Boys and girls from Thackeray Part 19

The boy stopped, kicked about the room, jumped up and down from the window seat, and finally, when the Major's luggage had been carried out, gave way to his feelings again. "By Jove, I _will_ go!" screamed out George, and rushed downstairs and flung across the street in a minute.

The yellow postilion was cracking his whip gently. William had got into the carriage, George bounded in after him, and flung his arms around the Major's neck, asking him multiplied questions. William kissed Georgie, spoke gently and sadly to him, and the boy got out, doubling his fists into his eyes. The yellow postilion cracked his whip again, up sprang Francis to the box, and away Dobbin was carried, never looking up as he pa.s.sed under Amelia's window; and Georgie, left alone in the street, burst out crying in the face of all the crowd and continued his lamentations far into the night, when Amelia's maid, who heard him howling, brought him some preserved apricots to console him.

Thus honest Dobbin pa.s.sed out of the life of Amelia and her boy, but not forever. Gentle Amelia was soon disillusioned in regard to the old schoolmate whom she had taken under her care, and found that in all the world there was no one who meant so much to her as faithful Dobbin. One morning she wrote and despatched a note, the inscription of which no one saw; but on account of which she looked very much flushed and agitated when Georgie met her coming from the Post; and she kissed him and hung over him a great deal that night. Two mornings later George, walking on the d.y.k.e with his mother, saw by the aid of his telescope an English steamer near the pier. George took the gla.s.s again and watched the vessel.

"How she does pitch! There goes a wave slap over her bows. There's a man lying down, and a--chap--in a--cloak with a--Hurrah! It's _Dob_, by jingo!" He clapped to the telescope and flung his arms round his mother, then ran swiftly off; and Amelia was left to make her peace alone with the faithful Major, who had returned at her request.

Some days later Becky Sharp felt it wise to leave for Bruges, and in the little church at Ostend there was a wedding, at which the only witnesses were Georgie and his Uncle Jos. Amelia Osborne had decided to accept the Major's protection for life, to the never-ending satisfaction of George, to whom the Major had always been comrade and father.

Immediately after his marriage Colonel Dobbin quitted the service and rented a pretty little country place in Hampshire, not far from Queen's Crawley, where Sir Pitt and his family constantly resided now, and where Rawdon Crawley was regarded as their son.

Lady Jane and Mrs. Dobbin became great friends, and there was a perpetual crossing of pony chaises between the two places. Lady Jane was G.o.dmother to Mrs. Dobbin's little girl, who bore her name, and the two lads, George Osborne and Rawdon Crawley, who had met so many years before as children when little Rawdon invited George to take a ride on his pony, and whose lives had been filled with such different experiences since that time, now became close friends. They were both entered at the same college at Cambridge, hunted and shot together in the vacations, confided in each other; and when we last see them, fast becoming young men, they are deep in a quarrel about Lady Jane's daughter, with whom they were both, of course, in love.

No further proof of approaching age is needed than a quarrel over a young lady, and the lads, George and Rawdon, now give place forever to men.

Though the circ.u.mstances of their lives had been unlike, though George had had all the love that a devoted mother could give, and all the luxury which money could supply: and Rawdon had been without a mother's devotion; without the surroundings which had made George's life luxurious,--on the threshold of manhood we find them on an equal footing, entering life's arena, strong of limb, glad of heart, eager for what manhood was to bring them.

CLIVE AND ETHEL NEWCOME

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLIVE AND ETHEL NEWCOME.]

When one is about to write the biography of a certain person, it seems but fair to give as its background such facts concerning the hero's antecedents as place the details of his life in their proper setting. And so, having the honour to be the juvenile biographer of Mr. Clive Newcome, I deem it wise to preface the story of his life with a brief account of events and persons antecedent to his birth.

Thomas Newcome, Clive's grandfather, had been a weaver in his native village, and brought the very best character for honesty, thrift, and ingenuity with him to London, where he was taken into the house of Hobson Brothers, cloth-manufacturers; afterwards Hobson & Newcome. When Thomas Newcome had been some time in London, he quitted the house of Hobson, to begin business for himself. And no sooner did his business prosper than he married a pretty girl from his native village. What seemed an imprudent match, as his wife had no worldly goods to bring him, turned out a very lucky one for Newcome. The whole countryside was pleased to think of the marriage of the prosperous London tradesman with the penniless girl whom he had loved in the days of his own poverty; the great country clothiers, who knew his prudence and honesty, gave him much of their business, and Susan Newcome would have been the wife of a rich man had she not died a year after her marriage, at the birth of her son, Thomas.

Newcome had a nurse for the child, and a cottage at Clapham, hard by Mr.

