Part 58 (1/2)
Miss Newcome has been compared ere this to the statue of ”Huntress Diana” at the Louvre, whose haughty figure and beauty the young lady indeed somewhat resembled. I was not present when Diana and Diana's grandmother hunted the n.o.ble Scottish stag of whom we have just been writing; nor care to know how many times Lord Farintosh escaped, and how at last he was brought to bay and taken by his resolute pursuers. Paris, it appears, was the scene of his fall and capture. The news was no doubt well known amongst Lord Farintosh's brother-dandies, among exasperated matrons and virgins in Mayfair, and in polite society generally, before it came to simple Tom Newcome and his son. Not a word on the subject had Sir Barnes mentioned to the Colonel: perhaps not choosing to speak till the intelligence was authenticated; perhaps not wis.h.i.+ng to be the bearer of tidings so painful.
Though the Colonel may have read in his Pall Mall Gazette a paragraph which announced an approaching MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE, ”between a n.o.ble young marquis and an accomplished and beautiful young lady, daughter and sister of a Northern baronet,” he did not know who were the fas.h.i.+onable persons about to be made happy, nor, until he received a letter from an old friend who lived at Paris, was the fact conveyed to him. Here is the letter preserved by him along with all that he ever received from the same hand:--
”Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain,
”Paris, 10 Fev.
”So behold you of return, my friend! you quit for ever the sword and those arid plains where you have pa.s.sed so many years of your life, separated from those to whom, at the commencement, you held very nearly.
Did it not seem once as if two hands never could unlock, so closely were they enlaced together? Ah, mine are old and feeble now; forty years have pa.s.sed since the time when you used to say they were young and fair. How well I remember me of every one of those days, though there is a death between me and them, and it is as across a grave I review them! Yet another parting, and tears and regrets are finished. Tenez, I do not believe them when they say there is no meeting for us afterwards, there above. To what good to have seen you, friend, if we are to part here, and in Heaven too? I have not altogether forgotten your language, is it not so? I remember it because it was yours, and that of my happy days. I radote like an old woman as I am. M. de Florac has known my history from the commencement. May I not say that after so many of years I have been faithful to him and to all my promises? When the end comes with its great absolution, I shall not be sorry. One supports the combats of life, but they are long, and one comes from them very wounded; ah, when shall they be over?
”You return and I salute you with wishes for parting. How much egotism!
I have another project which I please myself to arrange. You know how I am arrived to love Clive as own my child. I very quick surprised his secret, the poor boy, when he was here it is twenty months. He looked so like you as I repeal me of you in the old time! He told me he had no hope of his beautiful cousin. I have heard of the fine marriage that one makes her. Paul, my son, has been at the English Amba.s.sade last night and has made his congratulations to M. de Farintosh. Paul says him handsome, young, not too spiritual, rich, and haughty, like all, all n.o.ble Montagnards.
”But it is not of M. de Farintosh I write, whose marriage, without doubt, has been announced to you. I have a little project; very foolish, perhaps. You know Mr. the Duke of Ivry has left me guardian of his little daughter Antoinette, whose affreuse mother no one sees more.
Antoinette is pretty and good, and soft, and with an affectionate heart.
I love her already as my infant. I wish to bring her up, and that Clive should marry her. They say you are returned very rich. What follies are these I write! In the long evenings of winter, the children escaped it is a long time from the maternal nest, a silent old man my only company,--I live but of the past; and play with its souvenirs as the detained caress little birds, little flowers, in their prisons. I was born for the happiness; my G.o.d! I have learned it in knowing you. In losing you I have lost it. It is not against the will of Heaven I oppose myself. It is man, who makes himself so much of this evil and misery, this slavery, these tears, these crimes, perhaps.
”This marriage of the young Scotch Marquis and the fair Ethel (I love her in spite of all, and shall see her soon and congratulate her, for, do you see, I might have stopped this fine marriage, and did my best and more than my duty for our poor Clive) shall make itself in London next spring, I hear. You shall a.s.sist scarcely at the ceremony; he, poor boy, shall not care to be there. Bring him to Paris to make the court to my little Antoinette: bring him to Paris to his good friend, Comtesse de Florac.”
”I read marvels of his works in an English journal, which one sends me.”
