Part 21 (1/2)
He could not have been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking at him with her honest eyes. Last week he went to the Drawing-room, and papa presented him. His uniform of grey and silver was quite old, yet he looked much grander than Sir Brian in his new deputy-lieutenant's dress. ”Next year, when I am presented, you must come too, sir,” says Ethel. ”I insist upon it, you must come too!”
”I will order a new uniform, Ethel,” says her uncle.
The girl laughs. ”When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle, and asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the same question in my mind; and I thought when you went to the Drawing-room, perhaps the King will knight him. But instead he knighted mamma's apothecary, Sir Danby Jilks: that horrid little man, and I won't have you knighted any more.”
”I hope Egbert won't ask Sir Danby Jilks how many people HE has killed,”
says the Colonel, laughing; but thinking the joke too severe upon Sir Danby and the profession, he forthwith apologises by narrating many anecdotes he knows to the credit of surgeons. How, when the fever broke out on board the s.h.i.+p going to India, their surgeon devoted himself to the safety of the crew, and died himself, leaving directions for the treatment of the patients when he was gone! What heroism the doctors showed during the cholera in India; and what courage he had seen some of them exhibit in action: attending the wounded men under the hottest fire, and exposing themselves as readily as the bravest troops. Ethel declares that her uncle always will talk of other people's courage, and never say a word about his own; ”and the only reason,” she says, ”which made me like that odious Sir Thomas de Boots, who laughs so, and looks so red, and pays such horrid compliments to all ladies, was, that he praised you, uncle, at Newcome, last year, when Barnes and he came to us at Christmas. Why did you not come? Mamma and I went to see your old nurse; and we found her such a nice old lady.” So the pair talk kindly on, riding homewards through the pleasant summer twilight. Mamma had gone out to dinner; and there were cards for three parties afterwards.
”Oh, how I wish it was next year!” says Miss Ethel.
Many a splendid a.s.sembly, and many a brilliant next year, will the ardent and hopeful young creature enjoy; but in the midst of her splendour and triumphs, buzzing flatterers, conquered rivals, prostrate admirers, no doubt she will think sometimes of that quiet season before the world began for her, and that dear old friend, on whose arm she leaned while she was yet a young girl.
The Colonel comes to Park Street early in the forenoon, when the mistress of the house, surrounded by her little ones, is administering dinner to them. He behaves with splendid courtesy to Miss Quigley, the governess, and makes a point of taking wine with her, and of making a most profound bow during that ceremony. Miss Quigley cannot help thinking Colonel Newcome's bow very fine. She has an idea that his late Majesty must have bowed in that way: she flutteringly imparts this opinion to Lady Anne's maid; who tells her mistress, who tells Miss Ethel, who watches the Colonel the next time he takes wine with Miss Quigley, and they laugh, and then Ethel tells him; so that the gentleman and the governess have to blush ever after when they drink wine together. When she is walking with her little charges in the Park, or in that before-mentioned paradise nigh to Apsley House, faint signals of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She knows the dear Colonel amongst a thousand hors.e.m.e.n. If Ethel makes for her uncle purses, guard-chains, antimaca.s.sars, and the like beautiful and useful articles, I believe it is in reality Miss Quigley who does four-fifths of the work, as she sits alone in the schoolroom, high, high up in that lone house, when the little ones are long since asleep, before her dismal little tea-tray, and her little desk containing her mother's letters and her mementos of home.
There are, of course, numberless fine parties in Park Lane, where the Colonel knows he would be very welcome. But if there be grand a.s.semblies, he does not care to come. ”I like to go to the club best,”
he says to Lady Anne. ”We talk there as you do here about persons, and about Jack marrying, and Tom dying, and so forth. But we have known Jack and Tom all our lives, and so are interested in talking about them. Just as you are in speaking of your own friends and habitual society. They are people whose names I have sometimes read in the newspaper, but whom I never thought of meeting until I came to your house. What has an old fellow like me to say to your young dandies or old dowagers?”
”Mamma is very odd and sometimes very captious, my dear Colonel,” said Lady Anne, with a blush; ”she suffers so frightfully from tic that we are all bound to pardon her.”
