The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family Part 62

The house was most comfortably and snugly appointed from top to bottom; and thus it will be seen that Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis were likely to be in very good quarters for Christmas of 184-.

Tom Potter was so kind as to call on me two days after our arrival; and to greet me in the Princess's pew at church on the previous day. Before desiring to be introduced to my wife, he requested me to present him to my friend the Prince. He called him your Highness. His Highness, who had behaved with exemplary gravity, save once when he shrieked an "ah!" as Miss Liddy led off the children in the organ-loft in a hymn, and the whole pack went woefully out of tune, complimented Monsieur Tom on the sermon of monsieur his father. Tom walked with us to Rosebury lodge-gate. "Will you not come in, and make a party of billiard with me?" says His Highness. "Ah Pardon! I forgot, you do not play the billiard the Sunday!" "Any other day, Prince, I shall be delighted,"

says Tom; and squeezed His Highness's hand tenderly at parting. "Your comrade of college was he?" asks Florac. "My dear, what men are these comrades of college! What men are you Englis.h.!.+ My word of honour, there are some of them here--if I were to say to them wax my boots, they would take them and wax them! Didst thou see how the Reverend eyed us during the sermon? He regarded us over his book, my word of honour!"

Madame de Florac said simply, she wished the Prince would go and hear Mr. Jacob at the Ebenezer. Mr. Potter was not a good preacher, certainly.

"Savez-vows qu'elle est furieus.e.m.e.nt belle, la fille du Reverend?"

whispered His Highness to me. "I have made eyes at her during the sermon. They will be of pretty neighbours these meess!" and Paul looked unutterably roguish and victorious as he spoke. To my wife, I am bound to say, Monsieur de Moncontour showed a courtesy, a respect and kindness, that could not be exceeded. He admired her. He paid her compliments innumerable, and gave me I am sure sincere congratulations at possessing such a treasure. I do not think he doubted about his power of conquering her, or any other of the daughters of women. But I was the friend of his misfortunes--his guest; and he spared me.

I have seen nothing more amusing, odd, and pleasant than Florac at this time of his prosperity. We arrived, as this veracious chronicle has already a.s.serted, on a Sat.u.r.day evening. We were conducted to our most comfortable apartments; with crackling fires blazing on the hearths, and every warmth of welcome. Florac expanded and beamed with good-nature.

He shook me many times by the hand; he patted me; he called me his good--his brave.

He cried to his maitre d'hotel, "Frederic, remember monsieur is master here! Run before his orders. Prostrate thyself to him. He was good to me in the days of my misfortune. Hearest thou, Frederic? See that everything be done for Monsieur Pendennis--for madame sa charmante lady--for her angelic infant, and the bonne. None of thy garrison tricks with that young person, Frederic! vieux scelerat! Garde-toi de la, Frederic; si non, je t'envoie a Botani Bay; je te traduis devant le Lord Mare!"

"En Angleterre je me fais Anglais, vois-tu, mon ami," continued the Prince. "Demain c'est Sunday, et tu vas voir! I hear the bell, dress thyself for the dinner--my friend!"; Here there was another squeeze of both hands from the good-natured fellow. "It do good to my art to ave you in my ouse! Heuh!" He hugged his guest; he had tears in his eyes as he performed this droll, this kind embrace. Not less kind in her way, though less expensive and embracive, was Madame de Moncontour to my wife, as I found on comparing notes with that young woman, when the day's hospitalities were ended. The little Princess trotted from bedchamber to nursery to see that everything was made comfortable for her guests. She sate and saw the child washed and put to bed. She had never beheld such a little angel. She brought it a fine toy to play with. She and her grim old maid frightened the little creature at first, but it was very speedily reconciled to their countenances. She was in the nursery almost as early as the child's mother. "Ah!" sighed the poor little woman, "how happy you must be to have one!" In fine, my wife was quite overcome by her goodness and welcome.

Sunday morning arrived in the course of time, and then Florac appeared as a most wonderful Briton indeed! He wore top-boots and buckskins; and after breakfast, when we went to church, a white great-coat with a little cape, in which garment he felt that his similarity to an English gentleman was perfect. In conversation with his grooms and servants he swore freely,--not that he was accustomed to employ oaths in his own private talk, but he thought the employment of these expletives necessary as an English country gentleman. He never dined without a roast-beef, and insisted that the piece of meat should be bleeding, "as you love it, you others." He got up boxing-matches: and kept birds for combats of c.o.c.k. He a.s.sumed the sporting language with admirable enthusiasm--drove over to cover with a steppere--rode across countri like a good one--was splendid in the hunting-field in his velvet cap and Napoleon boots, and made the Hunt welcome at Rosebury where his good-natured little wife was as kind to the gentlemen in scarlet as she used to be of old to the stout Dissenting gentlemen in black, who sang hymns and spake sermons on her lawn. These folks, scared at the change which had taken place in the little Princess's habits of life, lamented her falling away: but in the county she and her husband got a great popularity, and in Newcome town itself they were not less liked, for her benefactions were unceasing, and Paul's affability the theme of all praise. The Newcome Independent and the Newcome Sentinel both paid him compliments; the former journal contrasting his behaviour with that of Sir Barnes, their member. Florac's pleasure was to drive his Princess with four horses into Newcome. He called his carriage his "trappe," his "drague." The street-boys cheered and hurrayed the Prince as he pa.s.sed through the town. One haberdasher had a yellow stock called the "Moncontour" displayed in his windows; another had a pink one marked "The Princely," and as such recommended it to the young Newcome gents.

