Part 7 (1/2)
CHAPTER VII. In which Mr. Clive's School-days are over
Our good Colonel had luckily to look forward to a more pleasant meeting with his son, than that unfortunate interview with his other near relatives. He dismissed his cab at Ludgate Hill, and walked thence by the dismal precincts of Newgate, and across the muddy pavement of Smithfield, on his way back to the old school where his son was, a way which he had trodden many a time in his own early days. There was Cistercian Street, and the Red Cow of his youth: there was the quaint old Grey Friars Square, with its blackened trees and garden, surrounded by ancient houses of the build of the last century, now slumbering like pensioners in the suns.h.i.+ne.
Under the great archway of the hospital he could look at the old Gothic building: and a black-gowned pensioner or two crawling over the quiet square, or pa.s.sing from one dark arch to another. The boarding-houses of the school were situated in the square, hard by the more ancient buildings of the hospital. A great noise of shouting, crying, clapping forms and cupboards, treble voices, ba.s.s voices, poured out of the schoolboys' windows: their life, bustle, and gaiety contrasted strangely with the quiet of those old men creeping along in their black gowns under the ancient arches yonder, whose struggle of life was over, whose hope and noise and bustle had sunk into that grey calm. There was Thomas Newcome arrived at the middle of life, standing between the shouting boys and the tottering seniors, and in a situation to moralise upon both, had not his son Clive, who has espied him from within Mr.
Hopkinson's, or let us say at once Hopkey's house, come jumping down the steps to greet his sire. Clive was dressed in his very best; not one of those four hundred young gentlemen had a better figure, a better tailor, or a neater boot. Schoolfellows, grinning through the bars, envied him as he walked away; senior boys made remarks on Colonel Newcome's loose clothes and long mustachios, his brown hands and unbrushed hat. The Colonel was smoking a cheroot as he walked; and the gigantic Smith, the c.o.c.k of the school, who happened to be looking majestically out of window, was pleased to say that he thought Newcome's governor was a fine manly-looking fellow.
”Tell me about your uncles, Clive,” said the Colonel, as they walked on arm in arm.
”What about them, sir?” asks the boy. ”I don't think I know much.”
”You have been to stay with them. You wrote about them. Were they kind to you?”
”Oh, yes, I suppose they are very kind. They always tipped me: only you know when I go there I scarcely ever see them. Mr. Newcome asks me the oftenest--two or three times a quarter when he's in town, and gives me a sovereign regular.”
”Well, he must see you to give you the sovereign,” says Clive's father, laughing.
The boy blushed rather.
”Yes. When it's time to go back to Smithfield on a Sunday night, I go into the dining-room to shake hands, and he gives it me; but he don't speak to me much, you know, and I don't care about going to Bryanstone Square, except for the tip, of course that's important, because I am made to dine with the children, and they are quite little ones; and a great cross French governess, who is always crying and shrieking after them, and finding fault with them. My uncle generally has his dinner-parties on Sat.u.r.day, or goes out; and aunt gives me ten s.h.i.+llings and sends me to the play; that's better fun than a dinner-party.” Here the lad blushed again. ”I used,” says he, ”when I was younger, to stand on the stairs and prig things out of the dishes when they came out from dinner, but I'm past that now. Maria (that's my cousin) used to take the sweet things and give 'em to the governess. Fancy! she used to put lumps of sugar into her pocket and eat them in the schoolroom! Uncle Hobson don't live in such good society as Uncle Newcome. You see, Aunt Hobson, she's very kind, you know, and all that, but I don't think she's what you call comme il faut.”
”Why, how are you to judge?” asks the father, amused at the lad's candid prattle, ”and where does the difference lie?”
”I can't tell you what it is, or how it is,” the boy answered, ”only one can't help seeing the difference. It isn't rank and that; only somehow there are some men gentlemen and some not, and some women ladies and some not. There's Jones now, the fifth form master, every man sees he's a gentleman, though he wears ever so old clothes; and there's Mr. Brown, who oils his hair, and wears rings, and white chokers--my eyes! such white chokers!--and yet we call him the handsome sn.o.b! And so about Aunt Maria, she's very handsome and she's very finely dressed, only somehow she's not--she's not the ticket, you see.”
”Oh, she's not the ticket,” says the Colonel, much amused.
”Well, what I mean is--but never mind,” says the boy. ”I can't tell you what I mean. I don't like to make fun of her, you know, for after all, she is very kind to me; but Aunt Anne is different, and it seems as if what she says is more natural; and though she has funny ways of her own too, yet somehow she looks grander,”--and here the lad laughed again.
”And do you know, I often think that as good a lady as Aunt Anne herself, is old Aunt Honeyman at Brighton--that is, in all essentials, you know. For she is not proud, and she is not vain, and she never says an unkind word behind anybody's back, and she does a deal of kindness to the poor without appearing to crow over them, you know; and she is not a bit ashamed of letting lodgings, or being poor herself, as sometimes I think some of our family----”
”I thought we were going to speak no ill of them?” says the Colonel, smiling.
”Well, it only slipped out unawares,” says Clive, laughing; ”but at Newcome when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great a.s.s, Barnes Newcome, gives himself his airs, it makes me die of laughing. That time I went down to Newcome, I went to see old Aunt Sarah, and she told me everything, and showed me the room where my grandfather--you know; and do you know I was a little hurt at first, for I thought we were swells till then. And when I came back to school, where perhaps I had been giving myself airs, and bragging about Newcome, why, you know, I thought it was right to tell the fellows.”
”That's a man,” said the Colonel, with delight; though had he said, ”That's a boy,” he had spoken more correctly. Indeed, how many men do we know in the world without caring to know who their fathers were? and how many more who wisely do not care to tell us? ”That's a man,” cries the Colonel; ”never be ashamed of your father, Clive.”
”Ashamed of my father!” says Clive, looking up to him, and walking on as proud as a peac.o.c.k. ”I say,” the lad resumed, after a pause--
”Say what you say,” said the father.
”Is that all true what's in the Peerage--in the Baronetage, about Uncle Newcome and Newcome; about the Newcome who was burned at Smithfield; about the one that was at the battle of Bosworth; and the old old Newcome who was bar--that is, who was surgeon to Edward the Confessor, and was killed at Hastings? I am afraid it isn't; and yet I should like it to be true.”
”I think every man would like to come of an ancient and honourable race,” said the Colonel, in his honest way. ”As you like your father to be an honourable man, why not your grandfather, and his ancestors before him? But if we can't inherit a good name, at least we can do our best to leave one, my boy; and that is an ambition which, please G.o.d, you and I will both hold by.”
With this simple talk the old and young gentleman beguiled their way, until they came into the western quarter of the town, where the junior member of the firm of Newcome Brothers had his house--a handsome and roomy mansion in Bryanstone Square. Colonel Newcome was bent on paying a visit to his sister-in-law, and as he knocked at the door, where the pair were kept waiting some little time, he could remark through the opened windows of the dining-room, that a great table was laid and every preparation made for a feast.
”My brother said he was engaged to dinner to-day,” said the Colonel.
”Does Mrs. Newcome give parties when he is away?”
”She invites all the company,” answered Clive. ”My uncle never asks any one without aunt's leave.”
The Colonel's countenance fell. He has a great dinner, and does not ask his own brother! Newcome thought. Why, if he had come to me in India with all his family, he might have stayed for a year, and I should have been offended if he had gone elsewhere.