The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 78

25. I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.

As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up from my book towards the swarm of black-coated pensioners: and amongst them--amongst them--sate Thomas Newcome.

His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book--there was no mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey Friars. His order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The steps of this good man had been ordered him hither by Heaven's decree: to this almshouse! Here it was ordained that a life all love, and kindness, and honour, should end! I heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon, after that. How dared I to be in a place of mark, and he, he yonder among the poor? Oh, pardon, you n.o.ble soul! I ask forgiveness of you for being of a world that has so treated you--you my better, you the honest, and gentle, and good! I thought the service would never end, or the organist's voluntaries, or the preacher's homily.

The organ played us out of chapel at length, and I waited in the ante-chapel until the pensioners took their turn to quit it. My dear, dear old friend! I ran to him with a warmth and eagerness of recognition which no doubt showed themselves in my face and accents, as my heart was moved at the sight of him. His own face flushed up when he saw me, and his hand shook in mine. "I have found a home, Arthur," said he. "Don't you remember before I went to India, when we came to see the old Grey Friars, and visited Captain Scarsdale in his room?--a poor brother like me--an old Peninsular man. Scarsdale is gone now, sir, and is where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; and I thought then, when we saw him,--here would be a place for an old fellow when his career was over, to hang his sword up; to humble his soul, and to wait thankfully for the end. Arthur. My good friend, Lord H., who is a Cistercian like ourselves, and has just been appointed a governor, gave me his first nomination. Don't be agitated, Arthur my boy, I am very happy. I have good quarters, good food, good light and fire, and good friends; blessed be G.o.d! my dear kind young friend--my boy's friend; you have always been so, sir; and I take it uncommonly kind of you, and I thank G.o.d for you, sir. Why, sir, I am as happy as the day is long."

He uttered words to this effect as he walked through the courts of the building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and comfortable, with a brisk fire crackling on the hearth; a little tea-table laid out, a Bible and spectacles by the side of it, and over the mantelpiece a drawing of his grandson by Clive.

"You may come and see me here, sir, whenever you like, and so may your dear wife and little ones, tell Laura, with my love;--but you must not stay now. You must go back to your dinner." In vain I pleaded that I had no stomach for it. He gave me a look, which seemed to say he desired to be alone, and I had to respect that order and leave him.

Of course I came to him on the very next day; though not with my wife and children, who were in truth absent in the country at Rosebury, where they were to pa.s.s the Christmas holidays; and where, this school-dinner over, I was to join them. On my second visit to Grey Friars my good friend entered more at length into the reasons why he had a.s.sumed the Poor Brother's gown; and I cannot say but that I acquiesced in his reasons, and admired that n.o.ble humility and contentedness of which he gave me an example.

"That which had caused him most grief and pain," he said, "in the issue of that unfortunate bank, was the thought that poor friends of his had been induced by his representations to invest their little capital in that speculation. Good Miss Honeyman, for instance, meaning no harm, and in all respects a most honest and kindly-disposed old lady, had nevertheless alluded more than once to the fact that her money had been thrown away; and these allusions, sir, made her hospitality somewhat hard to bear," said the Colonel. "At home--at poor Clivey's, I mean--it was even worse," he continued; "Mrs. Mackenzie for months past, by her complaints, and--and her conduct, has made my son and me so miserable--that flight before her, and into any refuge, was the best course. She too does not mean ill, Pen. Do not waste any of your oaths upon that poor woman," he added, holding up his finger, and smiling sadly. "She thinks I deceived her, though Heaven knows it was myself I deceived. She has great influence over Rosa. Very few persons can resist that violent and headstrong woman, sir. I could not bear her reproaches, or my poor sick daughter, whom her mother leads almost entirely now, and it was with all this grief on my mind, that, as I was walking one day upon Brighton cliff, I met my schoolfellow, my Lord H----, who has ever been a good friend of mine--and who told me how he had just been appointed a governor of Grey Friars. He asked me to dine with him on the next day, and would take no refusal. He knew of my pecuniary misfortunes, of course--and showed himself most n.o.ble and liberal in his offers of help. I was very much touched by his goodness, Pen,--and made a clean breast of it to his lordship; who at first would not hear of my coming to this place--and offered me out of the purse of an old brother-schoolfellow and an old brother soldier as much--as much as should last me my time. Wasn't it n.o.ble of him, Arthur? G.o.d bless him!

