Part 31 (1/2)

That cool old operator, who had taken Mr. Clive's case in hand, now produced her s.h.i.+ning knife, and executed the first cut with perfect neatness and precision. ”We are come here, as I suppose you know, Mr.

Newcome, upon family matters, and I frankly tell you that I think, for your own sake, you would be much better away. I wrote my daughter a great scolding when I heard that you were in this place.”

”But it was by the merest chance, mamma, indeed it was,” cries Lady Anne.

”Of course, by the merest chance, and by the merest chance I heard of it too. A little bird came and told me at Kissingen. You have no more sense, Anne, than a goose. I have told you so a hundred times. Lady Anne requested you to stay, and I, my good young friend, request you to go away.”

”I needed no request,” said Clive. ”My going, Lady Kew, is my own act. I was going without requiring any guide to show me to the door.”

”No doubt you were, and my arrival is the signal for Mr. Newcome's bon jour. I am Bogey, and I frighten everybody away. By the scene which you witnessed yesterday, my good young friend, and all that painful esclandre on the promenade, you must see how absurd, and dangerous, and wicked--yes, wicked it is for parents to allow intimacies to spring up between young people, which can only lead to disgrace and unhappiness.

Lady Dorking was another good-natured goose. I had not arrived yesterday ten minutes, when my maid came running in to tell me of what had occurred on the promenade; and, tired as I was, I went that instant to Jane Dorking and pa.s.sed the evening with her, and that poor little creature to whom Captain Belsize behaved so cruelly. She does not care a fig for him--not one fig. Her childish inclination is pa.s.sed away these two years, whilst Mr. Jack was performing his feats in prison; and if the wretch flatters himself that it was on his account she was agitated yesterday, he is perfectly mistaken, and you may tell him Lady Kew said so. She is subject to fainting fits. Dr. Finck has been attending her ever since she has been here. She fainted only last Tuesday at the sight of a rat walking about their lodgings (they have dreadful lodgings, the Dorkings), and no wonder she was frightened at the sight of that great coa.r.s.e tipsy wretch! She is engaged, as you know, to your connexion, my grandson, Barnes:--in all respects a most eligible union. The rank of life of the parties suits them to one another. She is a good young woman, and Barnes has experienced from persons of another sort such horrors, that he will know the blessing of domestic virtue. It was high time he should. I say all this in perfect frankness to you.

”Go back again and play in the garden, little brats” (this to the innocents who came frisking in from the lawn in front of the windows).

”You have been? And Barnes sent you in here? Go up to Miss Quigley. No, stop. Go and tell Ethel to come down; bring her down with you. Do you understand?”

The unconscious infants toddle upstairs to their sister; and Lady Kew blandly says, ”Ethel's engagement to my grandson, Lord Kew, has long been settled in our family, though these things are best not talked about until they are quite determined, you know, my dear Mr. Newcome.

When we saw you and your father in London, we heard that you too-that you too were engaged to a young lady in your own rank of life, a Miss--what was her name?--Miss MacPherson, Miss Mackenzie. Your aunt, Mrs. Hobson Newcome, who I must say is a most blundering silly person, had set about this story. It appears there is no truth in it. Do not look surprised that I know about your affairs. I am an old witch, and know numbers of things.”

And, indeed, how Lady Kew came to know this fact, whether her maid corresponded with Lady Anne's maid, what her ladys.h.i.+p's means of information were, avowed or occult, this biographer has never been able to ascertain. Very likely Ethel, who in these last three weeks had been made aware of that interesting circ.u.mstance, had announced it to Lady Kew in the course of a cross-examination, and there may have been a battle between the granddaughter and the grandmother, of which the family chronicler of the Newcomes has had no precise knowledge.

That there were many such I know--skirmishes, sieges, and general engagements. When we hear the guns, and see the wounded, we know there has been a fight. Who knows had there been a battle-royal, and was Miss Newcome having her wounds dressed upstairs?

”You will like to say good-bye to your cousin, I know,” Lady Kew continued, with imperturbable placidity. ”Ethel, my dear, here is Mr.

Clive Newcome, who has come to bid us all good-bye.” The little girls came trotting down at this moment, each holding a skirt of their elder sister. She looked rather pale, but her expression was haughty--almost fierce.

Clive rose up as she entered, from the sofa by the old Countess's side, which place she had pointed him to take during the amputation. He rose up and put his hair back off his face, and said very calmly, ”Yes, I'm come to say good-bye. My holidays are over, and Ridley and I are off for Rome; good-bye, and G.o.d bless you, Ethel.”

She gave him her hand and said, ”Good-bye, Clive,” but her hand did not return his pressure, and dropped to her side, when he let it go.

Hearing the words good-bye, little Alice burst into a howl, and little Maude, who was an impetuous little thing, stamped her little red shoes and said, ”It san't be good-bye. Tlive san't go.” Alice, roaring, clung hold of Clive's trousers. He took them up gaily, each on an arm, as he had done a hundred times, and tossed the children on to his shoulders, where they used to like to pull his yellow mustachios. He kissed the little hands and faces, and a moment after was gone.

”Qu'as-tu?” says M. de Florac, meeting him going over the bridge to his own hotel. ”Qu'as-tu, mon pet.i.t Claive? Est-ce qu'on vient de t'arracher une dent?”

”C'est ca,” says Clive, and walked into the Hotel de France. ”Hulloh!

J. J.! Ridley!” he sang out. ”Order the trap out and let's be off.”

”I thought we were not to march till to-morrow,” says J. J., divining perhaps that some catastrophe had occurred. Indeed, Mr. Clive was going a day sooner than he had intended. He woke at Fribourg the next morning.

It was the grand old cathedral he looked at, not Baden of the pine-clad hills, of the pretty walks and the lime-tree avenues. Not Baden, the prettiest booth of all Vanity Fair. The crowds and the music, the gambling-tables and the cadaverous croupiers and c.h.i.n.king gold, were far out of sight and hearing. There was one window in the Hotel de Hollande that he thought of, how a fair arm used to open it in the early morning, how the muslin curtain in the morning air swayed to and fro. He would have given how much to see it once more! Walking about at Fribourg in the night, away from his companions, he had thought of ordering horses, galloping back to Baden, and once again under that window, calling Ethel, Ethel. But he came back to his room and the quiet J. J., and to poor Jack Belsize, who had had his tooth taken out too.

We had almost forgotten Jack, who took a back seat in Clive's carriage, as befits a secondary personage in this history, and Clive in truth had almost forgotten him too. But Jack having his own cares and business, and having rammed his own carpet-bag, brought it down without a word, and Clive found him environed in smoke when he came down to take his place in the little britzska. I wonder whether the window at the Hotel de Hollande saw him go? There are some curtains behind which no historian, however prying, is allowed to peep.

”Tiens, le pet.i.t part,” says Florac of the cigar, who was always sauntering. ”Yes, we go,” says Clive. ”There is a fourth place, Viscount; will you come too?”

”I would love it well,” replies Florac, ”but I am here in faction. My cousin and seigneur M. le Duc d'Ivry is coming all the way from Bagneres de Bigorre. He says he counts on me:--affaires mon cher, affaires d'etat.”

”How pleased the d.u.c.h.ess will be! Easy with that bag!” shouts Clive.

”How pleased the princess will be!” In truth he hardly knew what he was saying.

”Vous croyez; vous croyez,” says M. de Florac. ”As you have a fourth place, I know who had best take it.”

”And who is that?” asked the young traveller.