The drague conveyed us once to the neighbouring house of Newcome, whither my wife accompanied Madame de Moncontour at that lady's own request, to whom Laura very properly did not think fit to confide her antipathy for Lady Clara Newcome. Coming away from a great house, how often she and I, egotistical philosophers, thanked our fates that our own home was a small one! How long will great houses last in this world? Do not their owners now prefer a lodging at Brighton, or a little entresol on the Boulevard, to the solitary ancestral palace in a park barred round with snow? We were as glad to get out of Newcome as out of a prison. My wife and our hostess skipped into the carriage, and began to talk freely as the lodge-gates closed after us. Would we be lords of such a place under the penalty of living in it? We agreed that the little angle of earth called Fairoaks was dearer to us than the clumsy Newcome-pile of Tudor masonry. The house had been fitted up in the time of George IV. and the quasi-Gothic revival. We were made to pa.s.s through Gothic dining-rooms, where there was now no hospitality,--Gothic drawing-rooms shrouded in brown hollands, to one little room at the end of the dusky suite, where Lady Clara sate alone, or in the company of the nurses and children. The blank gloom of the place had fallen upon the poor lady. Even when my wife talked about children (good-natured Madame de Moncontour vaunting ours as a prodigy) Lady Clara did not brighten up! Her pair of young ones was exhibited and withdrawn. A something weighed upon the woman. We talked about Ethel's marriage.

She said it was fixed for the new year, she believed. She did not know whether Glenlivat had been very handsomely fitted up. She had not seen Lord Farintosh's house in London. Sir Barnes came down once--twice--of a Sat.u.r.day sometimes, for three or four days to hunt, to amuse himself, as all men do she supposed. She did not know when he was coming again. She rang languidly when we rose to take leave, and sank back on her sofa, where lay a heap of French novels. "She has chosen some pretty books,"

says Paul, as we drove through the sombre avenues through the grey park, mists lying about the melancholy ornamental waters, dingy herds of huddled sheep speckling the gra.s.s here and there; no smoke rising up from the great stacks of chimneys of the building we were leaving behind us, save one little feeble thread of white which we knew came from the fire by which the lonely mistress of Newcome was seated. "Ouf!" cries Florac, playing his whip, as the lodge-gates closed on us, and his team of horses rattled merrily along the road, "what a blessing it is to be out of that vault of a place! There is something fatal in this house--in this woman. One smells misfortune there."

The hotel which our friend Florac patronised on occasion of his visits to Newcome was the King's Arms, and it happened, one day, as we entered that place of entertainment in company, that a visitor of the house was issuing through the hall, to whom Florac seemed as if he would administer one of his customary embraces, and to whom the Prince called out "Jack," with great warmth and kindness as he ran towards the stranger.

Jack did not appear to be particularly well pleased on beholding us; he rather retreated from before the Frenchman's advances.

"My dear Jack, my good, my brave Ighgate! I am delighted to see you!"

Florac continues, regardless of the stranger's reception, or of the landlord's looks towards us, who was bowing the Prince into his very best room.

"How do you do, Monsieur de Florac?" growls the new comer, surlily; and was for moving on after this brief salutation; but having a second thought seemingly, turned back and followed Florac into the apartment where our host conducted us. "A la bonne heure!" Florac renewed his cordial greetings to Lord Highgate. "I knew not, mon bon, what fly had stung you," says he to my lord. The landlord, rubbing his hands, smirking and bowing, was anxious to know whether the Prince would take anything after his drive. As the Prince's attendant and friend, the l.u.s.tre of his reception partially illuminated me. When the chief was not by, I was treated with great attention (mingled with a certain degree of familiarity) by my landlord.

Lord Highgate waited until Mr. Taplow was out of the room; and then said to Florac, "Don't call me by my name here, please, Florac, I am here incog."

"Plait-il?" asks Florac. "Where is incog.?" He laughed when the word was interpreted to him. Lord Highgate had turned to me. "There was no rudeness, you understand, intended, Mr. Pendennis, but I am down here on some business, and don't care to wear the handle to my name. Fellows work it so, don't you understand? never leave you at rest in a country town--that sort of thing. Heard of our friend Clive lately?"

