The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 72

The gentlemen are astonished at this statement.

"But," resumed the Colonel; "my son Clive, as my friend Bayham knows, and to my own regret and mortification, as I don't care to confess to you, declares he has no interest or desire in politics, or for public distinction--prefers his own pursuits--and even these I fear do not absorb him--declines the offer which I made him, to present himself in opposition to Sir Barnes Newcome. It becomes men in a certain station, as I think, to a.s.sert that station; and though a few years back I never should have thought of public life at all, and proposed to end my days in quiet as a retired dragoon officer, since--since it has pleased Heaven to increase very greatly my pecuniary means, to place me, as a director and manager of an important banking company, in a station of great public responsibility, I and my brother-directors have thought it but right that one of us should sit in Parliament, if possible, and I am not a man to shirk from that or from any other duty."

"Colonel, will you attend a meeting of electors which we will call, and say as much to them and as well?" cries Mr. Potts. "Shall I put an announcement in my paper to the effect that you are ready to come forward?"

"I am prepared to do so, my good sir."

And presently this solemn palaver ended.

Besides the critical article upon the Baronet's lecture, of which Mr.

Warrington was the author, there appeared in the leading columns of the ensuing number of Mr. Potts' Independent, some remarks of a very smashing or hostile nature, against the Member for Newcome. "This gentleman has shown such talent in the lecturing business," the Independent said, "that it is a great pity he should not withdraw himself from politics, and cultivate what all Newcome knows are the arts which he understands best; namely, poetry and the domestic affections.

The performance of our talented representative last night was so pathetic as to bring tears into the eyes of several of our fair friends.

We have heard, but never believed until now, that Sir Barnes Newcome possessed such a genius for making women cry. Last week we had the talented Miss Noakes, from Slowcome, reading Milton to us; how far superior was the eloquence of Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., even to that of the celebrated jestress! Bets were freely offered in the room last night that Sir Barnes would beat any woman,--bets which were not taken, as we scarcely need say, so well do our citizens appreciate the character of our excellent, our admirable representative.--Let the Baronet stick to his lectures, and let Newcome relieve him of his political occupations. He is not fit for them, he is too sentimental a man for us; the men of Newcome want a sound practical person; the Liberals of Newcome have a desire to be represented. When we elected Sir Barnes, he talked liberally enough, and we thought he would do, but you see the honourable Baronet is so poetical! we ought to have known that, and not to have believed him. Let us have a straightforward gentleman.

If not a man of words, at least let us have a practical man. If not a man of eloquence, one at any rate whose word we can trust, and we can't trust Sir Barnes Newcome's; we have tried him, and we can't really. Last night when the ladies were crying, we could not for the souls of us help laughing. We hope we know how to conduct ourselves as gentlemen.

We trust we did not interrupt the harmony of the evening; but Sir Barnes Newcome, prating about children and virtue, and affection and poetry, this is really too strong.

"The Independent, faithful to its name, and ever actuated by principles of honour, has been, as our thousands of readers know, disposed to give Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., a fair trial. When he came forward after his father's death, we believed in his pledges and promises, as a retrencher and reformer, and we stuck by him. Is there any man in Newcome, except, perhaps, our twaddling old contemporary the Sentinel, who believes in Sir B. N. any more? We say no, and we now give the readers of the Independent, and the electors of this borough, fair notice, that when the dissolution of Parliament takes place, a good man, a true man, a man of experience, no dangerous Radical, or brawling tap orator--Mr. Hicks's friends well understand whom we mean--but a gentleman of Liberal principles, well-won wealth, and deserved station and honour, will ask the electors of Newcome whether they are, or are not discontented with their present unworthy Member. The Independent for one, says, we know good men of your family, we know in it men who would do honour to any name; but you, Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., we trust no more."

In the electioneering matter, which had occasioned my unlucky interference, and that subsequent little coolness upon the good Colonel's part, Clive Newcome had himself shown that the scheme was not to his liking; had then submitted as his custom was: and doing so with a bad grace, as also was to be expected, had got little thanks for his obedience. Thomas Newcome was hurt at his son's faint-heartedness, and of course little Rosey was displeased at his hanging back. He set off in his father's train, a silent, unwilling partisan. Thomas Newcome had the leisure to survey Clive's glum face opposite to him during the whole of their journey, and to chew his mustachios, and brood upon his wrath and wrongs. His life had been a sacrifice for that boy! What darling schemes had he not formed in his behalf, and how superciliously did Clive meet his projects! The Colonel could not see the harm of which he had himself been the author. Had he not done everything in mortal's power for his son's happiness, and how many young men in England were there with such advantages as this moody, discontented, spoiled boy? As Clive backed out of the contest, of course his father urged it only the more vehemently.

