when you sing so wonderfully, so beautifully, yourself? Do not leave the
piano, please--do sing again!" And she puts out a kind little hand
towards the superior artist, and, blushing, leads her back to the
instrument. "I'm sure me and Emily will sing for you as much as you like,
dear," says Mrs. Sherrick, nodding to Rosey good-naturedly. Mrs.
Mackenzie, who has been biting her lips and drumming the time on a
side-table, forgets at last the pain of being vanquished in admiration of
the conquerors. "It was cruel of you not to tell us, Mr. Honeyman," she
says, "of the--of the treat you had in store for us. I had no idea we
were going to meet professional people; Mrs. Sherrick's singing is indeed
beautiful."
"If you come up to our place in the Regent's Park, Mr. Newcome," Mr.
Sherrick says, "Mrs. S. and Emily will give you as many songs as you
like. How do you like the house in Fitzroy Square? Anything wanting doing
there? I'm a good landlord to a good tenant. Don't care what I spend on
my houses. Lose by 'em sometimes. Name a day when you'll come to us; and
I'll ask some good fellows to meet you. Your father and Mr. Binnie came
once. That was when you were a young chap. They didn't have a bad
evening, I believe. You just come and try us--I can give you as good a
glass of wine as most, I think," and he smiles, perhaps thinking of the
champagne which Mr. Warrington had slighted. "I've ad the close carriage
for my wife this evening," he continues, looking out of window at a very
handsome brougham which has just drawn up there. "That little pair of
horses steps prettily together, don't they? Fond of horses? I know you
are. See you in the Park; and going by our house sometimes. The Colonel
sits a horse uncommonly well: so do you, Mr. Newcome. I've often said,
'Why don't they get off their horses and say, Sherrick, we're come for a
bit of lunch and a glass of Sherry?' Name a day, sir. Mr. P., will you be
in it?"
Clive Newcome named a day, and told his father of the circumstance in the
evening. The Colonel looked grave. "There was something which I did not
quite like about Mr. Sherrick," said that acute observer of human nature.
"It was easy to see that the man is not quite a gentleman. I don't care
what a man's trade is, Clive. Indeed, who are we, to give ourselves airs
upon that subject? But when I am gone, my boy, and there is nobody near
you who knows the world as I do, you may fall into designing hands, and
rogues may lead you into mischief: keep a sharp look-out, Clive. Mr.
Pendennis, here, knows that there are designing fellows abroad" (and the
dear old gentleman gives a very knowing nod as he speaks). "When I am
gone, keep the lad from harm's way, Pendennis. Meanwhile Mr. Sherrick has
been a very good and obliging landlord; and a man who sells wine may
certainly give a friend a bottle. I am glad you had a pleasant evening,
boys. Ladies, I hope you have had a pleasant afternoon. Miss Rosey, you
are come back to make tea for the old gentlemen? James begins to get
about briskly now. He walked to Hanover Square, Mrs. Mackenzie, without
hurting his ankle in the least."
"I am almost sorry that he is getting well," says Mrs. Mackenzie
sincerely. "He won't want us when he is quite cured."
"Indeed, my dear creature!" cries the Colonel, taking her pretty hand and
kissing it; "he will want you, and he shall want you. James no more knows
the world than Miss Rosey here; and if I had not been with him, would
have been perfectly unable to take care of himself. When I am gone to
India, somebody must stay with him; and--and my boy must have a home to
go to," says the kind soldier, his voice dropping. "I had been in hopes
that his own relatives would have received him more, but never mind about
that," he cried more cheerfully. "Why, I may not be absent a year! I
perhaps need not go at all--I am second for promotion. A couple of our
old generals may drop any day; and when I get my regiment I come back to
stay, to live at home. Meantime, whilst I am gone, my dear lady, you will
take care of James; and you will be kind to my boy."
"That I will!" said the widow, radiant with pleasure, and she took one of
Clive's hands and pressed it for an instant; and from Clive's father's
kind face there beamed out that benediction which always made his
countenance appear to me among the most beautiful of human faces.
