The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 66

"Of course it's me," answers the young man, not quite understanding the train of ideas in his companion's mind. "And I've given up everything--everything--and have broken off with my old habits and--and things, you know--and intend to lead a regular life--and will never go to Tattersall's again; nor bet a s.h.i.+lling; nor touch another cigar if you like--that is, if you don't like; for I love you so, Ethel--I do, with all my heart I do!"

"You are very generous and kind, Lord Farintosh," Ethel said. "It is myself, not you, I doubt. Oh, I am humiliated to make such a confession!"

"How humiliated?" Ethel withdrew the hand which the young n.o.bleman endeavoured to seize.

"If," she continued, "if I found it was your birth, and your name, and your wealth that I coveted, and had nearly taken, ought I not to feel humiliated, and ask pardon of you and of G.o.d? Oh, what perjuries poor Clara was made to speak,--and see what has befallen her! We stood by and heard her without being shocked. We applauded even. And to what shame and misery we brought her! Why did her parents and mine consign her to such ruin! She might have lived pure and happy but for us. With her example before me--not her flight, poor child--I am not afraid of that happening to me--but her long solitude, the misery of her wasted years,--my brother's own wretchedness and faults aggravated a hundredfold by his unhappy union with her--I must pause while it is yet time, and recall a promise which I know I should make you unhappy if I fulfilled. I ask your pardon that I deceived you, Lord Farintosh, and feel ashamed for myself that I could have consented to do so."

"Do you mean," cried the young Marquis, "that after my conduct to you--after my loving you, so that even this--this disgrace in your family don't prevent my going on--after my mother has been down on her knees to me to break off, and I wouldn't--no, I wouldn't--after all White's sneering at me and laughing at me, and all my friends, friends of my family, who would go to--go anywhere for me, advising me, and saying, 'Farintosh, what a fool you are! break off this match,'--and I wouldn't back out, because I loved you so, by Heaven, and because, as a man and a gentleman, when I give my word I keep it--do you mean that you throw me over? It's a shame--it's a shame!" And again there were tears of rage and anguish in Farintosh's eyes.

"What I did was a shame, my lord," Ethel said, humbly; "and again I ask your pardon for it. What I do now is only to tell you the truth, and to grieve with all my soul for the falsehood--yes the falsehood--which I told you, and which has given your kind heart such cruel pain."

"Yes, it was a falsehood!" the poor lad cried out. "You follow a fellow, and you make a fool of him, and you make him frantic in love with you, and then you fling him over! I wonder you can look me in the face after such an infernal treason. You've done it to twenty fellows before, I know you have. Everybody said so, and warned me. You draw them on, and get them to be in love, and then you fling them away. Am I to go back to London and be made the laughing-stock of the whole town--I, who might marry any woman in Europe, and who am at the head of the n.o.bility of England?"

"Upon my word, if you will believe me after deceiving you once," Ethel interposed, still very humbly, "I will never say that it was I who withdrew from you, and that it was not you who refused me. What has happened here fully authorises you. Let the rupture of the engagement come from you, my lord. Indeed, indeed, I would spare you all the pain I can. I have done you wrong enough already, Lord Farintosh."

And now the Marquis burst forth with tears and imprecations, wild cries of anger, love, and disappointment, so fierce and incoherent that the lady to whom they were addressed did not repeat them to her confidante.

Only she generously charged Laura to remember, if ever she heard the matter talked of in the world, that it was Lord Farintosh's family which broke off the marriage; but that his lords.h.i.+p had acted most kindly and generously throughout the whole affair.

He went back to London in such a state of fury, and raved so wildly amongst his friends against the whole Newcome family, that many men knew what the case really was. But all women averred that that intriguing worldly Ethel Newcome, the apt pupil of her wicked old grandmother, had met with a deserved rebuff; that, after doing everything in her power to catch the great parti, Lord Farintosh, who had long been tired of her, flung her over, not liking the connexion; and that she was living out of the world now at Newcome, under the pretence of taking care of that unfortunate Lady Clara's children, but really because she was pining away for Lord Farintosh, who, as we all know, married six months afterwards.

CHAPTER LX. In which we write to the Colonel

Deeming that her brother Barnes had cares enough of his own presently at hand, Ethel did not think fit to confide to him the particulars of her interview with Lord Farintosh; nor even was poor Lady Anne informed that she had lost a n.o.ble son-in-law. The news would come to both of them soon enough, Ethel thought; and indeed, before many hours were over, it reached Sir Barnes Newcome in a very abrupt and unpleasant way. He had dismal occasion now to see his lawyers every day; and on the day after Lord Farintosh's abrupt visit and departure, Sir Barnes, going into Newcome upon his own unfortunate affairs, was told by his attorney, Mr.

