The World's Greatest Books - Volume 8 Part 24

"Captain Costizan, will you take something to drink?"

"Bedad I will," says the Captain, "and I'll sing ye a song too."

Having procured a gla.s.s of whisky and water, the unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was doing or saying, selected one of the most outrageous of what he called his prime songs, and began his music. At the end of the second verse, the Colonel started up, and looking as ferocious as though he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree, roared out "Silence!"

"Do you dare, sir," cries the Colonel, trembling with anger, "to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the king's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash?"

"Why do you bring young boys here, old man?" cries a malcontent.

"Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen. I never could have believed that Englishmen could meet together and allow an old man so to disgrace himself. For shame! Go home to your bed, you h.o.a.ry old sinner! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see for once in his life to what degradation, drunkenness, and whisky may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir!" says the Colonel, to the amazed waiter. "Keep it till you see me in this place again, which will be never--by George, never!" And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company, the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after him.

Clive seemed rather shamefaced; but I fear the rest of the company looked still more foolish.

_II.--Clive Newman in Love_

The Colonel, in conjunction with an Indian friend of his, Mr. Binnie, took a house in London, No. 120, Fitzroy Square, and there was fine amus.e.m.e.nt for Clive and his father and Mr. Binnie in the purchase of furniture for the new mansion. It was like n.o.body else's house. What cosy pipes did we not smoke in the dining room, in the drawing room, or where we would!

Clive had a tutor, whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great _forte_ decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he drew the dogs. He drew his father in all postures--asleep, on foot, on horseback; and jolly little Mr. Binnie, with his plump legs on a chair, or jumping briskly on the back of a cob which he rode.

"Oh," says Clive, if you talk to him now about those early days, "it was a jolly time! I do not believe there was any young fellow in London so happy." And there hangs up in his painting-room now a head, with hair touched with grey, with a large moustache, and melancholy eyes. And Clive shows that portrait of their grandfather to his children, and tells them that the whole world never saw a n.o.bler gentleman.

Of course our young man commenced as an historical painter, deeming that the highest branch of art. He painted a prodigious battle-piece of a.s.saye, and will it be believed that the Royal Academicians rejected this masterpiece? Clive himself, after a month's trip to Paris with his father, declared the thing was rubbish.

It was during this time, when Clive and his father were in Paris, that Mr. Binnie, laid up with a wrenched ankle, was consoled by a visit from his sister, Mrs. Mackenzie, a brisk, plump little widow, and her daughter, Miss Rosey, a blue-eyed, fair-haired la.s.s, with a very sweet voice.

Of course the most hospitable and polite of colonels would not hear of Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter quitting his house when he returned to it, after the pleasant sojourn in Paris; nor indeed, did his fair guest show the least anxiety or intention to go away. Certainly, the house was a great deal more cheerful for the presence of the two pleasant ladies.

Everybody liked them. Binnie received their caresses very good-humouredly. The Colonel liked every woman under the sun. Clive laughed and joked and waltzed alternately with Rosey and her mamma. None of us could avoid seeing that Mrs. Mackenzie was, as the phrase is, "setting her cap" openly at Clive; and Clive laughed at her simple manoeuvres as merrily as the rest.

Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie's niece and sister in Fitzroy Square, Mrs. Newcome, wife of Hobson Newcome, banker, the Colonel's brother, gave a dinner party at her house in Bryanstone Square. "It is quite a family party," whispered the happy Mrs. Newcome, when we recognised Lady Ann Newcome's carriage, and saw her ladys.h.i.+p, her mother--old Lady Kew, her daughter, Ethel, and her husband, Sir Brian, (Hobson's twin brother and partner in the banking firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome), descend from the vehicle. The whole party from St. Pancras were already a.s.sembled--Mr. Binnie, the Colonel and his son, Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Rosey.

Everybody was bent upon being happy and gracious. Miss Newcome ran up to the Colonel with both hands out, and with no eyes for anyone else, until Clive advancing, those bright eyes become brighter still with surprise and pleasure as she beholds him. And, as she looks, Miss Ethel sees a very handsome fellow, while the blus.h.i.+ng youth casts down his eyes before hers.

"Upon my word, my dear Colonel," says old Lady Kew, nodding her head shrewdly, "I think we were right."

"No doubt right in everything your ladys.h.i.+p does, but in what particularly?" asks the Colonel.

"Right to keep him out of the way. Ethel has been disposed of these ten years. Did not Ann tell you? How foolish of her! But all mothers like to have young men dying for their daughters. Your son is really the handsomest boy in London. Ethel, my dear! Colonel Newcome must present us to Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Mackenzie;" and Ethel, giving a nod to Clive, with whom she had talked for a minute or two, again puts her hand into her uncle's and walks towards Mrs. Mackenzie.

Let the artist give us a likeness of Ethel. She is seventeen years old, rather taller than the majority of women. Youth looks out of her bright eyes and flashes scorn or denial, perhaps too readily, when she encounters flattery or meanness. Her smile, when it lights up her face and eyes, is as beautiful as spring suns.h.i.+ne. Her countenance somewhat grave and haughty, on occasion brightens with humour or beams with kindliness and affection.

That night in the drawing room we found the two young ladies engaged over an alb.u.m, containing a number of Clive's drawings made in the time of his very early youth, and Miss Ethel seemed to be very much pleased with these performances.

Old Major Pendennis, whom I met earlier in the day, made some confidential remarks concerning Miss Ethel and her relatives, which I set down here. "Your Indian Colonel," says he, "seems a worthy man. He don't seem to know much of the world and we are not very intimate. They say he wanted to marry your friend Clive to Lady Ann's daughter, an exceedingly fine girl; one of the prettiest girls come out this season.

