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 nobility 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 lordship 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 noble 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 lordship 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 passing 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 circumstance, 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
blushing 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 petit 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 circumstance; 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 nobleman--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
shilling 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 title 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.
This was the sentence Thomas Newcome delivered: a righteous and
tender-hearted man, as we know, but judging in this case wrongly, and
bearing much too hardly, as we who know her betters must think, upon one
who had her faults certainly, but whose errors were not all of her own
making. Who set her on the path she walked in? It was her parents' hands
which led her, and her parents' voices which commanded her to accept the
temptation set before her. What did she know of the character of the man
selected to be her husband? Those who should have known better brought
him to her, and vouched for him. Noble, unhappy young creature! are you
the first of your sisterhood who has been bidden to traffic your beauty,
to crush and slay your honest natural affections, to sell your truth and
your life for rank and title? But the Judge who sees not the outward acts
merely, but their causes, and views not the wrong alone, but the
temptations, struggles, ignorance of erring creatures, we know has a
different code to ours--to ours, who fall upon the fallen, who fawn upon
the prosperous so, who administer our praises and punishments so
prematurely, who now strike so hard, and, anon, spare so shamelessly.
Our stay with our hospitable friends at Rosebury was perforce coming to a
close, for indeed weeks after weeks had passed since we had been under
their pleasant roof; and in spite of dearest Ethel's remonstrances it was
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