don’t see why you need be ashamed to go on the Course with your wife in her carriage, Clive,” remarks the Colonel.

“The Course! the Course is at Calcutta, papa!” cries Rosey. “We drive in the Park.”

“We have a park at Barrackpore too, my dear,” says papa.

“And he calls his grooms saices! He said he was going to send away a saice for being tipsy, and I did not know in the least what he could mean, Laura!”

“Mr. Newcome! you must go and drive on the Course with Rosa now; and the Colonel must sit and talk with me, whom he has not been to see for such a long time.” Clive presently went off in state by Rosey’s side, and then Laura showed Colonel Newcome his beautiful white Cashmere shawl round a successor of that little person who had first been wrapped in that web, now a stout young gentleman whose noise could be clearly heard in the upper regions.

“I wish you could come down with us, Arthur, upon our electioneering visit.”

“That of which you were talking last night? Are you bent upon it?”

“Yes, I am determined on it.”

Laura heard a child’s cry at this moment, and left the room with a parting glance at her husband, who in fact had talked over the matter with Mrs. Pendennis, and agreed with her in opinion.

As the Colonel had opened the question, I ventured to make a respectful remonstrance against the scheme. Vindictiveness on the part of a man so simple and generous, so fair and noble in all his dealings as Thomas Newcome, appeared in my mind unworthy of him. Surely his kinsman had sorrow and humiliation enough already at home. Barnes’s further punishment, we thought, might be left to time, to remorse, to the Judge of right and wrong; Who better understands than we can do, our causes and temptations towards evil actions, Who reserves the sentence for His own tribunal. But when angered, the best of us mistake our own motives, as we do those of the enemy who inflames us. What may be private revenge, we take to be indignant virtue and just revolt against wrong. The Colonel would not hear of counsels of moderation, such as I bore him from a sweet Christian pleader. “Remorse!” he cried out with a laugh, “that villain will never feel it until he is tied up and whipped at the cart’s tail! Time change that rogue! Unless he is wholesomely punished, he will grow a greater scoundrel every year. I am inclined to think, sir,” says he, his honest brows darkling as he looked towards me, “that you too are spoiled by this wicked world, and these heartless, fashionable, fine people. You wish to live well with the enemy, and with us too, Pendennis. It can’t be. He who is not with us is against us. I very much fear, sir, that the women, the women, you understand, have been talking you over. Do not let us speak any more about this subject, for I don’t wish that my son, and my son’s old friend, should have a quarrel.” His face became red, his voice quivered with agitation, and he looked with glances which I was pained to behold in those kind old eyes: not because his wrath and suspicion visited myself, but because an impartial witness, nay, a friend to Thomas Newcome in that family quarrel, I grieved to think that a generous heart was led astray, and to see a good man do wrong. So with no more thanks for his interference than a man usually gets who meddles in domestic strifes, the present luckless advocate ceased pleading.

To be sure, the Colonel and Clive had other advisers, who did not take the peaceful side. George Warrington was one of these; he was for war à l’outrance with Barnes Newcome; for keeping no terms with such a villain. He found a pleasure in hunting him, and whipping him. “Barnes ought to be punished,” George said, “for his poor wife’s misfortune; it was Barnes’s infernal cruelty, wickedness, selfishness, which had driven her into misery and wrong.” Mr. Warrington went down to Newcome, and was present at that lecture whereof mention has been made in a previous chapter. I am afraid his behaviour was very indecorous; he laughed at the pathetic allusions of the respected Member for Newcome; he sneered at the sublime passages; he wrote an awful critique in the Newcome Independent two days after, whereof the irony was so subtle, that half the readers of the paper mistook his grave scorn for respect, and his gibes for praise.

Clive, his father, and Frederick Bayham, their faithful aide-de-camp, were at Newcome likewise when Sir Barnes’s oration was delivered. At first it was given out at Newcome that the Colonel visited the place for the purpose of seeing his dear old friend and pensioner, Mrs. Mason, who was now not long to enjoy his bounty, and so old, as scarcely to know her benefactor. Only after her sleep, or when the sun warmed her and the old wine with which he supplied her, was the good old woman able to recognise her Colonel. She mingled father and son together in her mind. A lady who now often came in to her, thought she was wandering in her talk, when the poor old woman spoke of a visit she had had from her boy; and then the attendant told Miss Newcome that such a visit had actually taken place, and that but yesterday Clive and his father had been in that room, and occupied the chair where she sat. “The young lady was taken quite ill, and seemed ready to faint almost,” Mrs. Mason’s servant and spokeswoman told Colonel Newcome when that gentleman arrived shortly after Ethel’s departure, to see his old nurse. “Indeed! he was very sorry.” The maid told many stories about Miss Newcome’s goodness and charity; how she was constantly visiting the poor now; how she was for ever engaged in good works for the young, the sick, and the aged. She had had a dreadful misfortune in love; she was going to be married to a young marquis; richer even than Prince de Moncontour down at Rosebury; but it was all broke off on account of that dreadful affair at the Hall.