Hobson's house, and being held in good esteem by his former employers, was sometimes invited by them to tea. When his wife died, Miss Hobson, who since her father's death had become a partner in the firm, met Mr.

Newcome with his little boy as she was coming out of meeting one Sunday, and the child looked so pretty, and Mr. Newcome so personable, that Miss Hobson invited him and little Tommy into the grounds; let the child frisk about in the hay on the lawn, and at the end of the visit gave him a large piece of pound-cake, a quant.i.ty of the finest hot-house grapes, and a tract in one syllable. Tommy was ill the next day; but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting, and not very long after that Miss Hobson became Mrs. Newcome.

After his father's second marriage, Tommy and Sarah, his nurse, who was also a cousin of Mr. Newcome's first wife, were transported from the cottage, where they had lived in great comfort, to the palace hard by, surrounded by lawns and gardens, graperies, aviaries, luxuries of all kinds. This paradise was separated from the outer world by a, thick hedge of tall trees and an ivy-covered porter's gate, through which they who travelled to London on the top of the Clapham coach could only get a glimpse of the bliss within. It was a serious paradise. As you entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes, on pa.s.sing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servant's entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peac.o.c.ks walked demurely on the terraces; the guinea fowls looked more Quaker-like than those birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious, and a clerk at the neighbouring chapel. The pastor, who entered at that gate and greeted his comely wife and children, fed the little lambkins with tracts. The head gardener was a Scotch Calvinist, after the strictest order. On a Sunday the household marched away to sit under his or her favourite minister, the only man who went to church being Thomas Newcome, with Tommy, his little son. Tommy was taught hymns suited to his tender age, pointing out the inevitable fate of wicked children and giving him a description of the punishment of little sinners, which poems he repeated to his step-mother after dinner, before a great shining mahogany table, covered with grapes, pineapples, plum cake, port wine, and madeira, and surrounded by stout men in black, with baggy white neckcloths, who took the little man between their knees and questioned him as to his right understanding of the place whither naughty boys were bound. They patted his head if he said well, or rebuked him if he was bold, as he often was.

Then came the birth of Mrs. Newcome's twin boys, Hobson and Bryan, and now there was no reason why young Newcome, their step-brother, should not go to school, and to Grey Friars Thomas Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging--O ye G.o.ds! with what delight--the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the new place. The pleasures of school-life were such to him that he did not care to go home for a holiday; for by playing tricks and breaking windows, by taking the gardener's peaches and the housekeeper's jam, by upsetting his two little brothers in a go-cart (of which injury the Baronet's nose bore marks to his dying day), by going to sleep during the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with levity, he drew down on himself the merited anger of his step-mother; and many punishments. To please Mrs. Newcome, his father whipped Tommy for upsetting his little brothers in the go-cart; but, upon being pressed to repeat the whipping for some other prank, Mr. Newcome refused, saying that the boy got flogging enough at school, with which opinion Master Tommy fully agreed. His step-mother, however, determined to make the young culprit smart for his offences, and one day, when Mr. Newcome was absent, and Tommy refractory as usual, summoned the butler and footman to flog the young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler's shins as to cause that menial to limp and suffer for many days after; and, seizing the decanter, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs.

Newcome's head before he would submit to the punishment she desired administered. When Mr. Newcome returned, he was indignant at his wife's treatment of Tommy, and said so, to her great displeasure. This affair, indeed, almost caused a break in their relations, and friends and clergy were obliged to interfere to allay the domestic quarrel. At length Mrs.

Newcome, who was not unkind, and could be brought to own that she was sometimes in fault, was induced to submit to the decrees of her husband, whom she had vowed to love and honour. When Tommy fell ill of scarlet fever she nursed him through his illness, and uttered no reproach to her husband when the twins took the disease. And even though Tommy in his delirium vowed that he would put on his clothes and run away to his old nurse Sarah, Mrs. Newcome's kindness to him never faltered. What the boy threatened in his delirium, a year later he actually achieved. He ran away from home, and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham. She housed the poor prodigal with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose instinct, backed by Mrs. Newcome's intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the young runaway had fled. Seeing a horsewhip in his parent's hand, Tommy, scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket, knew his fate; and getting out of bed, received his punishment without a word. Very likely the father suffered more than the child; for, when the punishment was over, the little man yet quivering with the pain, held out his little bleeding hand, and said, "I can--I can take it from you, sir,"

