Part 61 (2/2)
”I think it was a great pity they came to Brussels,” says Laura, as we sate on the deck, while her unconscious infant was cheerful, and while the water of the lazy Scheldt as yet was smooth.
”Who? The Colonel and Clive? They are very handsomely lodged. They have a good maitre d'hotel. Their dinners, I am sure, are excellent; and your child, madam, is as healthy as it possibly can be.”
”Blessed darling! Yes!” (Blessed darling crows, moos, jumps in his nurse's arms, and holds out a little mottled hand for a biscuit of Savoy, which mamma supplies.) ”I can't help thinking, Arthur, that Rosey would have been much happier as Mrs. Hoby than she will be as Mrs.
Newcome.”
”Who thinks of her being Mrs. Newcome?”
”Her mother, her uncle, and Clive's father, Since the Colonel has been so rich, I think Mrs. Mackenzie sees a great deal of merit in Clive.
Rosey will do anything her mother bids her. If Clive can be brought to the same obedience, Uncle James and the Colonel will be delighted. Uncle James has set his heart on this marriage. (He and his sister agree upon this point.) He told me, last night, that he would sing 'Nunc dimittis,'
could he but see the two children happy; and that he should lie easier in purgatory if that could be brought about.”
”And what did you say, Laura?”
”I laughed, and told Uncle James I was of the Hoby faction. He is very good-natured, frank, honest, and gentlemanlike, Mr. Hoby. But Uncle James said he thought Mr. Hoby was so--well, so stupid--that his Rosey would be thrown away upon the poor Captain. So I did not tell Uncle James that, before Clive's arrival, Rosey had found Captain Hoby far from stupid. He used to sing duets with her; he used to ride with her before Clive came. Last winter, when they were at Pau, I feel certain Miss Rosey thought Captain Hoby very pleasant indeed. She thinks she was attached to Clive formerly, and now she admires him, and is dreadfully afraid of him. He is taller and handsomer, and richer and cleverer than Captain Hoby, certainly.”
”I should think so, indeed,” breaks out Mr. Pendennis. ”Why, my dear, Clive is as fine a fellow as one can see on a summer's day. It does one good to look at him. What a frank pair of bright blue eyes he has, or used to have, till this mishap overclouded them! What a pleasant laugh he has! What a well-built, agile figure it is--what pluck, and spirit, and honour, there is about my young chap! I don't say he is a genius of the highest order, but he is the staunchest, the bravest, the cheeriest, the most truth-telling, the kindest heart. Compare him and Hoby! Why, Clive is an eagle, and yonder little creature a mousing owl!”
”I like to hear you speak so,” cries Mrs. Laura, very tenderly. ”People say that you are always sneering, Arthur; but I know my husband better.
We know papa better, don't we, baby?” (Here my wife kisses the infant Pendennis with great effusion, who has come up dancing on his nurse's arms.) ”But,” says she, coming back and snuggling by her husband's side again--”But suppose your favourite Clive is an eagle, Arthur, don't you think he had better have an eagle for a mate? If he were to marry little Rosey, I dare say he would be very good to her; but I think neither he nor she would be very happy. My dear, she does not care for his pursuits; she does not understand him when he talks. The two captains, and Rosey and I, and the campaigner, as you call her, laugh and talk, and prattle, and have the merriest little jokes with one another, and we all are as quiet as mice when you and Clive come in.”
”What, am I an eagle, too? I have no aquiline pretensions at all, Mrs.
Pendennis.”
”No. Well, we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of papa, are we, darling?” this young woman now calls out to the other member of her family; who, if you will calculate, has just had time to be walked twice up and down the deck of the steamer, whilst Laura has been making her speech about eagles. And soon the mother, child, and attendant descend into the lower cabins: and then dinner is announced: and Captain Jackson treats us to champagne from his end of the table and yet a short while, and we are at sea, and conversation becomes impossible: and morning sees us under the grey London sky, and amid the million of masts in the Thames.
CHAPTER LVII. Rosebury and Newcome
The friends to whom we were engaged in England were Florac and his wife, Madame la Princesse de Moncontour, who were determined to spend the Christmas holidays at the Princess's country seat. It was for the first time since their reconciliation, that the Prince and Princess dispensed their hospitalities at the latter's chateau. It is situated, as the reader has already been informed, at some five miles from the town of Newcome; away from the chimneys and smoky atmosphere of that place, in a sweet country of rural woodlands; over which quiet villages, grey church spires, and ancient gabled farmhouses are scattered: still wearing the peaceful aspect which belonged to them when Newcome was as yet but an antiquated country town, before mills were erected on its river-banks, and dyes and cinders blackened its stream. Twenty years since Newcome Park was the only great house in that district; now scores of fine villas have sprung up in the suburb lying between the town and park.
Newcome New Town, as everybody knows, has grown round the park-gates, and the New Town Hotel (where the railway station is) is a splendid structure in the Tudor style, more ancient in appearance than the park itself; surrounded by little antique villas with spiked gables, stacks of crooked chimneys, and plate-gla.s.s windows looking upon trim lawns; with glistening hedges of evergreens, spotless gravel walks, and Elizabethan gig-houses. Under the great railway viaduct of the New Town, goes the old tranquil winding London highroad, once busy with a score of gay coaches, and ground by innumerable wheels: but at a few miles from the New Town Station the road has become so mouldy that the gra.s.s actually grows on it; and Rosebury, Madame de Moncontour's house, stands at one end of a village-green, which is even more quiet now than it was a hundred years ago.