Was she very good to the poor? did she come often to see her grandfather’s old friend? it was no more than she ought “to do,” Colonel Newcome said; without, however, thinking fit to tell his informant that he had himself met his niece Ethel, five minutes before he had entered Mrs. Mason’s door.

The poor thing was in discourse with Mr. Harris, the surgeon, and talking (as best she might, for no doubt the news which she had just heard had agitated her), talking about blankets, and arrowroot, wine, and medicaments for her poor, when she saw her uncle coming towards her. She tottered a step or two forwards to meet him; held both her hands out, and called his name; but he looked her sternly in the face, took off his hat and bowed, and passed on. He did not think fit to mention the meeting even to his son, Clive; but we may be sure Mr. Harris, the surgeon, spoke of the circumstance that night after the lecture, at the club, where a crowd of gentlemen were gathered together, smoking their cigars, and enjoying themselves according to their custom, and discussing Sir Barnes Newcome’s performance.

According to established usage in such cases, our esteemed representative was received by the committee of the Newcome Athenæum, assembled in their committee-room, and thence marshalled by the chairman and vice-chairman to his rostrum in the lecture-hall, round about which the magnates of the institution and the notabilities of the town were rallied on this public occasion. The Baronet came in some state from his own house, arriving at Newcome in his carriage with four horses, accompanied by my lady his mother, and Miss Ethel his beautiful sister, who now was mistress at the Hall. His little girl was brought—five years old now; she sate on her aunt’s knee, and slept during a greater part of the performance. A fine bustle, we may be sure, was made on the introduction of these personages to their reserved seats on the platform, where they sate encompassed by others of the great ladies of Newcome, to whom they and the lecturer were especially gracious at this season. Was not Parliament about to be dissolved, and were not the folks at Newcome Park particularly civil at that interesting period? So Barnes Newcome mounts his pulpit, bows round to the crowded assembly in acknowledgment of their buzz of applause or recognition, passes his lily-white pocket-handkerchief across his thin lips, and dashes off into his lecture about Mrs. Hemans and the poetry of the affections. A public man, a commercial man as we well know, yet his heart is in his home, and his joy in his affections; the presence of this immense assembly here this evening; of the industrious capitalists; of the intelligent middle class; of the pride and mainstay of England, the operatives of Newcome; these, surrounded by their wives and their children (a graceful bow to the bonnets to the right of the platform), show that they too have hearts to feel, and homes to cherish; that they, too, feel the love of women, the innocence of children, the love of song! Our lecturer then makes a distinction between man’s poetry and woman’s poetry, charging considerably in favour of the latter. We show that to appeal to the affections is after all the true office of the bard; to decorate the homely threshold, to wreathe flowers round the domestic hearth, the delightful duty of the Christian singer. We glance at Mrs. Hemans’s biography, and state where she was born, and under what circumstances she must have at first, etc. etc. Is this a correct account of Sir Barnes Newcome’s lecture? I was not present, and did not read the report. Very likely the above may be a reminiscence of that mock lecture which Warrington delivered in anticipation of the Baronet’s oration.

After he had read for about five minutes, it was remarked the Baronet suddenly stopped and became exceedingly confused over his manuscript: betaking himself to his auxiliary glass of water before he resumed his discourse, which for a long time was languid, low, and disturbed in tone. This period of disturbance, no doubt, must have occurred when Sir Barnes saw before him F. Bayham and Warrington seated in the amphitheatre; and, by the side of those fierce scornful countenances, Clive Newcome’s pale face.

Clive Newcome was not looking at Barnes. His eyes were fixed upon the lady seated not far from the lecturer—upon Ethel, with her arm round her little niece’s shoulder, and her thick black ringlets drooping down over a face paler than Clive’s own.