Truth to tell, old Lady Kew had been particularly rude to Colonel Newcome and Clive. Ethel's birthday befell in the spring, on which occasion she was wont to have a juvenile a.s.sembly, chiefly of girls of her own age and condition; who came, accompanied by a few governesses, and they played and sang their little duets and choruses together, and enjoyed a gentle refection of sponge-cakes, jellies, tea, and the like.--The Colonel, who was invited to this little party, sent a fine present to his favourite Ethel; and Clive and his friend J. J. made a funny series of drawings, representing the life of a young lady as they imagined it, and drawing her progress from her cradle upwards: now engaged with her doll, then with her dancing-master; now marching in her back-board; now crying over her German lessons: and dressed for her first ball finally, and bestowing her hand upon a dandy, of preternatural ugliness, who was kneeling at her feet as the happy man. This picture was the delight of the laughing happy girls; except, perhaps, the little cousins from Bryanstone Square, who were invited to Ethel's party, but were so overpowered by the prodigious new dresses in which their mamma had attired them, that they could admire nothing but their rustling pink frocks, their enormous sashes, their lovely new silk stockings.
Lady Kew coming to London attended on the party, and presented her granddaughter with a sixpenny pincus.h.i.+on. The Colonel had sent Ethel a beautiful little gold watch and chain. Her aunt had complimented her with that refres.h.i.+ng work, Alison's History of Europe, richly bound.--Lady Kew's pincus.h.i.+on made rather a poor figure among the gifts, whence probably arose her ladys.h.i.+p's ill-humour.
Ethel's grandmother became exceedingly testy when, the Colonel arriving, Ethel ran up to him and thanked him for the beautiful watch, in return for which she gave him a kiss, which, I dare say, amply repaid Colonel Newcome; and shortly after him Mr. Clive arrived, looking uncommonly handsome, with that smart little beard and mustachio with which nature had recently gifted him. As he entered, all the girls, who had been admiring his pictures, began to clap their hands. Mr. Clive Newcome blushed, and looked none the worse for that indication of modesty.
Lady Kew had met Colonel Newcome a half-dozen times at her daughter's house: but on this occasion she had quite forgotten him, for when the Colonel made her a bow, her ladys.h.i.+p regarded him steadily, and beckoning her daughter to her, asked who the gentleman was who has just kissed Ethel? Trembling as she always did before her mother, Lady Anne explained. Lady Kew said ”Oh!” and left Colonel Newcome blus.h.i.+ng and rather embarra.s.se de sa personne--before her.
With the clapping of hands that greeted Clive's arrival, the Countess was by no means more good-humoured. Not aware of her wrath, the young fellow, who had also previously been presented to her, came forward presently to make her his compliments. ”Pray, who are you?” she said, looking at him very earnestly in the face. He told her his name.
”Hm,” said Lady Kew, ”I have heard of you, and I have heard very little good of you.”
”Will your ladys.h.i.+p please to give me your informant?” cried out Colonel Newcome.
Barnes Newcome, who had condescended to attend his sister's little fete, and had been languidly watching the frolics of the young people, looked very much alarmed.
CHAPTER XXI. Is Sentimental, but Short
Without wis.h.i.+ng to disparage the youth of other nations, I think a well-bred English lad has this advantage over them, that his bearing is commonly more modest than theirs. He does not a.s.sume the tail-coat and the manners of manhood too early: he holds his tongue, and listens to his elders: his mind blushes as well as his cheeks: he does not know how to make bows and pay compliments like the young Frenchman: nor to contradict his seniors as I am informed American striplings do. Boys, who learn nothing else at our public schools, learn at least good manners, or what we consider to be such; and with regard to the person at present under consideration, it is certain that all his acquaintances, excepting perhaps his dear cousin Barnes Newcome, agreed in considering him as a very frank, manly, modest, and agreeable young fellow.--My friend Warrington found a grim pleasure in his company; and his bright face, droll humour, and kindly laughter were always welcome in our chambers. Honest Fred Bayham was charmed to be in his society; and used pathetically to aver that he himself might have been such a youth, had he been blest with a kind father to watch, and good friends to guide, his early career. In fact, Fred was by far the most didactic of Clive's bachelor acquaintances, pursued the young man with endless advice and sermons, and held himself up as a warning to Clive, and a touching example of the evil consequences of early idleness and dissipation. Gentlemen of much higher rank in the world took a fancy to the lad. Captain Jack Belsize introduced him to his own mess, as also to the Guard dinner at St. James's; and my Lord Kew invited him to Kewbury, his lords.h.i.+p's house in Oxfords.h.i.+re, where Clive enjoyed hunting, shooting, and plenty of good company. Mrs. Newcome groaned in spirit when she heard of these proceedings; and feared, feared very much that that unfortunate young man was going to ruin; and Barnes Newcome amiably disseminated reports amongst his family that the lad was plunged in all sorts of debaucheries: that he was tipsy every night: that he was engaged, in his sober moments, with dice, the turf, or worse amus.e.m.e.nts: and that his head was so turned by living with Kew and Belsize, that the little rascal's pride and arrogance were perfectly insufferable. Ethel would indignantly deny these charges; then perhaps credit a few of them; and she looked at Clive with melancholy eyes when he came to visit his aunt; and I hope prayed that Heaven might mend his wicked ways. The truth is, the young fellow enjoyed life, as one of his age and spirit might be expected to do; but he did very little harm, and meant less; and was quite unconscious of the reputation which his kind friends were making for him.
