The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 6

Colonel Newcome here growled a wish regarding the ultimate fate of Sir Thomas de Boots, which we trust may never be realised by that distinguished cavalry officer.

"My brother says he's going to Newcome, Barnes, next week," said the Baronet, wis.h.i.+ng to make the conversation more interesting to the newly arrived Colonel. "He was saying so just when you came in, and I was asking him what took him there?"

"Did you ever hear of Sarah Mason?" says the Colonel.

"Really, I never did," the Baronet answered.

"Sarah Mason? No, upon my word, I don't think I ever did, said the young man.

"Well, that's a pity too," the Colonel said, with a sneer. "Mrs.

Mason is a relation of yours--at least by marriage. She is my aunt or cousin--I used to call her aunt, and she and my father and mother all worked in the same mill at Newcome together."

"I remember--G.o.d bless my soul--I remember now!" cried the Baronet. "We pay her forty pound a year on your account--don't you know, brother?

Look to Colonel Newcome's account--I recollect the name quite well.

But I thought she had been your nurse, and--and an old servant of my father's."

"So she was my nurse, and an old servant of my father's," answered the Colonel. "But she was my mother's cousin too and very lucky was my mother to have such a servant, or to have a servant at all. There is not in the whole world a more faithful creature or a better woman."

Mr. Hobson rather enjoyed his brother's perplexity, and to see when the Baronet rode the high horse, how he came down sometimes, "I am sure it does you very great credit," gasped the courtly head of the firm, "to remember a--a humble friend and connexion of our father's so well."

"I think, brother, you might have recollected her too," the Colonel growled out. His face was blus.h.i.+ng; he was quite angry and hurt at what seemed to him Sir Brian's hardness of heart.

"Pardon me if I don't see the necessity," said Sir Brian. "I have no relations.h.i.+p with Mrs. Mason, and do not remember ever having seen her.

Can I do anything for you, brother? Can I be useful to you in any way?

Pray command me and Barnes here, who after City hours will be delighted if he can be serviceable to you--I am nailed to this counter all the morning, and to the House of Commons all night;--I will be with you in one moment, Mr. Quilter. Good-bye, my dear Colonel. How well India has agreed with you! how young you look! the hot winds are nothing to what we endure in Parliament.--Hobson," in a low voice, "you saw about that h'm, that power of attorney--and h'm and h'm will call here at twelve about that h'm.--I am sorry I must say good-bye--it seems so hard after not meeting for so many years."

"Very," says the Colonel.

"Mind and send for me whenever you want me, now."

"Oh, of course," said the elder brother, and thought when will that ever be!

"Lady Anne will be too delighted at hearing of your arrival. Give my love to Clive--a remarkable fine boy, Clive--good morning:" and the Baronet was gone, and his bald head might presently be seen alongside of Mr. Quilter's confidential grey poll, both of their faces turned into an immense ledger.

Mr. Hobson accompanied the Colonel to the door, and shook him cordially by the hand as he got into his cab. The man asked whither he should drive? and poor Newcome hardly knew where he was or whither he should go. "Drive! a--oh--ah--damme, drive me anywhere away from this place!"

was all he could say; and very likely the cabman thought he was a disappointed debtor who had asked in vain to renew a bill. In fact, Thomas Newcome had overdrawn his little account. There was no such balance of affection in that bank of his brothers, as the simple creature had expected to find there.

When he was gone, Sir Brian went back to his parlour, where sate young Barnes perusing the paper. "My revered uncle seems to have brought back a quant.i.ty of cayenne pepper from India, sir," he said to his father.

"He seems a very kind-hearted simple man," the Baronet said "eccentric, but he has been more than thirty years away from home. Of course you will call upon him to-morrow morning. Do everything you can to make him comfortable. Whom would he like to meet at dinner? I will ask some of the Direction. Ask him, Barnes, for next Wednesday or Sat.u.r.day--no; Sat.u.r.day I dine with the Speaker. But see that every attention is paid him."

"Does he intend to have our relation up to town, sir? I should like to meet Mrs. Mason of all things. A venerable washerwoman, I daresay, or perhaps keeps a public-house," simpered out young Barnes.

"Silence, Barnes; you jest at everything, you young men do--you do.

Colonel Newcome's affection for his old nurse does him the greatest honour," said the Baronet, who really meant what he said.

"And I hope my mother will have her to stay a good deal at Newcome. I'm sure she must have been a washerwoman, and mangled my uncle in early life. His costume struck me with respectful astonishment. He disdains the use of straps to his trousers, and is seemingly unacquainted with gloves. If he had died in India, would my late aunt have had to perish on a funeral pile?" Here Mr. Quilter, entering with a heap of bills, put an end to these sarcastic remarks, and young Newcome, applying himself to his business (of which he was a perfect master), forgot about his uncle till after City hours, when he entertained some young gentlemen of Bays's Club with an account of his newly arrived relative.

Towards the City, whither he wended his way whatever had been the ball or the dissipation of the night before, young Barnes Newcome might be seen walking every morning, resolutely and swiftly, with his neat umbrella. As he pa.s.sed Charing Cross on his way westwards, his little boots trailed slowly over the pavement, his head hung languid (bending lower still, and smiling with faded sweetness as he doffed his hat and saluted a pa.s.sing carriage), his umbrella trailed after him. Not a dandy on all the Pall Mall pavement seemed to have less to do than he.