There are good men in the world, sir, there are true friends, as I have found in these later days. Do you know, sir"--here the old man's eyes twinkled,--"that Fred Bayham fixed up that bookcase yonder--and brought me my little boy's picture to hang up? Boy and Clive will come and see me soon."

"Do you mean they do not come?" I cried.

"They don't know I am here, sir," said the Colonel, with a sweet, kind smile. "They think I am visiting his lordship in Scotland. Ah! they are good people! When we had had a talk downstairs over our bottle of claret--where my old commander-in-chief would not hear of my plan--we went upstairs to her ladyship, who saw that her husband was disturbed, and asked the reason. I dare say it was the good claret that made me speak, sir; for I told her that I and her husband had had a dispute and that I would take her ladyship for umpire. And then I told her the story over, that I had paid away every rupee to the creditors, and mortgaged my pensions and retiring allowances for the same end, that I was a burden upon Clivey, who had enough, poor boy, to keep his own family, and his wife's mother, whom my imprudence had impoverished,--that here was an honourable asylum which my friend could procure for me, and was not that better than to drain his purse? She was very much moved, sir--she is a very kind lady, though she pa.s.sed for being very proud and haughty in India--so wrongly are people judged. And Lord H. said, in his rough way, 'that, by Jove, if Tom Newcome took a thing into his obstinate old head no one could drive it out.' And so," said the Colonel, with his sad smile, "I had my own way. Lady H. was good enough to come and see me the very next day--and do you know, Pen, she invited me to go and live with them for the rest of my life--made me the most generous, the most delicate offers. But I knew I was right, and held my own. I am too old to work, Arthur: and better here whilst I am to stay, than elsewhere. Look! all this furniture came from H. House--and that wardrobe is full of linen, which she sent me. She has been twice to see me, and every officer in this hospital is as courteous to me as if I had my fine house."

I thought of the psalm we had heard on the previous evening, and turned to it in the opened Bible, and pointed to the verse, "Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him."

Thomas Newcome seeing my occupation, laid a kind, trembling hand on my shoulder; and then, putting on his gla.s.ses, with a smile bent over the volume. And who that saw him then, and knew him and loved him as I did--who would not have humbled his own heart, and breathed his inward prayer, confessing and adoring the Divine Will, which ordains these trials, these triumphs, these humiliations, these blest griefs, this crowning Love?

I had the happiness of bringing Clive and his little boy to Thomas Newcome that evening; and heard the child's cry of recognition and surprise, and the old man calling the boy's name, as I closed the door upon that meeting; and by the night's mail I went down to Newcome, to the friends with whom my own family was already staying.

Of course, my conscience-keeper at Rosebury was anxious to know about the school-dinner, and all the speeches made, and the guests a.s.sembled there; but she soot ceased to inquire about these when I came to give her the news of the discovery of our dear old friend in the habit of a Poor Brother of Grey Friars. She was very glad to hear that Clive and his little son had been reunited to the Colonel; and appeared to imagine at first, that there was some wonderful merit upon my part in bringing the three together.

"Well--no great merit, Pen, as you will put it," says the Confessor; "but it was kindly thought, sir--and I like my husband when he is kind best; and don't wonder at your having made a stupid speech at the dinner, as you say you did, when you had this other subject to think of.

That is a beautiful psalm, Pen, and those verses which you were reading when you saw him, especially beautiful."

"But in the presence of eighty old gentlemen, who have all come to decay, and have all had to beg their bread in a manner, don't you think the clergyman might choose some other psalm?" asks Mr. Pendennis.

"They were not forsaken utterly, Arthur," says Mrs. Laura, gravely: but rather declines to argue the point raised by me; namely, that the selection of that especial thirty-seventh psalm was not complimentary to those decayed old gentlemen.

"All the psalms are good, sir," she says, "and this one, of course, is included," and thus the discussion closed.

I then fell to a description of Howland Street, and poor Clive, whom I had found there over his work. A dubious maid scanned my appearance rather eagerly when I asked to see him. I found a picture-dealer chaffering with him over a bundle of sketches, and his little boy, already pencil in hand, lying in one corner of the room, the sun playing about his yellow hair. The child looked languid and pale, the father worn and ill. When the dealer at length took his bargains away, I gradually broke my errand to Clive, and told him from whence I had just come.

He had thought his father in Scotland with Lord H.: and was immensely moved with the news which I brought.