Of course she knew that Clive was present. She was aware of him as she entered the hall; saw him at the very first moment; saw nothing but him, I dare say, though her eyes were shut and her head was turned now towards her mother, and now bent down on the little niece’s golden curls. And the past and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and passions, and tones and looks for ever echoing in the heart, and present in the memory—these, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great gulf of time, and parting, and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved for many years. There she sits; the same, but changed: as gone from him as if she were dead; departed indeed into another sphere, and entered into a kind of death. If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied. Strew round it the flowers of youth. Wash it with tears of passion. Wrap it and envelop it with fond devotion. Break heart, and fling yourself on the bier, and kiss her cold lips and press her hand! It falls back dead on the cold breast again. The beautiful lips have never a blush or a smile. Cover them and lay them in the ground, and so take thy hatband off, good friend, and go to thy business. Do you suppose you are the only man who has had to attend such a funeral? You will find some men smiling and at work the day after. Some come to the grave now and again out of the world, and say a brief prayer, and a “God bless her!” With some men, she gone, and her viduous mansion your heart to let, her successor, the new occupant, poking in all the drawers and corners, and cupboards of the tenement, finds her miniature and some of her dusty old letters hidden away somewhere, and says—Was this the face he admired so? Why, allowing even for the painter’s flattery, it is quite ordinary, and the eyes certainly do not look straight. Are these the letters you thought so charming? Well, upon my word, I never read anything more commonplace in my life! See, here’s a line half blotted out. Oh, I suppose she was crying then—some of her tears, idle tears—Hark, there is Barnes Newcome’s eloquence still plapping on like water from a cistern—and our thoughts, where have they wandered? far away from the lecture—as far away as Clive’s almost. And now the fountain ceases to trickle; the mouth from which issued that cool and limpid flux ceases to smile; the figure is seen to bow and retire; a buzz, a hum, a whisper, a scuffle, a meeting of bonnets and wagging of feathers and rustling of silks ensues. “Thank you! delightful, I am sure!” “I really was quite overcome;” “Excellent;” “So much obliged,” are rapid phrases heard amongst the polite on the platform. While down below, “Yaw! quite enough of that;” “Mary Jane, cover your throat up, and don’t kitch cold, and don’t push me, please, sir;” “’Arry! coom along and ’av’ a pint a ale,” etc., are the remarks heard, or perhaps not heard, by Clive Newcome, as he watches at the private entrance of the Athenæum, where Sir Barnes’s carriage is waiting with its flaming lamps, and domestics in state liveries. One of them comes out of the building bearing the little girl in his arms, and lays her in the carriage. Then Sir Barnes, and Lady Anne, and the Mayor; then Ethel issues forth, and as she passes under the lamps, beholds Clive’s face as pale and sad as her own.

Shall we go visit the lodge-gates of Newcome Park the moon shining on their carving? Is there any pleasure in walking by miles of grey paling, and endless palisades of firs? Oh, you fool, what do you hope to see behind that curtain? Absurd fugitive, whither would you run? Can you burst the tether of fate: and is not poor dear little Rosey Mackenzie sitting yonder waiting for you by the stake? Go home, sir; and don’t catch cold. So Mr. Clive returns to the King’s Arms, and goes up to his bedroom, and he hears Mr. F. Bayham’s deep voice as he passes by the Boscawen Room, where the Jolly Britons are as usual assembled.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

LXVII. Newcome and Liberty

We have said that the Baronet’s lecture was discussed in the midnight senate assembled at the King’s Arms, where Mr. Tom Potts showed the orator no mercy. The senate of the King’s Arms was hostile to Sir Barnes Newcome. Many other Newcomites besides were savage and inclined to revolt against the representative of their borough. As these patriots met over their cups, and over the bumper of friendship uttered the sentiments of freedom, they had often asked of one another, where should a man be found to rid Newcome of its dictator? Generous hearts writhed under the oppression: patriotic eyes scowled when Barnes Newcome went by: with fine satire, Tom Potts at Brown the hatter’s shop, who made the hats for Sir Barnes Newcome’s domestics, proposed to take one of the beavers—a gold-laced one with a cockade and a cord—and set it up in the market-place and bid all Newcome come bow to it, as to the hat of Gessler. “Don’t you think, Potts,” says F. Bayham, who of course was admitted into the King’s Arms club, and ornamented that assembly by his presence and discourse, “Don’t you think the Colonel would make a good William Tell to combat against that Gessler?” Ha! Proposal received with acclamation—eagerly adopted by Charles Tucker, Esq., Attorney-at-Law, who would not have the slightest objection to conduct Colonel Newcome’s, or any other gentleman’s electioneering business in Newcome or elsewhere.

Like those three gentlemen in the plays and pictures of William Tell, who conspire under the moon, calling upon liberty and resolving to elect Tell as their especial champion—like Arnold, Melchthal, and Werner—Tom Potts, Fred Bayham, and Charles Tucker, Esqs., conspired round a punch-bowl, and determined that Thomas Newcome should be requested to free his country. A deputation from the electors of Newcome, that is to say, these very gentlemen waited on the Colonel in his apartment the very next morning, and set before him the state of the borough; Barnes Newcome’s tyranny, under which it groaned; and the yearning of all honest men to be free from that usurpation. Thomas Newcome received the deputation with great solemnity and politeness, crossed his legs, folded his arms, smoked his cheroot, and listened moat decorously, as now Potts, now Tucker, expounded to him; Bayham giving the benefit of his emphatic “hear, hear,” to their statements, and explaining dubious phrases to the Colonel in the most affable manner.

Whatever the conspirators had to say against Barnes, Colonel Newcome was only too ready to believe. He had made up his mind that that criminal ought to be punished and exposed. The lawyer’s covert innuendoes, who was ready to insinuate any amount of evil against Barnes which could safely be uttered, were by no means strong enough for Thomas Newcome. “‘Sharp practice! exceedingly alive to his own interests—reported violence of temper and tenacity of money’—say swindling at once, sir—say falsehood and rapacity—say cruelty and avarice,” cries the Colonel. “I believe, upon my honour and conscience, that unfortunate young man to be guilty of every one of those crimes.”