Clive slunk away from committees and canva.s.sing, and lounged about the Newcome manufactories, whilst his father, with anger and bitterness in his heart, remained at the post of honour, as he called it, bent upon overcoming his enemy and carrying his point against Barnes Newcome. "If Paris will not fight, sir," the Colonel said, with a sad look following his son, "Priam must." Good old Priam believed his cause to be a perfectly just one, and that duty and his honour called upon him to draw the sword. So there was difference between Thomas Newcome and Clive his son. I protest it is with pain and reluctance I have to write that the good old man was in error--that there was a wrong-doer, and that Atticus was he.

Atticus, be it remembered, thought himself compelled by the very best motives. Thomas Newcome, the Indian banker, was at war with Barnes, the English banker. The latter had commenced the hostilities by a sudden and cowardly act of treason. There were private wrongs to envenom the contest, but it was the mercantile quarrel on which the Colonel chose to set his declaration of war. Barnes's first dastardly blow had occasioned it, and his uncle was determined to carry it through. This I have said was also George Warrington's judgment, who, in the ensuing struggle between Sir Barnes and his uncle, acted as a very warm and efficient partisan of the latter. "Kinsmanship!" says George, "what has old Tom Newcome ever had from his kinsman but cowardice and treachery? If Barnes had held up his finger, the young one might have been happy; if he could have effected it, the Colonel and his bank would have been ruined. I am for war, and for seeing the old boy in Parliament. He knows no more about politics than I do about dancing the polka; but there are five hundred wiseacres in that a.s.sembly who know no more than he does, and an honest man taking his seat there, in place of a confounded little rogue, at least makes a change for the better."

I dare say Thomas Newcome, Esq. would by no means have concurred in the above estimate of his political knowledge, and thought himself as well informed as another. He used to speak with the greatest gravity about our const.i.tution as the pride and envy of the world, though he surprised you as much by the lat.i.tudinarian reforms, which he was eager to press forward, as by the most singular old Tory opinions which he advocated on other occasions. He was for having every man to vote; every poor man to labour short time and get high wages; every poor curate to be paid double or treble; every bishop to be docked of his salary, and dismissed from the House of Lords. But he was a staunch admirer of that a.s.sembly, and a supporter of the rights of the Crown. He was for sweeping off taxes from the poor, and as money must be raised to carry on government, he opined that the rich should pay. He uttered all these opinions with the greatest gravity and emphasis, before a large a.s.sembly of electors, and others convened in the Newcome Town Hall, amid the roars of applause of the non-electors, and the bewilderment and consternation of Mr.

Potts, of the Independent, who had represented the Colonel in his paper as a safe and steady reformer. Of course the Sentinel showed him up as a most dangerous radical, a sepoy republican, and so forth, to the wrath and indignation of Colonel Newcome. He a republican! he scorned the name! He would die as he had bled many a time for his sovereign. He an enemy of our beloved Church! He esteemed and honoured it, as he hated and abhorred the superst.i.tions of Rome. (Yells, from the Irish in the crowd.) He an enemy of the House of Lords! He held it to be the safeguard of the const.i.tution and the legitimate prize of our most ill.u.s.trious, naval, military, and--and--legal heroes (ironical cheers).

He repelled with scorn the dastard attacks of the journal which had a.s.sailed him; he asked, laying his hands on his heart, if as a gentleman, an officer bearing Her Majesty's commission, he could be guilty of a desire to subvert her empire and to insult the dignity of her crown?

After this second speech at the Town Hall, it was a.s.serted by a considerable party in Newcome, that Old Tom (as the mob familiarly called him) was a Tory, while an equal number averred that he was a Radical. Mr. Potts tried to reconcile his statements, a work in which I should think the talented editor of the Independent had no little difficulty. "He knows nothing about it," poor Clive said with a sigh; "his politics are all sentiment and kindness; he will have the poor man paid double wages, and does not remember that the employer would be ruined: you have heard him, Pen, talking in this way at his own table, but when he comes out armed cap-a-pied, and careers against windmills in public, don't you see that as Don Quixote's son I had rather the dear brave old gentleman was at home?"

So this faineant took but little part in the electioneering doings, holding moodily aloof from the meetings, and councils, and public-houses, where his father's partisans were a.s.sembled.