saying which his face flushed, and his eyes filled, whereupon the father burst into a pa.s.sion of tears, and embraced the boy, and kissed him, besought him to be rebellious no more, flung the whip away from him, and swore, come what would, he would never strike him again. The quarrel was the means of a great and happy reconciliation. But the truce was only a temporary one. War very soon broke out again between the impetuous lad and his rigid, domineering step-mother. It was not that he was very bad, nor she so very stern, but the two could not agree. The boy sulked and was miserable at home, and, after a number of more serious escapades than he had before indulged in, he was sent to a tutor for military instruction, where he was prepared for the army and received a fairly good professional education. He cultivated mathematics and fortification, and made rapid progress in his study of the French language. But again did our poor Tommy get into trouble, and serious trouble indeed this time, for it involved his French master's pretty young daughter as well as himself. Frantic with wrath and despair at the unfortunate climax of events, young Newcome embarked for India, and quitted the parents whom he was never more to see. His name was no more mentioned at Clapham, but he wrote constantly to his father, who sent Tom liberal private remittances to India, and was in turn made acquainted with the fact of his son's marriage, and later received news of the birth of his grandson, Clive.

Old Thomas Newcome would have liked to leave all his private fortune to his son Thomas, for the twins were only too well provided for, but he dared not, for fear of his wife, and he died, and poor Tom was only secretly forgiven.

So much for the history of Clive Newcome's father and grandfather. Having related it in full detail, we can now proceed to the narrative of Clive's life, he being the hero of this tale.

From the day of his birth until he was some seven years old, Clive's English relatives knew nothing about him. Then, Colonel Newcome's wife having died, and having kept the boy with him as long as the climate would allow, Thomas Newcome, now Lieutenant-Colonel, decided that it was wise to send Clive to England, to entrust him to the boy's maternal aunt, Miss Honeyman, who was living at Brighton, that Clive might have the superior advantages of school days in England.

Let us glance at a few extracts from letters received by Colonel Newcome after his boy had reached England. The aunt to whose care he was entrusted wrote as follows:

With the most heartfelt joy, my dear Major, I take up my pen to announce to you the happy arrival of the Ramchunder and the dearest and handsomest little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little Clive is in perfect health. He speaks English wonderfully well. He cried when he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly brought him from Southhampton in a postchaise, but these tears in childhood are of very brief duration!...

You may be sure that the most liberal sum which you have placed to my credit with the Messrs. Hobson & Co. shall be faithfully expended on my dear little charge. Of course, unless Mrs. Newcome,--who can scarcely be called his grandmamma, I suppose,--writes to invite dear Clive to Clapham, I shall not think of sending him there. My brother, who thanks you for your continuous bounty, will write next month, and report progress as to his dear pupil. Clive will add a postscript of his own, and I am, my dear Major,

Your grateful and affectionate,

MARTHA HONEYMAN.

In a round hand and on lines ruled with pencil:

_Dearest Papa_ I am very well I hope you are Very Well. Mr. Sneed brought me in a postchaise I like Mr. Sneed very much. I like Aunt Martha I like Hannah. There are no ships here I am your affectionate son CLIVE NEWCOME.

There was also a note from Colonel Newcome's stepbrother, Bryan, as follows:

_My Dear Thomas_: Mr. Sneid, supercargo of the Ramchunder, East Indiaman, handed over to us yesterday your letter, and, to-day, I have purchased three thousand three hundred and twenty-three pounds 6 and 8, three per cent Consols, in our joint names (H. and B. Newcome), held for your little boy. Mr. S. gives a favourable account of the little man, and left him in perfect health two days since, at the house of his aunt, Miss Honeyman. We have placed 200 to that lady's credit, at your desire. I dare say my mother will ask your little boy to the Hermitage; and when we have a house of our own I am sure Ann and I shall be very happy to see him.

Yours affectionately,

B. NEWCOME.

And another from Miss Honeyman's brother, containing the following:

MAJOR NEWCOME:

_My Dear Colonel_: ... Clive is everything that a father's and uncle's, a pastor's, a teacher's, affections could desire. He is not a premature genius; he is not, I frankly own, more advanced in his cla.s.sical and mathematical studies than some children even younger than himself; but he has acquired the rudiments of health; he has laid in a store of honesty and good-humour which are not less likely to advance him in life than mere science and language ... etc., etc.,

Your affectionate brother-in-law,

CHARLES HONEYMAN.

Another letter from Miss Honeyman herself said:

_My Dear Colonel_: ... As my dearest little Clive was too small for a great school, I thought he could not do better than stay with his old aunt and have his uncle Charles for a tutor, who is one of the finest scholars in the world. Of late he has been too weak to take a curacy, so I thought he could not do better than become Clive's tutor, and agreed to pay him out of your handsome donation of 250 for Clive, a sum of one hundred pounds per year. But I find that Charles is too kind to be a schoolmaster, and Master Clive laughs at him. It was only the other day after his return from his grandmamma's that I found a picture of Mrs. Newcome and Charles, too, and of both their spectacles, quite like. He has done me and Hannah, too. Mr. Speck, the artist, says he is a wonder at drawing.