Heavyside, a large young officer of the household troops--old Sir Thomas de Boots--and Horace Fogey, whom every one knows--are in the window of Bays's, yawning as widely as that window itself. Horses under the charge of men in red jackets are pacing up and down St. James's Street. Cabmen on the stand are regaling with beer. Gentlemen with grooms behind them pa.s.s towards the Park. Great dowager barouches roll along emblazoned with coronets, and driven by coachmen in silvery wigs. Wistful provincials gaze in at the clubs. Foreigners chatter and show their teeth, and look at the ladies in the carriages, and smoke and spit refres.h.i.+ngly round about. Policeman X slouches along the pavement. It is five o'clock, the noon in Pall Mall.

"Here's little Newcome coming," says Mr. Horace Fogey. "He and the m.u.f.fin-man generally make their appearance in public together."

"Dashed little prig," says Sir Thomas de Boots, "why the dash did they ever let him in here? If I hadn't been in India, by dash--he should have been blackballed twenty times over, by dash." Only Sir Thomas used words far more terrific than dash, for this distinguished cavalry officer swore very freely.

"He amuses me; he's such a mischievous little devil," says good-natured Charley Heavyside.

"It takes very little to amuse you," remarks Fogey.

"You don't, Fogey," answers Charley. "I know every one of your demd old stories, that are as old as my grandmother. How-dy-do, Barney?" (Enter Barnes Newcome.) "How are the Three per Cents, you little beggar? I wish you'd do me a bit of stiff; and just tell your father, if I may overdraw my account I'll vote with him--hanged if I don't."

Barnes orders absinthe-and-water, and drinks: Heavyside resuming his elegant raillery. "I say, Barney, your name's Barney, and you're a banker. You must be a little Jew, hey? Vell, how mosh vill you to my little pill for?"

"Do hee-haw in the House of Commons, Heavyside," says the young man with a languid air. "That's your place: you're returned for it." (Captain the Honourable Charles Heavyside is a member of the legislature, and eminent in the House for asinine imitations which delight his own, and confuse the other party.) "Don't bray here. I hate the shop out of shop hours."

"Dash the little puppy," growls Sir de Boots, swelling in his waistband.

"What do they say about the Russians in the City?" says Horace Fogey, who has been in the diplomatic service. "Has the fleet left Cronstadt, or has it not?"

"How should I know?" asks Barney. "Ain't it all in the evening paper?"

"That is very uncomfortable news from India, General," resumes Fogey--"there's Lady Doddington's carriage, how well she looks--that movement of Runjeet-Singh on Peshawur: that fleet on the Irrawaddy. It looks doocid queer, let me tell you, and Penguin is not the man to be Governor-General of India in a time of difficulty."

"And Hustler's not the man to be Commander-in-Chief: dashder old fool never lived: a dashed old psalm-singing, blundering old woman," says Sir Thomas, who wanted the command himself.

"You ain't in the psalm-singing line, Sir Thomas," says Mr. Barnes; "quite the contrary." In fact, Sir de Boots in his youth used to sing with the Duke of York, and even against Captain Costigan, but was beaten by that superior baccha.n.a.lian artist.

Sir Thomas looks as if to ask what the dash is that to you? but wanting still to go to India again, and knowing how strong the Newcomes are in Leadenhall Street, he thinks it necessary to be civil to the young cub, and swallows his wrath once more into his waistband.

"I've got an uncle come home from India--upon my word I have," says Barnes Newcome. "That is why I am so exhausted. I am going to buy him a pair of gloves, number fourteen--and I want a tailor for him--not a young man's tailor. Fogey's tailor rather. I'd take my father's; but he has all his things made in the country--all--in the borough, you know--he's a public man."

"Is Colonel Newcome, of the Bengal Cavalry, your uncle?" asks Sir Thomas de Boots.

"Yes; will you come and meet him at dinner next Wednesday week, Sir Thomas? and, Fogey, you come; you know you like a good dinner. You don't know anything against my uncle, do you, Sir Thomas? Have I any Brahminical cousins? Need we be ashamed of him?"

"I tell you what, young man, if you were more like him it wouldn't hurt you. He's an odd man; they call him Don Quixote in India; I suppose you've read Don Quixote?"

"Never heard of it, upon my word; and why do you wish I should be more like him? I don't wish to be like him at all, thank you."

"Why, because he is one of the bravest officers that ever lived," roared out the old soldier. "Because he's one of the kindest fellows; because he gives himself no dashed airs, although he has reason to be proud if he chose. That's why, Mr. Newcome."

"A topper for you, Barney, my boy," remarks Charles Heavyside, as the indignant General walks away gobbling and red. Barney calmly drinks the remains of his absinthe.

"I don't know what that old m.u.f.f means," he says innocently, when he has finished his bitter draught. "He's always flying out at me, the old turkey-c.o.c.k. He quarrels with my play at whist, the old idiot, and can no more play than an old baby. He pretends to teach me billiards, and I'll give him fifteen in twenty and beat his old head off. Why do they let such fellows into clubs? Let's have a game at piquet till dinner, Heavyside. Hallo! That's my uncle, that tall man with the mustachios and the short trousers, walking with that boy of his. I dare say they are going to dine in Covent Garden, and going to the play. How-dy-do, Nunky?"--and so the worthy pair went up to the card-room, where they sate at piquet until the hour of sunset and dinner arrived.