"I haven't written to him for a month. It's not pleasant the letters I have to write, Pen, and I can't make them pleasant. Up, Tommykin, and put on your cap." Tommykin jumps up. "Put on your cap, and tell them to take off your pinafore, tell grandmamma----"

At that name Tommykin begins to cry.

"Look at that!" says Clive, commencing to speak in the French language, which the child interrupts by calling out in that tongue. "I speak also French, papa."

"Well, my child! You will like to come out with papa, and Betsy can dress you." He flings off his own paint-stained shooting-jacket as he talks, takes a frock-coat out of a carved wardrobe, and a hat from a helmet on the shelf. He is no longer the handsome splendid boy of old times. Can that be Clive, with that haggard face and slouched handkerchief? "I am not the dandy I was, Pen," he says bitterly.

A little voice is heard crying overhead--and giving a kind of gasp the wretched father stops in some indifferent speech he was trying to make.

"I can't help myself," he groans out; "my wife is so ill, she can't attend to the child. Mrs. Mackenzie manages the house for me--and--here!

Tommy, Tommy! papa is coming!" Tommy has been crying again; and flinging open the studio door, Clive calls out, and dashes upstairs.

I hear scuffling, stamping, loud voices, poor Tommy's scared little pipe--Clive's fierce objurgations, and the Campaigner's voice barking out--"Do, sir, do! with my child suffering in the next room. Behave like a brute to me, do. He shall not go! He shall not have the hat"--"He shall"--"Ah--ah!" A scream is heard. It is Clive tearing a child's hat out of the Campaigner's hands, with which, and a flushed face, he presently rushes downstairs, bearing little Tommy on his shoulder.

"You see what I am come to, Pen," he says with a heartbroken voice, trying, with hands all of a tremble, to tie the hat on the boy's head.

He laughs bitterly at the ill success of his endeavours. "Oh, you silly papa!" laughs Tommy, too.

The door is flung open, and the red-faced Campaigner appears. Her face is mottled with wrath, her bandeaux of hair are disarranged upon her forehead, the ornaments of her cap, cheap, and dirty, and numerous, only give her a wilder appearance. She is in a large and dingy wrapper, very different from the lady who had presented herself a few months back to my wife--how different from the smiling Mrs. Mackenzie of old days!

"He shall not go out of a winter day, sir," she breaks out. "I have his mother's orders, whom you are killing. Mr. Pendennis!" She starts, perceiving me for the first time, and her breast heaves, and she prepares for combat, and looks at me over her shoulder.

"You and his father are the best judges upon this point, ma'am," said Mr. Pendennis, with a bow.

"The child is delicate, sir," cries Mrs. Mackenzie; "and this winter----"

"Enough of this," says Clive with a stamp, and pa.s.ses through her guard with Tommy, and we descend the stairs, and at length are in the free street. Was it not best not to describe at full length this portion of poor Clive's history?

CHAPTER LXXVI. Christmas at Rosebury

We have known our friend Florac under two aristocratic names, and might now salute him by a third, to which he was ent.i.tled, although neither he nor his wife ever chose to a.s.sume it. His father was lately dead, and M. Paul de Florac might sign himself Duc d'Ivry if he chose, but he was indifferent as to the matter, and his wife's friends indignant at the idea that their kinswoman, after having been a Princess, should descend to the rank of a mere d.u.c.h.ess. So Prince and Princess these good folks remained, being exceptions to that order, inasmuch as their friends could certainly put their trust in them.

On his father's death Florac went to Paris, to settle the affairs of the paternal succession; and, having been for some time absent in his native country, returned to Rosebury for the winter, to resume that sport of which he was a distinguished amateur. He hunted in black during the ensuing season; and, indeed, henceforth laid aside his splendid attire and his allurements as a young man. His waist expanded, or was no longer confined by the cestus which had given it a shape. When he laid aside his black, his whiskers, too, went into a sort of half-mourning, and appeared in grey. "I make myself old, my friend," he said, pathetically; "I have no more neither twenty years nor forty." He went to Rosebury Church no more; but, with great order and sobriety, drove every Sunday to the neighbouring Catholic chapel at C---- Castle. We had an ecclesiastic or two to dine with us at Rosebury, one of whom I inclined to think was Florac's director.