Mr. Bayham remarks to Mr. Potts that our friend the Colonel, when he does utter an opinion, takes care that there shall be no mistake about it.

“And I took care there should be no mistake before I uttered it at all, Bayham!” cries F. B.’s patron. “As long as I was in any doubt about this young man, I gave the criminal the benefit of it, as a man who admires our glorious constitution should do, and kept my own counsel, sir.”

“At least,” remarks Mr. Tucker, “enough is proven to show that Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Baronet, is scarce a fit person to represent this great borough in Parliament.”

“Represent Newcome in Parliament! It is a disgrace to that noble institution the English House of Commons, that Barnes Newcome should sit in it. A man whose word you cannot trust; a man stained with every private crime. What right has he to sit in the assembly of the legislators of the land, sir?” cries the Colonel, waving his hand as if addressing a chamber of deputies.

“You are for upholding the House of Commons?” inquires the lawyer.

“Of course, sir, of course.”

“And for increasing the franchise, Colonel Newcome, I should hope?” continues Mr. Tucker.

“Every man who can read and write ought to have a vote, sir; that is my opinion!” cries the Colonel.

“He’s a Liberal to the backbone,” says Potts to Tucker.

“To the backbone!” responds Tucker to Potts. “The Colonel will do for us, Potts.”

“We want such a man, Tucker; the Independent has been crying out for such a man for years past. We ought to have a Liberal as second representative of this great town—not a sneaking half-and-half Ministerialist like Sir Barnes, a fellow with one leg in the Carlton and the other in Brookes’s. Old Mr. Bunce we can’t touch. His place is safe; he is a good man of business: we can’t meddle with Mr. Bunce—I know that, who know the feeling of the country pretty well.”

“Pretty well! Better than any man in Newcome, Potts!” cries Mr. Tucker.

“But a good man like the Colonel,—a good Liberal like the Colonel,—a man who goes in for household suffrage——”

“Certainly, gentlemen.”

“And the general great Liberal principles—we know, of course—such a man would assuredly have a chance against Sir Barnes Newcome at the coming election! could we find such a man! a real friend of the people!”

“I know a friend of the people if ever there was one,” F. Bayham interposes.

“A man of wealth, station, experience; a man who has fought for his country; a man who is beloved in this place as you are, Colonel Newcome: for your goodness is known, sir—You are not ashamed of your origin, and there is not a Newcomite old or young, but knows how admirably good you have been to your old friend, Mrs.—Mrs. What-d’-you-call’-em.”

“Mrs. Mason,” from F. B.

“Mrs. Mason. If such a man as you, sir, would consent to put himself in nomination at the next election, every true Liberal in this place would rush to support you; and crush the oligarchy who rides over the liberties of this borough!”

“Something of this sort, gentlemen, I own to you had crossed my mind,” Thomas Newcome remarked. “When I saw that disgrace to my name, and the name of my father’s birthplace, representing the borough in Parliament, I thought for the credit of the town and the family, the Member for Newcome at least might be an honest man. I am an old soldier; have passed all my life in India; and am little conversant with affairs at home” (cries of “You are, you are”). “I hoped that my son, Mr. Clive Newcome, might have been found qualified to contest this borough against his unworthy cousin, and possibly to sit as your representative in Parliament. The wealth I have had the good fortune to amass will descend to him naturally, and at no very distant period of time, for I am nearly seventy years of age, gentlemen.”

The gentlemen are astonished at this statement.

“But,” resumed the Colonel; “my son Clive, as my friend Bayham knows, and to my own regret and mortification, as I don’t care to confess to you, declares he has no interest or desire in politics, or for public distinction—prefers his own pursuits—and even these I fear do not absorb him—declines the offer which I made him, to present himself in opposition to Sir Barnes Newcome. It becomes men in a certain station, as I think, to assert that station; and though a few years back I never should have thought of public life at all, and proposed to end my days in quiet as a retired dragoon officer, since—since it has pleased Heaven to increase very greatly my pecuniary means, to place me, as a director and manager of an important banking company, in a station of great public responsibility, I and my brother-directors have thought it but right that one of us should sit in Parliament, if possible, and I am not a man to shirk from that or from any other duty.”

“Colonel, will you attend a meeting of electors which we will call, and say as much to them and as well?” cries Mr. Potts. “Shall I put an announcement in my paper to the effect that you are ready to come forward?”

“I am prepared to do so, my good sir.”

And presently this solemn palaver ended.