CHAPTER LXVIII. A Letter and a Reconciliation

Miss Ethel Newcome to Mrs. Pendennis:

"Dearest Laura,--I have not written to you for many weeks past. There have been some things too trivial, and some too sad, to write about; some things I know I shall write of if I begin, and yet that I know I had best leave; for of what good is looking to the past now? Why vex you or myself by reverting to it? Does not every day bring its own duty and task, and are these not enough to occupy one? What a fright you must have had with my little G.o.ddaughter! Thank heaven she is well now, and restored to you. You and your husband I know do not think it essential, but I do, most essential, and am very grateful that she was taken to church before her illness.

"Is Mr. Pendennis proceeding with his canva.s.s? I try and avoid a certain subject, but it will come. You know who is canva.s.sing against us here.

My poor uncle has met with very considerable success amongst the lower cla.s.ses. He makes them rambling speeches at which my brother and his friends laugh, but which the people applaud. I saw him only yesterday, on the balcony of the King's Arms, speaking to a great mob, who were cheering vociferously below. I had met him before. He would not even stop and give his Ethel of old days his hand. I would have given him I don't know what, for one kiss, for one kind word; but he pa.s.sed on and would not answer me. He thinks me--what the world thinks me, worldly and heartless; what I was. But at least, dear Laura, you know that I always truly loved him, and do now, although he is our enemy, though he believes and utters the most cruel things against Barnes, though he says that Barnes Newcome, my father's son, my brother, Laura, is not an honest man. Hard, selfish, worldly, I own my poor brother to be, and pray Heaven to amend him; but dishonest! and to be so maligned by the person one loves best in the world! This is a hard trial. I pray a proud heart may be bettered by it.

"And I have seen my cousin; once at a lecture which poor Barnes gave, and who seemed very much disturbed on perceiving Clive; once afterwards at good old Mrs. Mason's, whom I have always continued to visit for uncle's sake. The poor old woman, whose wits are very nearly gone, held both our hands, and asked when we were going to be married? and laughed, poor old thing! I cried out to her that Mr. Clive had a wife at home, a young dear wife, I said. He gave a dreadful sort of laugh, and turned away into the window. He looks terribly ill, pale, and oldened.

"I asked him a great deal about his wife, whom I remember a very pretty, sweet-looking girl indeed, at my Aunt Hobson's, but with a not agreeable mother as I thought then. He answered me by monosyllables, appeared as though he would speak, and then became silent. I am pained, and yet glad that I saw him, I said, not very distinctly, I dare say, that I hoped the difference between Barnes and uncle would not extinguish his regard for mamma and me, who have always loved him; when I said loved him, he give one of his bitter laughs again; and so he did when I said I hoped his wife was well. You never would tell me much about Mrs. Newcome; and I fear she does not make my cousin happy. And yet this marriage was of my uncle's making: another of the unfortunate marriages in our family.

I am glad that I paused in time, before the commission of that sin; I strive my best, and to amend my temper, my inexperience, my shortcomings, and try to be the mother of my poor brother's children.

But Barnes has never forgiven me my refusal of Lord Farintosh. He is of the world still, Laura. Nor must we deal too harshly with people of his nature, who cannot perhaps comprehend a world beyond. I remember in old days, when we were travelling on the Rhine, in the happiest days of my whole life, I used to hear Clive and his friend Mr. Ridley, talk of art and of nature in a way that I could not understand at first, but came to comprehend better as my cousin taught me; and since then, I see pictures, landscapes, and flowers, with quite different eyes, and beautiful secrets as it were, of which I had no idea before. The secret of all secrets, the secret of the other life, and the better world beyond ours, may not this be unrevealed to some? I pray for them all, dearest Laura, for those nearest and dearest to me, that the truth may lighten their darkness, and Heaven's great mercy defend them in the perils and dangers of their night.

"My boy at Sandhurst has done very well indeed; and Egbert, I am happy to say, thinks of taking orders; he has been very moderate at College.

Not so Alfred; but the Guards are a sadly dangerous school for a young man; I have promised to pay his debts, and he is to exchange into the line. Mamma is coming to us at Christmas with Alice; my sister is very pretty indeed, I think, and I am rejoiced she is to marry young Mr.

Mumford, who has a tolerable living, and who has been attached to her ever since he was a boy at Rugby School.