"Whether you ave andle or no andle, Jack, you are always the bien venu to me. What is thy affair? Old monster! I wager----"

"No, no, no such nonsense," says Jack, rather eagerly. "I give you my honour, I--I want to--to raise a sum of money--that is, to invest some in a speculation down here--deuced good the speculations down here; and, by the way, if the landlord asks you, I'm Mr. Harris--I'm a civil engineer--I'm waiting for the arrival of the Canada at Liverpool from America, and very uneasy about my brother who is on board."

"What does he recount to us there? Keep these stories for the landlord, Jack; to us 'tis not the pain to lie. My good Mr. Harris, why have we not seen you at Rosebury? The Princess will scold me if you do not come; and you must bring your dear brother when he arrive too. Do you hear?"

The last part of this sentence was uttered for Mr. Taplow's benefit, who had re-entered the George bearing a tray of wine and biscuit.

The Master of Rosebury and Mr. Harris went out presently to look at a horse which was waiting the former's inspection in the stableyard of the hotel. The landlord took advantage of his business, to hear a bell which never was rung, and to ask me questions about the guest who had been staying at his house for a week past. Did I know that party? Mr.

Pendennis said, "Yes, he knew that party."

"Most respectable party, I have no doubt," continues Boniface. "Do you suppose the Prince of Moncontour knows any but respectable parties?"

asks Mr. Pendennis--a query of which the force was so great as to discomfit and silence our landlord, who retreated to ask questions concerning Mr. Harris of Florac's grooms.

What was Highgate's business here? Was it mine to know? I might have suspicions, but should I entertain them or communicate them, and had I not best keep them to myself? I exchanged not a word on the subject of Highgate with Florac, as we drove home: though from the way in which we looked at one another each saw that the other was acquainted with that unhappy gentleman's secret. We fell to talking about Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Ivry as we trotted on; and then of English manners by way of contrast, of intrigues, elopements, Gretna Grin, etc., etc. "You are a droll nation!" says Florac. "To make love well, you must absolutely have a chaise-de-poste, and a scandal afterwards. If our affairs of this kind made themselves on the grand route, what armies of postillions we should need!"

I held my peace. In that vision of Jack Belsize I saw misery, guilt, children dishonoured, homes deserted,--ruin for all the actors and victims of the wretched conspiracy. Laura marked my disturbance when we reached home. She even divined the cause of it, and charged me with it at night, when we sate alone by our dressing-room fire, and had taken leave of our kind entertainers. Then, under her cross-examination, I own that I told what I had seen--Lord Highgate, under a feigned name staying at Newcome. It might be nothing. "Nothing! Gracious heavens! Could not this crime and misery be stopped?" "It might be too late," Laura's husband said sadly, bending down his head into the fire.

She was silent too for a while. I could see she was engaged where pious women ever will betake themselves in moments of doubt, of grief, of pain, of separation, of joy even, or whatsoever other trial. They have but to will, and as it were an invisible temple rises round them; their hearts can kneel down there; and they have an audience of the great, the merciful untiring Counsellor and Consoler. She would not have been frightened at Death near at hand. I have known her to tend the poor round about us, or to bear pain--not her own merely, but even her children's and mine, with a surprising outward constancy and calm. But the idea of this crime being enacted close at hand, and no help for it--quite overcame her. I believe she lay awake all that night; and rose quite haggard and pale after the bitter thoughts which had deprived her of rest.

She embraced her own child with extraordinary tenderness that morning, and even wept over it, calling it by a thousand fond names of maternal endearment "Would I leave you, my darling--could I ever, ever, ever quit you, my blessing, and treasure!" The unconscious little thing, hugged to his mother's bosom, and scared at her tones and tragic face, clung frightened and weeping round Laura's neck. Would you ask what the husband's feelings were as he looked at that sweet love, that sublime tenderness, that pure Saint blessing the life of him unworthy? Of all the gifts of Heaven to us below, that felicity is the sum and the chief.

I tremble as I hold it lest I should lose it, and be left alone in the blank world without it: again, I feel humiliated to think that I possess it; as hastening home to a warm fireside and a plentiful table, I feel ashamed sometimes before the poor outcast beggar s.h.i.+vering in the street.

Breakfast was scarcely over when Laura asked for a pony carriage, and said she was bent on a private visit. She took her baby and nurse with her. She refused our company, and would not even say whither she was bound until she had pa.s.sed the lodge-gate. I may have suspected what the object was of her journey. Florac and I did not talk of it. We rode out to meet the hounds of a cheery winter morning: on another day I might have been amused with my host--the splendour of his raiment, the neatness of his velvet cap, the gloss of his hunting-boots; the cheers, shouts, salutations, to dog and man; the oaths and outcries of this Nimrod, who shouted louder than the whole field and the whole pack too--but on this morning--I was thinking of the tragedy yonder enacting, and came away early from the hunting-field, and found my wife already returned to Rosebury.

