Part 66 (2/2)
”Colonel Newcome, C.B., Montagne de la Cour, Brussels,” I read, in this young woman's handwriting; and asked, turning round upon Laura, who entered the room just as I discovered her guilt: ”What have you been writing to Colonel Newcome about, miss?”
”I wanted him to get me some lace,” she said.
”To lace some nightcaps for me, didn't you, my dear? He is such a fine judge of lace! If I had known you had been writing, I would have asked you to send him a message. I want something from Brussels. Is the letter--ahem--gone?” (In this artful way, you see, I just hinted that I should like to see letter.).
”The letter is--ahem--gone,” says Laura. ”What do you want from Brussels, Pen?”
”I want some Brussels sprouts, my love--they are so fine in their native country.”
”Shall I write to him to send the letter back?” palpitates poor little Laura; for she thought her husband was offended, by using the ironic method.
”No, you dear little woman! You need not send for letter the back: and you need not tell me what was in it: and I will bet you a hundred yards of lace to a cotton nightcap--and you know whether I, madam, am a man a bonnet-de-coton--I will let you that I know what you have been writing about, under pretence of a message about lace, to our Colonel.”
”He promised to send it me. He really did. Lady Rockminster gave me twenty pounds----” gasps Laura.
”Under pretence of lace, you have been sending over a love-message. You want to see whether Clive is still of his old mind. You think the coast is now clear, and that dearest Ethel may like him. You think Mrs. Mason is growing very old and infirm, and the sight of her dear boy would----”
”Pen! Pen! did you open my letter?” cries Laura; and a laugh which could afford to be good-humoured (followed by yet another expression of the lips) ended this colloquy. No; Mr Pendennis did not see the letter--but he knew the writer;--flattered himself that he knew women in general.
”Where did you get your experience of them, sir?” asks Mrs. Laura.
Question answered in the same manner as the previous demand.
”Well, my dear; and why should not the poor boy be made happy?” Laura continues, standing very close up to her husband. ”It is evident to me that Ethel is fond of him. I would rather see her married to a good young man whom she loves, than the mistress of a thousand palaces and coronets. Suppose--suppose you had married Miss Amory, sir, what a wretched worldly creature you would have been by this time; whereas now----”
”Now that I am the humble slave of a good woman there is some chance for me,” cries this model of husbands. ”And all good women are match-makers, as we know very well; and you have had this match in your heart ever since you saw the two young people together. Now; madam, since I did not see your letter to the Colonel--though I have guessed part of it--tell me, what have you said in it? Have you by any chance told the Colonel that the Farintosh alliance was broken off?”
Laura owned that she had hinted as much.
”You have not ventured to say that Ethel is well inclined to Clive?”
”Oh, no--oh dear, no!” But after much cross-examining and a little blus.h.i.+ng on Laura's part, she is brought to confess that she has asked the Colonel whether he will not come and see Mrs. Mason, who is pining to see him, and is growing very old. And I find out that she has been to see this Mrs. Mason; that she and Miss Newcome visited the old lady the day before yesterday; and Laura thought from the manner in which Ethel looked at Clive's picture, hanging up in the parlour of his father's old friend, that she really was very much, etc. etc. So, the letter being gone, Mrs. Pendennis is most eager about the answer to it, and day after day examines the bag, and is provoked that it brings no letter bearing the Brussels post-mark.
Madame de Moncontour seems perfectly well to know what Mrs. Laura has been doing and is hoping. ”What, no letters again to-day? Ain't it provoking?” she cries. She is in the conspiracy too; and presently Florac is one of the initiated. ”These women wish to bacler a marriage between the belle miss and le pet.i.t Claive,” Florac announces to me.
He pays the highest compliments to Miss Newcome's person, as he speaks regarding the marriage. ”I continue to adore your Anglaises,” he is pleased to say. ”What of freshness, what of beauty, what roses! And then they are so adorably good! Go, Pendennis, thou art a happy coquin!” Mr.
Pendennis does not say No. He has won the twenty-thousand-pound prize; and we know there are worse blanks in that lottery.
CHAPTER LXI. In which we are introduced to a New Newcome
No answer came to Mrs. Pendennis's letter to Colonel Newcome at Brussels, for the Colonel was absent from that city, and at the time when Laura wrote was actually in London, whither affairs of his own had called him. A note from George Warrington acquainted me with this circ.u.mstance; he mentioned that he and the Colonel had dined together at Bays's on the day previous, and that the Colonel seemed to be in the highest spirits. High spirits about what? This news put Laura in a sad perplexity. Should she write and tell him to get his letters from Brussels? She would in five minutes have found some other pretext for writing to Colonel Newcome, had not her husband sternly cautioned the young woman to leave the matter alone.
The more readily perhaps because he had quarrelled with his nephew Sir Barnes, Thomas Newcome went to visit his brother Hobson and his sister-in-law; bent on showing that there was no division between him and this branch of his family. And you may suppose that the admirable woman just named had a fine occasion for her virtuous conversational powers in discoursing upon the painful event which had just happened to Sir Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson's homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have groaned and lamented, gathered its children about its knees, wept over them and washed them; gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the knocker; confabulated with its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces to its husband; and bored the whole house! The punishment of worldliness and vanity, the evil of marrying out of one's station, how these points must have been explained and enlarged on! Surely the Peerage was taken off the drawing-room table and removed to papa's study, where it could not open, as it used naturally once, to Highgate, Baron, or Farintosh, Marquis of, being shut behind wires and closely jammed in on an upper shelf between Blackstone's Commentaries and the Farmer's Magazine! The breaking of the engagement with the Marquis of Farintosh was known in Bryanstone Square; and you may be sure interpreted by Mrs. Hobson in the light the most disadvantageous to Ethel Newcome. A young n.o.bleman--with grief and pain Ethel's aunt must own the fact--a young man of notoriously dissipated habits but of great wealth and rank, had been pursued by the unhappy Lady Kew--Mrs. Hobson would not say by her niece, that were too dreadful--had been pursued, and followed, and hunted down in the most notorious manner, and finally made to propose! Let Ethel's conduct and punishment be a warning to my dearest girls, and let them bless Heaven they have parents who are not worldly! After all the trouble and pains, Mrs. Hobson did not say disgrace, the Marquis takes the very first pretext to break off the match, and leaves the unfortunate girl for ever!
And now we have to tell of the hardest blow which fell upon poor Ethel, and this was that her good uncle Thomas Newcome believed the charges against her. He was willing enough to listen now to anything which was said against that branch of the family. With such a traitor, double-dealer, dastard as Barnes at its head, what could the rest of the race be? When the Colonel offered to endow Ethel and Clive with every s.h.i.+lling he had in the world, had not Barnes, the arch-traitor, temporised and told him falsehoods, and hesitated about throwing him off until the Marquis had declared himself? Yes. The girl he and poor Clive loved so was ruined by her artful relatives, was unworthy of his affection and his boy's, was to be banished, like her worthless brother, out of his regard for ever. And the man she had chosen in preference to his Clive!--a roue, a libertine, whose extravagances and dissipations were the talk of every club, who had no wit, nor talents, not even constancy (for had he not taken the first opportunity to throw her off?) to recommend him--only a great t.i.tle and a fortune wherewith to bribe her! For shame, for shame! Her engagement to this man was a blot upon her--the rupture only a just punishment and humiliation. Poor unhappy girl! let her take care of her wretched brother's abandoned children, give up the world, and amend her life.
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