A reason, perhaps, for Paul's altered demeanour, was the presence of his mother at Rosebury. No politeness or respect could be greater than Paul's towards the Countess. Had she been a sovereign princess, Madame de Florac could not have been treated with more profound courtesy than she now received from her son. I think the humble-minded lady could have dispensed with some of his attentions; but Paul was a personage who demonstrated all his sentiments, and performed his various parts in life with the greatest vigour. As a man of pleasure, for instance, what more active roue than he? As a jeune homme, who could be younger, and for a longer time? As a country gentleman, or an l'homme d'affaires, he insisted upon dressing each character with the most rigid accuracy, and an exact.i.tude that reminded one somewhat of Bouffe, or Ferville, at the play. I wonder whether, when is he quite old, he will think proper to wear a pigtail, like his old father? At any rate, that was a good part which the kind fellow was now acting, of reverence towards his widowed mother, and affectionate respect for her declining days. He not only felt these amiable sentiments, but he imparted them to his friends most freely, as his wont was. He used to weep freely,--quite unrestrained by the presence of the domestics, as English sentiment would be:--and when Madame de Florac quitted the room after dinner, would squeeze my hand and tell me with streaming eyes, that his mother was an angel. "Her life has been but a long trial, my friend," he would say. "Shall not I, who have caused her to shed so many tears, endeavour to dry some?" Of course the friends who liked him best encouraged him in an intention so pious.

The reader has already been made acquainted with this lady by the letters of hers, which came into my possession some time after the events which I am at present narrating: my wife, through our kind friend, Colonel Newcome, had also had the honour of an introduction to Madame de Florac at Paris; and, on coming to Rosebury for the Christmas holidays, I found Laura and the children greatly in favour with the good Countess. She treated her son's wife with a perfect though distant courtesy. She was thankful to Madame de Moncontour for the latter's great goodness to her son. Familiar with but very few persons, she could scarcely be intimate with her homely daughter-in-law. Madame de Moncontour stood in the greatest awe of her; and, to do that good lady justice, admired and reverenced Paul's mother with all her simple heart. In truth, I think almost every one had a certain awe of Madame de Florac, except children, who came to her trustingly, and, as it were, by instinct. The habitual melancholy of her eyes vanished as they lighted upon young faces and infantile smiles. A sweet love beamed out of her countenance: an angelic smile shone over her face, as she bent towards them and caressed them. Her demeanour then, nay, her looks and ways at other times;--a certain gracious sadness, a sympathy with all grief, and pity for all pain; a gentle heart, yearning towards all children; and, for her own especially, feeling a love that was almost an anguish: in the affairs of the common world only a dignified acquiescence, as if her place was not in it, and her thoughts were in her Home elsewhere;--these qualities, which we had seen exemplified in another life, Laura and her husband watched in Madame de Florac, and we loved her because she was like our mother. I see in such women, the good and pure, the patient and faithful, the tried and meek, the followers of Him whose earthly life was divinely sad and tender.

But, good as she was to us and to all, Ethel Newcome was the French lady's greatest favourite. A bond of extreme tenderness and affection united these two. The elder friend made constant visits to the younger at Newcome; and when Miss Newcome, as she frequently did, came to Rosebury, we used to see that they preferred to be alone; divining and respecting the sympathy which brought those two faithful hearts together. I can imagine now the two tall forms slowly pacing the garden walks, or turning, as they lighted on the young ones in their play. What was their talk! I never asked it. Perhaps Ethel never said what was in her heart, though, be sure, the other knew it. Though the grief of those they love is untold, women hear it; as they soothe it with unspoken consolations. To see the elder lady embrace her friend as they parted was something holy--a sort of saintlike salutation.

Consulting the person from whom I had no secrets, we had thought best at first not to mention to our friends the place and position in which we had found our dear Colonel; at least to wait for a fitting opportunity on which we might break the news to those who held him in such affection. I told how Clive was hard at work, and hoped the best for him. Good-natured Madame de Moncontour was easily satisfied with my replies to her questions concerning our friend. Ethel only asked if he and her uncle were well, and once or twice made inquiries respecting Rosa and her child. And now it was that my wife told me, what I need no longer keep secret, of Ethel's extreme anxiety to serve her distressed relatives, and how she, Laura, had already acted as Miss Newcome's almoner in furnishing and hiring those apartments, which Ethel believed were occupied by Clive and his father, and wife and child. And my wife further informed me with what deep grief Ethel had heard of her uncle's misfortune, and how, but that she feared to offend his pride, she longed to give him a.s.sistance. She had even ventured to offer to send him pecuniary help; but the Colonel (who never mentioned the circ.u.mstance to me any other of his friends), in a kind but very cold letter, had declined to be beholden to his niece for help.