Besides the critical article upon the Baronet’s lecture, of which Mr. Warrington was the author, there appeared in the leading columns of the ensuing number of Mr. Potts’ Independent, some remarks of a very smashing or hostile nature, against the Member for Newcome. “This gentleman has shown such talent in the lecturing business,” the Independent said, “that it is a great pity he should not withdraw himself from politics, and cultivate what all Newcome knows are the arts which he understands best; namely, poetry and the domestic affections. The performance of our talented representative last night was so pathetic as to bring tears into the eyes of several of our fair friends. We have heard, but never believed until now, that Sir Barnes Newcome possessed such a genius for making women cry. Last week we had the talented Miss Noakes, from Slowcome, reading Milton to us; how far superior was the eloquence of Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., even to that of the celebrated jestress! Bets were freely offered in the room last night that Sir Barnes would beat any woman,—bets which were not taken, as we scarcely need say, so well do our citizens appreciate the character of our excellent, our admirable representative.—Let the Baronet stick to his lectures, and let Newcome relieve him of his political occupations. He is not fit for them, he is too sentimental a man for us; the men of Newcome want a sound practical person; the Liberals of Newcome have a desire to be represented. When we elected Sir Barnes, he talked liberally enough, and we thought he would do, but you see the honourable Baronet is so poetical! we ought to have known that, and not to have believed him. Let us have a straightforward gentleman. If not a man of words, at least let us have a practical man. If not a man of eloquence, one at any rate whose word we can trust, and we can’t trust Sir Barnes Newcome’s; we have tried him, and we can’t really. Last night when the ladies were crying, we could not for the souls of us help laughing. We hope we know how to conduct ourselves as gentlemen. We trust we did not interrupt the harmony of the evening; but Sir Barnes Newcome, prating about children and virtue, and affection and poetry, this is really too strong.

“The Independent, faithful to its name, and ever actuated by principles of honour, has been, as our thousands of readers know, disposed to give Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., a fair trial. When he came forward after his father’s death, we believed in his pledges and promises, as a retrencher and reformer, and we stuck by him. Is there any man in Newcome, except, perhaps, our twaddling old contemporary the Sentinel, who believes in Sir B. N. any more? We say no, and we now give the readers of the Independent, and the electors of this borough, fair notice, that when the dissolution of Parliament takes place, a good man, a true man, a man of experience, no dangerous Radical, or brawling tap orator—Mr. Hicks’s friends well understand whom we mean—but a gentleman of Liberal principles, well-won wealth, and deserved station and honour, will ask the electors of Newcome whether they are, or are not discontented with their present unworthy Member. The Independent for one, says, we know good men of your family, we know in it men who would do honour to any name; but you, Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., we trust no more.”

In the electioneering matter, which had occasioned my unlucky interference, and that subsequent little coolness upon the good Colonel’s part, Clive Newcome had himself shown that the scheme was not to his liking; had then submitted as his custom was: and doing so with a bad grace, as also was to be expected, had got little thanks for his obedience. Thomas Newcome was hurt at his son’s faint-heartedness, and of course little Rosey was displeased at his hanging back. He set off in his father’s train, a silent, unwilling partisan. Thomas Newcome had the leisure to survey Clive’s glum face opposite to him during the whole of their journey, and to chew his mustachios, and brood upon his wrath and wrongs. His life had been a sacrifice for that boy! What darling schemes had he not formed in his behalf, and how superciliously did Clive meet his projects! The Colonel could not see the harm of which he had himself been the author. Had he not done everything in mortal’s power for his son’s happiness, and how many young men in England were there with such advantages as this moody, discontented, spoiled boy? As Clive backed out of the contest, of course his father urged it only the more vehemently. Clive slunk away from committees and canvassing, and lounged about the Newcome manufactories, whilst his father, with anger and bitterness in his heart, remained at the post of honour, as he called it, bent upon overcoming his enemy and carrying his point against Barnes Newcome. “If Paris will not fight, sir,” the Colonel said, with a sad look following his son, “Priam must.” Good old Priam believed his cause to be a perfectly just one, and that duty and his honour called upon him to draw the sword. So there was difference between Thomas Newcome and Clive his son. I protest it is with pain and reluctance I have to write that the good old man was in error—that there was a wrong-doer, and that Atticus was he.

Atticus, be it remembered, thought himself compelled by the very best motives. Thomas Newcome, the Indian banker, was at war with Barnes, the English banker. The latter had commenced the hostilities by a sudden and cowardly act of treason. There were private wrongs to envenom the contest, but it was the mercantile quarrel on which the Colonel chose to set his declaration of war. Barnes’s first dastardly blow had occasioned it, and his uncle was determined to carry it through. This I have said was also George Warrington’s judgment, who, in the ensuing struggle between Sir Barnes and his uncle, acted as a very warm and efficient partisan of the latter. “Kinsmanship!” says George, “what has old Tom Newcome ever had from his kinsman but cowardice and treachery? If Barnes had held up his finger, the young one might have been happy; if he could have effected it, the Colonel and his bank would have been ruined. I am for war, and for seeing the old boy in Parliament. He knows no more about politics than I do about dancing the polka; but there are five hundred wiseacres in that assembly who know no more than he does, and an honest man taking his seat there, in place of a confounded little rogue, at least makes a change for the better.”