Laura had been, as I suspected, to Lady Clara. She did not know why, indeed. She scarce knew what she should say when she arrived--how she could say what she had in her mind. "I hoped, Arthur, that I should have something--something told me to say," whispered Laura, with her head on my shoulder; and as I lay awake last night thinking of her, prayed--that is, hoped, I might find a word of consolation for that poor lady. Do you know, I think she has hardly ever heard a kind word? She said so; she was very much affected after we had talked together a little.

"At first she was very indifferent; cold and haughty in her manner; asked what had caused the pleasure of this visit, for I would go in, though at the lodge they told me her ladys.h.i.+p was unwell, and they thought received no company. I said I wanted to show our boy to her--that the children ought to be acquainted--I don't know what I said.

She seemed more and more surprised--then all of a sudden--I don't know how--I said, 'Lady Clara, I have had a dream about you and your children, and I was so frightened that I came over to you to speak about it.' And I had the dream, Pen; it came to me absolutely as I was speaking to her.

"She looked a little scared, and I went on telling her the dream. 'My dear' I said, 'I dreamed that I saw you happy with those children.'

"'Happy!' says she--the three were playing in the conservatory into which her sitting-room opens.

"'And that a bad spirit came and tore them from you, and drove you out into the darkness; and I saw you wandering about quite lonely and wretched, and looking back into the garden where the children were playing. And you asked and implored to see them; and the Keeper at the gate said 'No, never.' And then--then I thought they pa.s.sed by you, and they did not know you.'

"'Ah!' said Lady Clara.

"'And then I thought, as we do in dreams, you know, that it was my child who was separated from me, and who would not know me: and oh, what a pang that was! Fancy that! Let us pray G.o.d it was only a dream. And worse than that, when you, when I implored to come to the child, and the man said, 'No, never,' I thought there came a spirit--an angel that fetched the child to heaven, and you said, 'Let me come too; oh, let me come too, I am so miserable.' And the angel said, 'No, never, never.'

"By this time Lady Clara was looking very pale. 'What do you mean?' she asked of me," Laura continued.

"'Oh, dear lady, for the sake of the little ones, and Him who calls them to Him, go you with them. Never, never part from them! Cling to His knees, and take shelter there.' I took her hands, and I said more to her in this way, Arthur, that I need not, that I ought not to speak again.

But she was touched at length when I kissed her; and she said I was very kind to her, and no one had ever been so, and that she was quite alone in the world and had no friend to fly to; and would I go and stay with her? and I said 'yes;' and we must go, my dear. I think you should see that person at Newcome--see him, and warn him," cried Laura, warming as she spoke, "and pray G.o.d to enlighten and strengthen him, and to keep him from this temptation, and implore him to leave this poor, weak, frightened, trembling creature; if he has the heart of a gentleman and the courage of a man, he will, I know he will."

"I think he would, my dearest," I said, "if he but heard the pet.i.tioner." Laura's cheeks were blus.h.i.+ng, her eyes brightened, her voice rang with a sweet pathos of love that vibrates through my whole being sometimes. It seems to me as if evil must give way, and bad thoughts retire before that purest creature.

"Why has she not some of her family with her, poor thing!" my wife continued. "She perishes in that solitude. Her husband prevents her, I think--and--oh--I know enough of him to know what his life is. I shudder, Arthur, to see you take the hand of that wicked, selfish man.

You must break with him, do you hear, sir?"

"Before or after going to stay at his house, my love?" asks Mr.

Pendennis.

"Poor thing! she lighted up at the idea of any one coming. She ran and showed me the rooms we were to have. It will be very stupid; and you don't like that. But you can write your book, and still hunt and shoot with our friends here. And Lady Anne Newcome must be made to come back again. Sir Barnes quarrelled with his mother and drove her out of the house on her last visit--think of that! The servants here know it.

Martha brought me the whole story from the housekeeper's room. This Sir Barnes Newcome is a dreadful creature, Arthur. I am so glad I loathed him from the very first moment I saw him."

"And into this ogre's den you propose to put me and my family, madam!"

says the husband. "Indeed, where won't I go if you order me? Oh, who will pack my portmanteau?"

Florac and the Princess were both in desolation when, at dinner, we announced our resolution to go away--and to our neighbours at Newcome!

that was more extraordinary. "Que diable goest thou to do in this galley?" asks our host as we sat alone over our wine.

But Laura's intended visit to Lady Clara was never to have a fulfilment, for on this same evening, as we sate at our dessert, comes a messenger from Newcome, with a note for my wife from the lady there:--