There had been a long-standing promise that Clive and his father were to go to Newcome at Christmas: and I dare say Ethel proposed to reform the young prodigal, if prodigal he was, for she busied herself delightedly in preparing the apartments which they were to inhabit during their stay--speculated upon it in a hundred pleasant ways, putting off her visit to this pleasant neighbour, or that pretty scene in the vicinage, until her uncle should come and they should be enabled to enjoy the excursion together. And before the arrival of her relatives, Ethel, with one of her young brothers, went to see Mrs. Mason; and introduced herself as Colonel Newcome's niece; and came back charmed with the old lady, and eager once more in defence of Clive (when that young gentleman's character happened to be called in question by her brother Barnes), for had she not seen the kindest letter, which Clive had written to old Mrs. Mason, and the beautiful drawing of his father on horseback and in regimentals, waving his sword in front of the gallant the Bengal Cavalry, which the lad had sent down to the good old woman?
He could not be very bad, Ethel thought, who was so kind and thoughtful for the poor. His father's son could not be altogether a reprobate. When Mrs. Mason, seeing how good and beautiful Ethel was, and thinking in her heart nothing could be too good or beautiful for Clive, nodded her kind old head at Miss Ethel, and said she should like to find a husband for her, Miss Ethel blushed, and looked handsomer than ever; and at home, when she was describing the interview, never mentioned this part of her talk with Mrs. Mason.
But the enfant terrible, young Alfred, did: announcing to all the company at dessert, that Ethel was in love with Clive--that Clive was coming to marry her--that Mrs. Mason, the old woman at Newcome, had told him so.
”I dare say she has told the tale all over Newcome!” shrieked out Mr.
Barnes. ”I dare say it will be in the Independent next week. By Jove, it's a pretty connexion--and nice acquaintances this uncle of ours brings us!” A fine battle ensued upon the receipt and discussion of this intelligence: Barnes was more than usually bitter and sarcastic: Ethel haughtily recriminated, losing her temper, and then her firmness, until, fairly bursting into tears, she taxed Barnes with meanness and malignity in for ever uttering stories to his cousin's disadvantage, and pursuing with constant slander and cruelty one of the very best of men. She rose and left the table in great tribulation--she went to her room and wrote a letter to her uncle, blistered with tears, in which she besought him not to come to Newcome.--Perhaps she went and looked at the apartments which she had adorned and prepared for his reception. It was for him and for his company that she was eager. She had met no one so generous and gentle, so honest and unselfish, until she had seen him.
Lady Anne knew the ways of women very well; and when Ethel that night, still in great indignation and scorn against Barnes, announced that she had written a letter to her uncle, begging the Colonel not to come at Christmas, Ethel's mother soothed the wounded girl, and treated her with peculiar gentleness and affection; and she wisely gave Mr. Barnes to understand, that if he wished to bring about that very attachment, the idea of which made him so angry, he could use no better means than those which he chose to employ at present, of constantly abusing and insulting poor Clive, and awakening Ethel's sympathies by mere opposition. And Ethel's sad little letter was extracted from the post-bag: and her mother brought it to her, sealed, in her own room, where the young lady burned it: being easily brought by Lady Anne's quiet remonstrances to perceive that it was best no allusion should take place to the silly dispute which had occurred that evening; and that Clive and his father should come for the Christmas holidays, if they were so minded. But when they came, there was no Ethel at Newcome. She was gone on a visit to her sick aunt, Lady Julia. Colonel Newcome pa.s.sed the holidays sadly without his young favourite, and Clive consoled himself by knocking down pheasants with Sir Brian's keepers: and increased his cousin's attachment for him by breaking the knees of Barnes's favourite mare out hunting. It was a dreary entertainment; father and son were glad enough to get away from it, and to return to their own humbler quarters in London.
Thomas Newcome had now been for three years in the possession of that felicity which his soul longed after; and had any friend of his asked him if he was happy, he would have answered in the affirmative no doubt, and protested that he was in the enjoyment of everything a reasonable man could desire. And yet, in spite of his happiness, his honest face grew more melancholy: his loose clothes hung only the looser on his lean limbs: he ate his meals without appet.i.te: his nights were restless: and he would sit for hours silent in the midst of his family, so that Mr.