I dare say Thomas Newcome, Esq. would by no means have concurred in the above estimate of his political knowledge, and thought himself as well informed as another. He used to speak with the greatest gravity about our constitution as the pride and envy of the world, though he surprised you as much by the latitudinarian reforms, which he was eager to press forward, as by the most singular old Tory opinions which he advocated on other occasions. He was for having every man to vote; every poor man to labour short time and get high wages; every poor curate to be paid double or treble; every bishop to be docked of his salary, and dismissed from the House of Lords. But he was a staunch admirer of that assembly, and a supporter of the rights of the Crown. He was for sweeping off taxes from the poor, and as money must be raised to carry on government, he opined that the rich should pay. He uttered all these opinions with the greatest gravity and emphasis, before a large assembly of electors, and others convened in the Newcome Town Hall, amid the roars of applause of the non-electors, and the bewilderment and consternation of Mr. Potts, of the Independent, who had represented the Colonel in his paper as a safe and steady reformer. Of course the Sentinel showed him up as a most dangerous radical, a sepoy republican, and so forth, to the wrath and indignation of Colonel Newcome. He a republican! he scorned the name! He would die as he had bled many a time for his sovereign. He an enemy of our beloved Church! He esteemed and honoured it, as he hated and abhorred the superstitions of Rome. (Yells, from the Irish in the crowd.) He an enemy of the House of Lords! He held it to be the safeguard of the constitution and the legitimate prize of our most illustrious, naval, military, and—and—legal heroes (ironical cheers). He repelled with scorn the dastard attacks of the journal which had assailed him; he asked, laying his hands on his heart, if as a gentleman, an officer bearing Her Majesty’s commission, he could be guilty of a desire to subvert her empire and to insult the dignity of her crown?

After this second speech at the Town Hall, it was asserted by a considerable party in Newcome, that Old Tom (as the mob familiarly called him) was a Tory, while an equal number averred that he was a Radical. Mr. Potts tried to reconcile his statements, a work in which I should think the talented editor of the Independent had no little difficulty. “He knows nothing about it,” poor Clive said with a sigh; “his politics are all sentiment and kindness; he will have the poor man paid double wages, and does not remember that the employer would be ruined: you have heard him, Pen, talking in this way at his own table, but when he comes out armed cap-à-pied, and careers against windmills in public, don’t you see that as Don Quixote’s son I had rather the dear brave old gentleman was at home?”

So this fainéant took but little part in the electioneering doings, holding moodily aloof from the meetings, and councils, and public-houses, where his father’s partisans were assembled.

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LXVIII. A Letter and a Reconciliation

Miss Ethel Newcome to Mrs. Pendennis:

“Dearest Laura,—I have not written to you for many weeks past. There have been some things too trivial, and some too sad, to write about; some things I know I shall write of if I begin, and yet that I know I had best leave; for of what good is looking to the past now? Why vex you or myself by reverting to it? Does not every day bring its own duty and task, and are these not enough to occupy one? What a fright you must have had with my little goddaughter! Thank heaven she is well now, and restored to you. You and your husband I know do not think it essential, but I do, most essential, and am very grateful that she was taken to church before her illness.

“Is Mr. Pendennis proceeding with his canvass? I try and avoid a certain subject, but it will come. You know who is canvassing against us here. My poor uncle has met with very considerable success amongst the lower classes. He makes them rambling speeches at which my brother and his friends laugh, but which the people applaud. I saw him only yesterday, on the balcony of the King’s Arms, speaking to a great mob, who were cheering vociferously below. I had met him before. He would not even stop and give his Ethel of old days his hand. I would have given him I don’t know what, for one kiss, for one kind word; but he passed on and would not answer me. He thinks me—what the world thinks me, worldly and heartless; what I was. But at least, dear Laura, you know that I always truly loved him, and do now, although he is our enemy, though he believes and utters the most cruel things against Barnes, though he says that Barnes Newcome, my father’s son, my brother, Laura, is not an honest man. Hard, selfish, worldly, I own my poor brother to be, and pray Heaven to amend him; but dishonest! and to be so maligned by the person one loves best in the world! This is a hard trial. I pray a proud heart may be bettered by it.

“And I have seen my cousin; once at a lecture which poor Barnes gave, and who seemed very much disturbed on perceiving Clive; once afterwards at good old Mrs. Mason’s, whom I have always continued to visit for uncle’s sake. The poor old woman, whose wits are very nearly gone, held both our hands, and asked when we were going to be married? and laughed, poor old thing! I cried out to her that Mr. Clive had a wife at home, a young dear wife, I said. He gave a dreadful sort of laugh, and turned away into the window. He looks terribly ill, pale, and oldened.