Clive was not by when this letter reached his father. Clive was in his painting-room, and lest he should meet his son, and in order to devise the best means of breaking the news to the lad, Thomas Newcome retreated out of doors; and from the Oriental he crossed Oxford Street, and from Oxford Street he stalked over the roomy pavements of Gloucester Place, and there he bethought him how he had neglected Mrs. Hobson Newcome of late, and the interesting family of Bryanstone Square. So he went to leave his card at Maria's door: her daughters, as we have said, are quite grown girls. If they have been lectured, and learning, and back-boarded, and practising, and using the globes, and laying in a store of 'ologies, ever since, what a deal they must know! Colonel Newcome was admitted to see his nieces, and Consummate Virtue, their parent. Maria was charmed to see her brother-in-law; she greeted him with reproachful tenderness: ”Why, why,” her fine eyes seemed to say, ”have you so long neglected us? Do you think because I am wise, and gifted, and good, and you are, it must be confessed, a poor creature with no education, I am not also affable? Come, let the prodigal be welcomed by his virtuous relatives: come and lunch with us, Colonel!” He sate down accordingly to the family tiffin.
When the meal was over, the mother, who had matter of importance to impart to him, besought him to go to the drawing-room, and there poured out such a eulogy upon her children's qualities as fond mothers know how to utter. They knew this and they knew that. They were instructed by the most eminent professors; ”that wretched Frenchwoman, whom you may remember here, Mademoiselle Lenoir,” Maria remarked parenthetically, ”turned out, oh, frightfully! She taught the girls the worst accent, it appears. Her father was not a colonel; he was--oh! never mind! It is a mercy I got rid of that fiendish woman, and before my precious ones knew what she was!” And then followed details of the perfections of the two girls, with occasional side-shots at Lady Anne's family, just as in the old time. ”Why don't you bring your boy, whom I have always loved as a son, and who avoids me? Why does not Clive know his cousins? They are very different from others of his kinswomen, who think best of the heartless world.”
”I fear, Maria, there is too much truth in what you say,” sighs the Colonel, drumming on a book on the drawing-room table, and looking down sees it is a great, large, square, gilt Peerage, open at FARINTOSH, MARQUIS OF.--Fergus Angus Malcolm Mungo Roy, Marquis of Farintosh, Earl of Glenlivat, in the peerage of Scotland; also Earl of Rossmont, in that of the United Kingdom. Son of Angus Fergus Malcolm, Earl of Glenlivat, and grandson and heir of Malcolm Mungo Angus, first Marquis of Farintosh, and twenty-fifth Earl, etc. etc.
”You have heard the news regarding Ethel?” remarks Hobson.
”I have just heard,” says the poor Colonel.
”I have a letter from Anne this morning,” Maria continues. ”They are of course delighted with the match. Lord Farintosh is wealthy, handsome; has been a little wild, I hear; is not such a husband as I would choose for my darlings, but poor Brian's family have been educated to love the world; and Ethel no doubt is flattered by the prospects before her. I have heard that some one else was a little epris in that quarter. How does Clive bear the news, my dear Colonel?”
”He has long expected it,” says the Colonel, rising: ”and I left him very cheerful at breakfast this morning.”
”Send him to see us, the naughty boy!” cries Maria. ”We don't change; we remember old times, to us he will ever be welcome!” And with this confirmation of Madame de Florac's news, Thomas Newcome walked sadly homewards.
And now Thomas Newcome had to break the news to his son; who received the shot in such a way as caused his friends and confidants to admire his high spirit. He said he had long been expecting some such announcement: it was many months since Ethel had prepared him for it. Under her peculiar circ.u.mstances he did not see how she could act otherwise than she had done. And he narrated to the Colonel the substance of the conversation which the two young people had had together several months before, in Madame de Florac's garden.
Clive's father did not tell his son of his own bootless negotiation with Barnes Newcome. There was no need to recall that now; but the Colonel's wrath against his nephew exploded in conversation with me, who was the confidant of father and son in this business. Ever since that luckless day when Barnes thought proper to--to give a wrong address for Lady Kew, Thomas Newcome's anger had been growing. He smothered it yet for a while, sent a letter to Lady Anne Newcome, briefly congratulating her on the choice which he had heard Miss Newcome had made; and in acknowledgment of Madame de Florac's more sentimental epistle he wrote a reply which has not been preserved, but in which he bade her rebuke Miss Newcome for not having answered him when he wrote to her, and not having acquainted her old uncle with her projected union.
To this message, Ethel wrote back a brief, hurried reply; it said:--
”I saw Madame de Florac last night at her daughter's reception, and she gave me my dear uncle's messages. Yes, the news is true which you have heard from Madame de Florac, and in Bryanstone Square. I did not like to write it to you, because I know one whom I regard as a brother (and a great, great deal better), and to whom I know it will give pain. He knows that I have done my duty, and why I have acted as I have done. G.o.d bless him and his dear father!
”What is this about a letter which I never answered? Grandmamma knows nothing about a letter. Mamma has enclosed to me that which you wrote to her, but there has been no letter from T. N. to his sincere and affectionate E. N.