Speers, how the Marquis of Farintosh had slept for a few hours at the King's Arms, and returned to town the same evening by the train. We may add, that his lords.h.i.+p had occupied the very room in which Lord Highgate had previously slept; and Mr. Taplow recommends the bed accordingly, and shows pride it with to this very day.

Much disturbed by this intelligence, Sir Barnes was making his way to his cheerless home in the evening, when near his own gate he overtook another messenger. This was the railway porter, who daily brought telegraphic messages from his uncle and the London bank. The message of that day was,--"Consols, so-and-so. French Rentes, so much. Highgate's and Farintosh's accounts withdrawn." The wretched keeper of the lodge owned, with trembling, in reply to the curses and queries of his employer, that a gentleman, calling himself the Marquis of Farintosh, had gone up to the house the day before, and come away an hour afterwards,--did not like to speak to Sir Barnes when he came home, Sir Barnes looked so bad like.

Now, of course, there could be no concealment from her brother, and Ethel and Barnes had a conversation, in which the latter expressed himself with that freedom of language which characterised the head of the house of Newcome. Madame de Moncontour's pony-chaise was in waiting at the hall door, when the owner of the house entered it; and my wife was just taking leave of Ethel and her little people when Sir Barnes Newcome entered the lady's sitting-room.

The livid scowl with which Barnes greeted my wife surprised that lady, though it did not induce her to prolong her visit to her friend. As Laura took leave, she heard Sir Barnes screaming to the nurses to "take those little beggars away," and she rightly conjectured that some more unpleasantries had occurred to disturb this luckless gentleman's temper.

On the morrow, dearest Ethel's usual courier, one of the boys from the lodge, trotted over on his donkey to dearest Laura at Rosebury, with one of those missives which were daily pa.s.sing between the ladies. This letter said:--

"Barnes m'a fait une scene terrible hier. I was obliged to tell him everything about Lord F., and to use the plainest language. At first, he forbade you the house. He thinks that you have been the cause of F.'s dismissal, and charged me, most unjustly, with a desire to bring back poor C. N. I replied as became me, and told him fairly I would leave the house if odious insulting charges were made against me, if my friends were not received. He stormed, he cried, he employed his usual language,--he was in a dreadful state. He relented and asked pardon. He goes to town to-night by the mail-train. Of course you come as usual, dear, dear Laura. I am miserable without you; and you know I cannot leave poor mamma. Clarykin sends a thousand kisses to little Arty; and I am his mother's always affectionate--E. N.

"Will the gentlemen like to shoot our pheasants? Please ask the Prince to let Warren know when. I sent a brace to poor dear old Mrs. Mason, and had such a nice letter from her!"

"And who is poor dear Mrs. Mason" asks Mr. Pendennis, as yet but imperfectly acquainted with the history of the Newcomes.

And Laura told me--perhaps I had heard before, and forgotten--that Mrs.

Mason was an old nurse and pensioner of the Colonel's, and how he had been to see her for the sake of old times; and how she was a great favourite with Ethel; and Laura kissed her little son, and was exceedingly bright, cheerful, and hilarious that evening, in spite of the affliction under which her dear friends at Newcome were labouring.

People in country-houses should be exceedingly careful about their blotting-paper. They should bring their own portfolios with them. If any kind readers will bear this simple little hint in mind, how much mischief may they save themselves,--nay, enjoy possibly, by looking at the pages of the next portfolio in the next friend's bedroom in which they sleep. From such a book I once cut out, in Charles Slyboots'

well-known and perfectly clear handwriting, the words, "Miss Emily Hartington, James Street, Backingham Gate, London," and produced as legibly on the blotting-paper as on the envelope which the postman delivered. After showing the paper round to the company, I enclosed it in a note and sent it to Mr. Slyboots, who married Miss Hartington three months afterwards. In such a book at the club I read, as plainly as you may read this page, a holograph page of the Right Honourable the Earl of Bareacres, which informed the whole club of a painful and private circ.u.mstance, and said, "My dear Green,--I am truly sorry that I shall not be able to take up the bill for eight hundred and fifty-six pounds, which becomes due next Tu----" and upon such a book, going to write a note in Madame de Moncontour's drawing-room at Rosebury, what should I find but proofs that my own wife was engaged in a clandestine correspondence with a gentleman residing abroad!

"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.