“I asked him a great deal about his wife, whom I remember a very pretty, sweet-looking girl indeed, at my Aunt Hobson’s, but with a not agreeable mother as I thought then. He answered me by monosyllables, appeared as though he would speak, and then became silent. I am pained, and yet glad that I saw him, I said, not very distinctly, I dare say, that I hoped the difference between Barnes and uncle would not extinguish his regard for mamma and me, who have always loved him; when I said loved him, he give one of his bitter laughs again; and so he did when I said I hoped his wife was well. You never would tell me much about Mrs. Newcome; and I fear she does not make my cousin happy. And yet this marriage was of my uncle’s making: another of the unfortunate marriages in our family. I am glad that I paused in time, before the commission of that sin; I strive my best, and to amend my temper, my inexperience, my shortcomings, and try to be the mother of my poor brother’s children. But Barnes has never forgiven me my refusal of Lord Farintosh. He is of the world still, Laura. Nor must we deal too harshly with people of his nature, who cannot perhaps comprehend a world beyond. I remember in old days, when we were travelling on the Rhine, in the happiest days of my whole life, I used to hear Clive and his friend Mr. Ridley, talk of art and of nature in a way that I could not understand at first, but came to comprehend better as my cousin taught me; and since then, I see pictures, landscapes, and flowers, with quite different eyes, and beautiful secrets as it were, of which I had no idea before. The secret of all secrets, the secret of the other life, and the better world beyond ours, may not this be unrevealed to some? I pray for them all, dearest Laura, for those nearest and dearest to me, that the truth may lighten their darkness, and Heaven’s great mercy defend them in the perils and dangers of their night.

“My boy at Sandhurst has done very well indeed; and Egbert, I am happy to say, thinks of taking orders; he has been very moderate at College. Not so Alfred; but the Guards are a sadly dangerous school for a young man; I have promised to pay his debts, and he is to exchange into the line. Mamma is coming to us at Christmas with Alice; my sister is very pretty indeed, I think, and I am rejoiced she is to marry young Mr. Mumford, who has a tolerable living, and who has been attached to her ever since he was a boy at Rugby School.

“Little Barnes comes on bravely with his Latin; and Mr. Whitestock, a most excellent and valuable person in this place, where there is so much Romanism and Dissent, speaks highly of him. Little Clara is so like her unhappy mother in a thousand ways and actions, that I am shocked often; and see my brother starting back and turning his head away, as if suddenly wounded. I have heard the most deplorable accounts of Lord and Lady Highgate. Oh, dearest friend and sister!-save you, I think I scarce know any one that is happy in the world: I trust you may continue so-you who impart your goodness and kindness to all who come near you-you in whose sweet serene happiness I am thankful to be allowed to repose sometimes. You are the island in the desert, Laura! and the birds sing there, and the fountain flows; and we come and repose by you for a little while, and to-morrow the march begins again, and the toil, and the struggle, and the desert. Good-bye, fountain! Whisper kisses to my dearest little ones from their affectionate Aunt Ethel.

“A friend of his, a Mr. Warrington, has spoken against us several times with extraordinary ability, as Barnes owns. Do you know Mr. W.? He wrote a dreadful article in the Independent, about the last poor lecture, which was indeed sad, sentimental, commonplace: and the critique is terribly comical. I could not help laughing, remembering some passages in it, when Barnes mentioned it: and my brother became so angry! They have put up a dreadful caricature of B. in Newcome: and my brother says he did it, but I hope not. It is very droll, though: he used to make them very funnily. I am glad he has spirits for it. Good-bye again.—E. N.”

“He says he did it!” cries Mr. Pendennis, laying the letter down. “Barnes Newcome would scarcely caricature himself, my dear?”

“‘He’ often means—means Clive—I think,” says Mrs. Pendennis, in an offhand manner.

“Oh! he means Clive, does he, Laura?”

“Yes—and you mean goose, Mr. Pendennis!” that saucy lady replies.

It must have been about the very time when this letter was written, that a critical conversation occurred between Clive and his father, of which the lad did not inform me until much later days; as was the case—the reader has been more than once begged to believe—with many other portions of this biography.

One night the Colonel, having come home from a round of electioneering visits, not half satisfied with himself; exceedingly annoyed (much more than he cared to own) with the impudence of some rude fellows at the public-houses, who had interrupted his fine speeches with odious hiccups and familiar jeers, was seated brooding over his cheroot by the chimney-fire; friend F. B. (of whose companionship his patron was occasionally tired) finding much better amusement with the Jolly Britons in the Boscawen Room below. The Colonel, as an electioneering business, had made his appearance in the club. But that ancient Roman warrior had frightened those simple Britons. His manners were too awful for them: so were Clive’s, who visited them also under Mr. Pott’s introduction; but the two gentlemen, each being full of care and personal annoyance at the time, acted like wet blankets upon the Britons—whereas F. B. warmed them and cheered them, affably partook of their meals with them, and graciously shared their cups. So the Colonel was alone, listening to the far-off roar of the Britons’ choruses by an expiring fire, as he sate by a glass of cold negus and the ashes of his cigar.