So I may have remained some days at Rosebury, and the real position of the two Newcomes was unknown to our friends there. Christmas Eve was come, and, according to a long-standing promise, Ethel Newcome and her two children had arrived from the Park, which dreary mansion, since his double defeat, Sir Barnes scarcely ever visited. Christmas was come, and Rosebury hall was decorated with holly. Florac did his best to welcome his friends, and strove to make the meeting gay, though in truth it was rather melancholy. The children, however, were happy: and they had pleasure enough, in the school festival, in the distribution of cloaks and blankets to the poor, and in Madame de Moncontour's gardens, delightful and beautiful though the winter was there.

It was only a family meeting, Madame de Florac's widowhood not permitting her presence in large companies. Paul sate at his table between his mother and Mrs. Pendennis; Mr. Pendennis opposite to him, with Ethel and Madame de Moncontour on each side. The four children were placed between these personages, on whom Madame de Florac looked with her tender glances, and to whose little wants the kindest of hosts ministered with uncommon good-nature and affection. He was very soft-hearted about children. "Pourquoi n'en avons-nous pas, Jeanne? He!

quoi n'en avons-nous pas?" he said, addressing his wife by her Christian name. The poor little lady looked kindly at her husband, and then gave a sigh, and turned and heaped cake upon the plate of the child next to her. No mamma or Aunt Ethel could interpose. It was a very light wholesome cake. Brown made it on purpose for the children, "the little darlings!" cries the Princess.

The children were very happy at being allowed to sit up so late to dinner, at all the kindly amus.e.m.e.nts of the day, at the holly and mistletoe cl.u.s.tering round the lamps--the mistletoe, under which the gallant Florac, skilled in all British usages, vowed he would have his privilege. But the mistletoe was cl.u.s.tered round the lamp, the lamp was over the centre of the great round table--the innocent gratification which he proposed to himself was denied to M. Paul.

In the greatest excitement and good-humour, our host at the dessert made us des speech. He carried a toast to the charming Ethel, another to the charming Mistriss Laura, another to his good fren', his brave frren', his 'appy fren', Pendennis--'appy as possessor of such a wife, 'appy as writer of works destined to the immortality, etc. etc. The little children round about clapped their happy little hands, and laughed and crowed in chorus. And now the nursery and its guardians were about to retreat, when Florac said he had yet a speech, yet a toast--and he bade the butler pour wine into every one's gla.s.s--yet a toast--and he carried it to the health of our dear friends, of Clive and his father,--the good, the brave Colonel! "We who are happy," says he, "shall we not think of those who are good? We who love each other, shall we not remember those whom we all love?" He spoke with very great tenderness and feeling. "Ma bonne mere, thou too shalt drink this toast!" he said, taking his mother's hand, and kissing it. She returned his caress gently, and tasted the wine with her pale lips. Ethel's head bent in silence over her gla.s.s; and, as for Laura, need I say what happened to her! When the ladies went away my heart was opened to my friend Florac, and I told him where and how I had left my dear Clive's father.

The Frenchman's emotion on hearing this tale was such that I have loved him ever since. Clive in want! Why had he not sent to his friend?

Grands Dieux! Clive who had helped him in his greatest distress! Clive's father, ce preux chevalier, ce parfait gentilhomme! In a hundred rapid exclamations Florac exhibited his sympathy, asking of Fate, why such men as he and I were sitting surrounded by splendours--before golden vases crowned with flowers--with valets to kiss our feet--(those were merely figures of speech in which Paul expressed his prosperity)--whilst our friend the Colonel, so much better than we, spent his last days in poverty, and alone.

I liked Florac none the less, I own, because that one of the conditions of the Colonel's present life, which appeared the hardest to most people, affected Florac but little. To be a Pensioner of an Ancient Inst.i.tution? Why not? Might not a man retire without shame to the Invalides at the close of his campaigns, and, had not Fortune conquered our old friend, and age and disaster overcome him? It never once entered Thomas Newcome's head; nor Clive's, nor Florac's, nor his mother's, that the Colonel demeaned himself at all by accepting that bounty; and I recollect Warrington sharing our sentiment and trowling out those n.o.ble lines of the old poet:--