And that shows how monstrous ignorant of the world Colonel Newcome is.

His son could no more get that girl than he could marry one of the royal princesses. These banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Mark my words, they intend Miss Newcome for some man of high rank. Old Lady Kew is a monstrous clever woman. Nothing could show a more deplorable ignorance of the world than poor Newcome supposing his son could make such a match as that with his cousin. Is it true that he is going to make his son an artist? I don't know what the deuce the world is coming to. An artist! By Gad, in my time a fellow would as soon have thought of making his son a hairdresser, or a pastrycook, by Gad."

Lady Kew carried off her granddaughter Ethel, the Colonel returned to India, and Clive, endowed with a considerable annual sum from his father, went abroad with an apparatus of easels and painting boxes.

Clive found Lady Ann, with Ethel and her other children, at Bount on their way to Baden Baden, and the old Countess being away for the time, it seemed to Clive that the barrier between himself and the family was withdrawn. He was glad enough to go with his cousins, and travel in the orbit of Ethel Newcome--who is now grown up and has been presented at Court.

At Baden Baden was Lady Kew; and Clive learning that Ethel was about to be betrothed, and that his suit was hopeless, retreated, with his paint boxes across the Alps to Rome.

_III.--Clive is Married_

It was announced that Miss Newcome was engaged to the Marquis Fairntosh, but for all that no marriage took place. First the death of Lady Kew made an inevitable postponement, and then Ethel herself shrunk from the loveless match, and, in spite of Lord Fairntosh's protests, dismissed the n.o.ble marquis.

But the announcement drove Clive to marry pretty little Rose Mackenzie.

The Colonel was back in England again, and for good--a rich man, thanks to the success of the Bundeleund Bank, Bengal, in which his savings were invested, and heavily displeased with Ethel's treatment of his son.

Clive's marriage was performed in Brussels, where Mr. James Binnie, who longed to see Rosey wedded, and his sister, whom we flippantly ventured to call the Campaigner, had been staying that summer. After the marriage they went off to Scotland, and the Colonel and his son and daughter-in-law came to London--not to the old bachelor quarters in Fitzroy Square, but to a sumptuous mansion in the Tyburnian district--and one which became people of their station. To this house came Mrs. Mackenzie when the baby was born, and there she stayed.

In a pique with the woman he loved, and from that generous weakness which led him to acquiesce in most wishes of his good father, the young man had gratified the darling wish of the Colonel's heart, and taken the wife whom his old friends brought to him. Rosey, who was also of a very obedient and docile nature, had acquiesced gladly enough in her mamma's opinion, that she was in love with the rich and handsome young Clive, and accepted him for better or worse.

If Clive was gloomy and discontented even when the honeymoon had scarce waned, what was the young man's condition in poverty, when they had no love along with a silent dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged each morsel which his poor old father ate--when a vulgar, coa.r.s.e-minded woman--as Mrs. Mackenzie was--pursued with brutal sarcasm one of the tenderest and n.o.blest gentlemen in the world; when an ailing wife, always under some one's domination, received him with helpless hysterical cries and reproaches!

For a ghastly bankruptcy overwhelmed the Bundeleund Bank, and with its failure went all Colonel Newcome's savings, and all Mrs. Mackenzie's money and her daughter's. Even the Colonel's pension and annuities were swallowed up in the general ruin, for the old man would pay every s.h.i.+lling of his debts.

When I ventured to ask the Colonel why Mrs. Mackenzie should continue to live with them--"She has a right to live in the house," he said, "it is I who have no right in it. I am a poor old pensioner, don't you see, subsisting on Rosey's bounty. We live on the hundred a year secured to her at her marriage, and Mrs. Mackenzie has her forty pounds of pension which she adds to the common stock. They put their little means together, and they keep us--me and Clive. What can we do for a living?

Great G.o.d! What can we do?"

But Clive was getting on tolerably well, at his painting, and many sitters came to him from amongst his old friends; he had work, scantily paid it is true, but work sufficient. "I am pretty easy in my mind, since I have become acquainted with a virtuous dealer," the painter a.s.sured me one day. "I sell myself to him, body and soul, for some half dozen pounds a week. I know I can get my money, and he is regularly supplied with his pictures. But for Rosey's illness we might carry on well enough."

Rosey's illness? I was sorry to hear of that; and poor Clive, entering into particulars, told me how he had spent upon doctors rather more than a fourth of his year's earnings.

_IV.--The Colonel Says "Adsum" When His Name is Called_

Mention has been made of the Grey Friars school--where the Colonel and Clive and I had been brought up, an ancient foundation still subsisting at Smithfield.

On the 12th of December, the Founder's Day, a goodly company of old Cistercians is generally brought together, to hear a sermon in chapel; after which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old condisciples meet, and speeches are made. In the chapel sit some three-score old gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms.

The service for Founder's Day is a special one, and we hear--

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.

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 in the psalms I chanced to look up from my book towards the black-coated pensioners, and amongst them--amongst them--sat Thomas Newcome.

There was no mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey Friars. The steps of this good man had been ordered hither by heaven's decree to this alms-house!

The organ played us out of chapel, and I waited until the pensioners took their turn to quit it. The wan face of my dear old friend flushed up when he saw me, and his hand shook in mine, "I have found a home, Arthur," said he. "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. Why, sir, I am as happy as the day is long."

We walked through the courts of the building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and comfortable, with a brisk fire on the hearth, a little tea-table laid out, and over the mantelpiece a drawing of his grandson by Clive.