I dare say he may have been thinking that his fire was well-nigh out,—his cup of the dregs, his pipe little more now than dust and ashes—when Clive, candle in hand, came into their sitting-room.

As each saw the other’s face, it was so very sad and worn and pale, that the young man started back; and the elder, with quite the tenderness of old days, cried, “God bless me, my boy, how ill you look! Come and warm yourself—look, the fire’s out. Have something, Clivy!”

For months past they had not had a really kind word. The tender old voice smote upon Clive, and he burst into sudden tears. They rained upon his father’s trembling old brown hand, and stooped down and kissed it.

“You look very ill too, father,” says Clive.

“Ill? not I!” cries the father, still keeping the boy’s hand under both his own on the mantelpiece. “Such a battered old fellow as I am has a right to look the worse for wear; but you, boy; why do you look so pale?”

“I have seen a ghost, father,” Clive answered. Thomas, however, looked alarmed and inquisitive as though the boy was wandering in his mind.

“The ghost of my youth, father, the ghost of my happiness, and the best days of my life,” groaned out the young man. “I saw Ethel to-day. I went to see Sarah Mason, and she was there.”

“I had seen her, but I did not speak of her,” said the father. “I thought it was best not to mention her to you, my poor boy. And are—are you fond of her still, Clive?”

“Still! once means always in these things, father, doesn’t it? Once means to-day, and yesterday, and forever and ever.”

“Nay, my boy, you mustn’t talk to me so, or even to yourself so. You have the dearest little wife at home, a dear little wife and child.”

“You had a son, and have been kind enough to him, God knows. You had a wife: but that doesn’t prevent other—other thoughts. Do you know you never spoke twice in your life about my mother? You didn’t care for her.”

“I—I did my duty by her; I denied her nothing. I scarcely ever had a word with her, and I did my best to make her happy,” interposed the Colonel.

“I know, but your heart was with the other. So is mine. It’s fatal; it runs in the family, father.”

The boy looked so ineffably wretched that the father’s heart melted still more. “I did my best, Clive,” the Colonel gasped out. “I went to that villain Barnes and offered him to settle every shilling I was worth on you—I did—you didn’t know that—I’d kill myself for your sake, Clivy. What’s an old fellow worth living for? I can live upon a crust and a cigar. I don’t care about a carriage, and only go in it to please Rosey. I wanted to give up all for you, but he played me false, that scoundrel cheated us both; he did, and so did Ethel.”

“No, sir; I may have thought so in my rage once, but I know better now. She was the victim and not the agent. Did Madame de Florac play you false when she married her husband? It was her fate, and she underwent it. We all bow to it, we are in the track and the car passes over us. You know it does, father.” The Colonel was a fatalist: he had often advanced this Oriental creed in his simple discourses with his son and Clive’s friends.

“Besides,” Clive went on, “Ethel does not care for me. She received me to-day quite coldly, and held her hand out as if we had only parted last year. I suppose she likes that marquis who jilted her—God bless her! How shall we know what wins the hearts of women? She has mine. There was my Fate. Praise be to Allah! It is over.”

“But there’s that villain who injured you. His isn’t over yet,” cried the Colonel, clenching his trembling hand.

“Ah, father! Let us leave him to Allah too! Suppose Madame de Florac had a brother who insulted you. You know you wouldn’t have revenged yourself. You would have wounded her in striking him.”

“You called out Barnes yourself, boy,” cried the father.

“That was for another cause, and not for my quarrel. And how do you know I intended to fire? By Jove, I was so miserable then that an ounce of lead would have done me little harm!”

The father saw the son’s mind more clearly than he had ever done hitherto. They had scarcely ever talked upon that subject which the Colonel found was so deeply fixed in Clive’s heart. He thought of his own early days, and how he had suffered, and beheld his son before him racked with the same cruel pangs of enduring grief. And he began to own that he had pressed him too hastily in his marriage; and to make an allowance for an unhappiness of which he had in part been the cause.

“Mashallah! Clive, my boy,” said the old man, “what is done is done.”

“Let us break up our camp before this place, and not go to war with Barnes, father,” said Clive. “Let us have peace—and forgive him if we can.”

“And retreat before this scoundrel, Clive?”

“What is a victory over such a fellow? One gives a chimney-sweep the wall, father.”

“I say again—What is done is done. I have promised to meet him at the hustings, and I will. I think it is best: and you are right: and you act like a high-minded gentleman—and my dear old boy—not to meddle in the quarrel—though I didn’t think so—and the difference gave me a great deal of pain—and so did what Pendennis said—and I’m wrong—and thank God I am wrong—and God bless you, my own boy!” the Colonel cried out in a burst of emotion; and the two went to their bedrooms together, and were happier as they shook hands at the doors of their adjoining chambers than they had been for many a long day and year.

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