When first Madame de Florac bought the place, it scarcely ranked amongst the country-houses; and she, the sister of manufacturers at Newcome and Manchester, did not of course visit the county families. A homely little body, married to a Frenchman from whom she was separated, may or may not have done a great deal of good in her village, have had pretty gardens, and won prizes at the Newcome flower and fruit shows; but, of course, she was n.o.body in such an aristocratic county as we know ------s.h.i.+re is. She had her friends and relatives from Newcome. Many of them were Quakers--many were retail shopkeepers. She even frequented the little branch Ebenezer, on Rosebury Green; and it was only by her charities and kindness at Christmas-time, that the Rev. Dr. Potter, the rector at Rosebury, knew her. The old clergy, you see, live with the county families. Good little Madame de Florac was pitied and patronised by the Doctor, treated with no little superciliousness by Mrs. Potter, and the young ladies, who only kept the first society. Even when her rich brother died, and she got her share of all that money Mrs. Potter said poor Madame de Florac did well in not trying to move out of her natural sphere (Mrs. P. was the daughter of a bankrupt hatter in London, and had herself been governess in a n.o.ble family, out of which she married Mr.
P., who was private tutor). Madame de Florac did well, she said, not to endeavour to leave her natural sphere, and that The County never would receive her. Tom Potter, the rector's son, with whom I had the good fortune to be a fellow-student at Saint Boniface College, Oxbridge--a rattling, forward, and it must be owned, vulgar youth--asked me whether Florac was not a billiard-marker by profession? and was even so kind as to caution his sisters not to speak of billiards before the lady of Rosebury. Tom was surprised to learn that Monsieur Paul de Florac was a gentleman of lineage incomparably better than that of any, except two or three families in England (including your own, my dear and respected reader, of course, if you hold to your pedigree). But the truth is, heraldically speaking, that union with the Higgs of Manchester was the first misalliance which the Florac family had made for long long years.
Not that I would wish for a moment to insinuate that any n.o.bleman is equal to an English n.o.bleman; nay, that an English sn.o.b, with a coat-of-arms bought yesterday, or stolen out of Edmonton, or a pedigree purchased from a peerage-maker, has not a right to look down upon any of your paltry foreign n.o.bility.
One day the carriage-and-four came in state from Newcome Park, with the well-known chaste liveries of the Newcomes, and drove up Rosebury Green, towards the parsonage gate, when Mrs. and the Miss Potters happened to be standing, cheapening fish from a donkey-man, with whom they were in the habit of dealing. The ladies were in their pokiest old head-gear and most dingy gowns, when they perceived the carriage approaching; and considering, of course, that the visit of the Park people was intended for them, dashed into the rectory to change their clothes, leaving Rowkins, the costermonger, in the very midst of the negotiation about the three mackerel. Mamma got that new bonnet out of the bandbox; Lizzy and Liddy skipped up to their bedroom, and brought out those dresses which they wore at the dejeuner at the Newcome Athenaeum, when Lord Leveret came down to lecture; into which they no sooner had hooked their lovely shoulders, than they reflected with terror that mamma had been altering one of papa's flannel waistcoats and had left it in the drawing-room, when they were called out by the song of Rowkins, and the appearance of his donkey's ears over the green gate of the rectory. To think of the Park people coming, and the drawing-room in that dreadful state!
But when they came downstairs the Park people were not in the room--the woollen garment was still on the table (how they plunged it into the chiffonier!)--and the only visitor was Rowkins, the costermonger, grinning at the open French windows, with the three mackerel, and crying, ”Make it sixpence, miss--don't say fippens, maam, to a pore fellow that has a wife and family.” So that the young ladies had to cry--”Impudence!” ”Get away, you vulgar insolent creature!--Go round, sir, to the back door!” ”How dare you?” and the like; fearing lest Lady Anne Newcome, and Young Ethel, and Barnes should enter in the midst of this ign.o.ble controversy.
They never came at all--those Park people. How very odd! They pa.s.sed the rectory gate; they drove on to Madame de Florac's lodge. They went in.
They stayed for half an hour; the horses driving round and round the gravel road before the house; and Mrs. Potter and the girls speedily going to the upper chambers, and looking out of the room where the maids slept, saw Lady Anne, Ethel, and Barnes walking with Madame de Florac, going into the conservatories, issuing thence with MacWhirter, the gardener, bearing huge bunches of grapes and large fasces of flowers; they saw Barnes talking in the most respectful manner to Madame de Florac: and when they went downstairs and had their work before them--Liddy her gilt music-book, Lizzy her embroidered altar-cloth, mamma her scarlet cloak for one of the old women--they had the agony of seeing the barouche over the railings whisk by, with the Park people inside, and Barnes driving the four horses.
It was on that day when Barnes had determined to take up Madame de Florac; when he was bent upon reconciling her to her husband. In spite of all Mrs. Potter's predictions, the county families did come and visit the manufacturer's daughter; and when Madame de Florac became Madame la Princesse de Moncontour, when it was announced that she was coming to stay at Rosebury for Christmas, I leave you to imagine whether the circ.u.mstance was or was not mentioned in the Newcome Sentinel and the Newcome Independent; and whether Rev. G. Potter, D.D., and Mrs. Potter did or did not call on the Prince and Princess. I leave you to imagine whether the lady did or did not inspect all the alterations which Vineer's people from Newcome were making at Rosebury House--the chaste yellow satin and gold of the drawing-room--the carved oak for the dining-room--the chintz for the bedrooms--the Princess's apartment--the Prince's apartment--the guests' apartments--the smoking-room, gracious goodness!--the stables (these were under Tom Potter's superintendence), ”and I'm finished,” says he one day, ”if here doesn't come a billiard-table!”
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