"Little Barnes comes on bravely with his Latin; and Mr. Whitestock, a most excellent and valuable person in this place, where there is so much Romanism and Dissent, speaks highly of him. Little Clara is so like her unhappy mother in a thousand ways and actions, that I am shocked often; and see my brother starting back and turning his head away, as if suddenly wounded. I have heard the most deplorable accounts of Lord and Lady Highgate. Oh, dearest friend and sister!-save you, I think I scarce know any one that is happy in the world: I trust you may continue so-you who impart your goodness and kindness to all who come near you-you in whose sweet serene happiness I am thankful to be allowed to repose sometimes. You are the island in the desert, Laura! and the birds sing there, and the fountain flows; and we come and repose by you for a little while, and to-morrow the march begins again, and the toil, and the struggle, and the desert. Good-bye, fountain! Whisper kisses to my dearest little ones from their affectionate Aunt Ethel.

"A friend of his, a Mr. Warrington, has spoken against us several times with extraordinary ability, as Barnes owns. Do you know Mr. W.? He wrote a dreadful article in the Independent, about the last poor lecture, which was indeed sad, sentimental, commonplace: and the critique is terribly comical. I could not help laughing, remembering some pa.s.sages in it, when Barnes mentioned it: and my brother became so angry! They have put up a dreadful caricature of B. in Newcome: and my brother says he did it, but I hope not. It is very droll, though: he used to make them very funnily. I am glad he has spirits for it. Good-bye again.--E.

N."

"He says he did it!" cries Mr. Pendennis, laying the letter down.

"Barnes Newcome would scarcely caricature himself, my dear?"

"'He' often means--means Clive--I think," says Mrs. Pendennis, in an offhand manner.

"Oh! he means Clive, does he, Laura?"

"Yes--and you mean goose, Mr. Pendennis!" that saucy lady replies.

It must have been about the very time when this letter was written, that a critical conversation occurred between Clive and his father, of which the lad did not inform me until much later days; as was the case--the reader has been more than once begged to believe--with many other portions of this biography.

One night the Colonel, having come home from a round of electioneering visits, not half satisfied with himself; exceedingly annoyed (much more than he cared to own) with the impudence of some rude fellows at the public-houses, who had interrupted his fine speeches with odious hiccups and familiar jeers, was seated brooding over his cheroot by the chimney-fire; friend F. B. (of whose companionship his patron was occasionally tired) finding much better amus.e.m.e.nt with the Jolly Britons in the Boscawen Room below. The Colonel, as an electioneering business, had made his appearance in the club. But that ancient Roman warrior had frightened those simple Britons. His manners were too awful for them: so were Clive's, who visited them also under Mr. Pott's introduction; but the two gentlemen, each being full of care and personal annoyance at the time, acted like wet blankets upon the Britons--whereas F. B. warmed them and cheered them, affably partook of their meals with them, and graciously shared their cups. So the Colonel was alone, listening to the far-off roar of the Britons' choruses by an expiring fire, as he sate by a gla.s.s of cold negus and the ashes of his cigar.

I dare say he may have been thinking that his fire was well-nigh out,--his cup of the dregs, his pipe little more now than dust and ashes--when Clive, candle in hand, came into their sitting-room.

As each saw the other's face, it was so very sad and worn and pale, that the young man started back; and the elder, with quite the tenderness of old days, cried, "G.o.d bless me, my boy, how ill you look! Come and warm yourself--look, the fire's out. Have something, Clivy!"

For months past they had not had a really kind word. The tender old voice smote upon Clive, and he burst into sudden tears. They rained upon his father's trembling old brown hand, and stooped down and kissed it.

"You look very ill too, father," says Clive.

"Ill? not I!" cries the father, still keeping the boy's hand under both his own on the mantelpiece. "Such a battered old fellow as I am has a right to look the worse for wear; but you, boy; why do you look so pale?"

"I have seen a ghost, father," Clive answered. Thomas, however, looked alarmed and inquisitive as though the boy was wandering in his mind.

"The ghost of my youth, father, the ghost of my happiness, and the best days of my life," groaned out the young man. "I saw Ethel to-day. I went to see Sarah Mason, and she was there."

"I had seen her, but I did not speak of her," said the father. "I thought it was best not to mention her to you, my poor boy. And are--are you fond of her still, Clive?"

"Still! once means always in these things, father, doesn't it? Once means to-day, and yesterday, and forever and ever."

"Nay, my boy, you mustn't talk to me so, or even to yourself so. You have the dearest little wife at home, a dear little wife and child."

"You had a son, and have been kind enough to him, G.o.d knows. You had a wife: but that doesn't prevent other--other thoughts. Do you know you never spoke twice in your life about my mother? You didn't care for her."

"I--I did my duty by her; I denied her nothing. I scarcely ever had a word with her, and I did my best to make her happy," interposed the Colonel.

"I know, but your heart was with the other. So is mine. It's fatal; it runs in the family, father."