CHAPTER XXIV
In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity
His narrative, as the judicious reader no doubt is aware, is written
maturely and at ease, long after the voyage is over, whereof it recounts
the adventures and perils; the winds adverse and favourable; the storms,
shoals, shipwrecks, islands, and so forth, which Clive Newcome met in his
early journey in life. In such a history events follow each other without
necessarily having a connection with one another. One ship crosses
another ship, and after a visit from one captain to his comrade, they
sail away each on his course. The Clive Newcome meets a vessel which
makes signals that she is short of bread and water; and after supplying
her, our captain leaves her to see her no more. One or two of the vessels
with which we commenced the voyage together, part company in a gale, and
founder miserably; others, after being wofully battered in the tempest,
make port, or are cast upon surprising islands where all sorts of
unlooked-for prosperity awaits the lucky crew. Also, no doubt, the writer
of the book, into whose hands Clive Newcome's logs have been put, and who
is charged with the duty of making two octavo volumes out of his friend's
story, dresses up the narrative in his own way; utters his own remarks in
place of Newcome's; makes fanciful descriptions of individuals and
incidents with which he never could have been personally acquainted; and
commits blunders, which the critics will discover. A great number of the
descriptions in Cook's Voyages, for instance, were notoriously invented
by Dr. Hawkesworth, who "did" the book: so in the present volumes, where
dialogues are written down, which the reporter could by no possibility
have heard, and where motives are detected which the persons actuated by
them certainly never confided to the writer, the public must once for all
be warned that the author's individual fancy very likely supplies much of
the narrative; and that he forms it as best he may, out of stray papers,
conversations reported to him, and his knowledge, right or wrong, of the
characters of the persons engaged. And, as is the case with the most
orthodox histories, the writer's own guesses or conjectures are printed
in exactly the same type as the most ascertained patent facts. I fancy,
for my part, that the speeches attributed to Clive, the Colonel, and the
rest, are as authentic as the orations in Sallust or Livy, and only
implore the truth-loving public to believe that incidents here told, and
which passed very probably without witnesses, were either confided to me
subsequently as compiler of this biography, or are of such a nature that
they must have happened from what
we know happened after. For example,
when you read such words as QVE ROMANVS on a battered Roman stone, your
profound antiquarian knowledge enables you to assert that SENATVS POPVLVS
was also inscribed there at some time or other. You take a mutilated
statue of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, or Virorum, and you pop him on a wanting
hand, an absent foot, or a nose which time or barbarians have defaced.
You tell your tales as you can, and state the facts as you think they
must have been. In this manner, Mr. James (historiographer to Her
Majesty), Titus Livius, Professor Alison, Robinson Crusoe, and all
historians proceeded. Blunders there must be in the best of these
narratives, and more asserted than they can possibly know or vouch for.
To recur to our own affairs, and the subject at present in hand, I am
obliged here to supply from conjecture a few points of the history, which
I could not know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us say, is
Romanus, and we must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription. After
Mrs. Mackenzie and her pretty daughter had been for a few months in
London, which they did not think of quitting, although Mr. Binnie's
wounded little leg was now as well and as brisk as ever it had been, a
redintegration of love began to take place between the Colonel and his
relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that there had ever been a
quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was not a man to talk
at length of any such matter; though a word or two occasionally dropped
in conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons who chose to
interest themselves about his family affairs to form their own opinions
concerning them. After that visit of the Colonel and his son to Newcome,
Ethel was constantly away with her grandmother. The Colonel went to see
his pretty little favourite at Brighton, and once, twice, thrice, Lady
Kew's door was denied to him. The knocker of that door could not be more
fierce than the old lady's countenance, when Newcome met her in her
chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the loveliest of a charming
Amazonian squadron, led by Mr. Whiskin, the riding-master, when the
Colonel encountered his pretty Ethel, she greeted him affectionately, it
is true; there was still the sweet look of candour and love in her eyes;
but when he rode up to her she looked so constrained, when he talked
about Clive, so reserved, when he left her, so sad, that he could not but
feel pain and commiseration. Back he went to London, having in a week
only caught this single glance of his darling.
This event occurred while Clive was painting his picture of the "Battle
of Assaye" before mentioned, during the struggles incident on which
composition he was not thinking much about Miss Ethel, or his papa, or
any other subject but his great work. Whilst Assaye was still in
progress, Thomas Newcome must have had an explanation with his
sister-in-law, Lady Anne, to whom he frankly owned the hopes which he had
entertained for Clive, and who must as frankly have told the Colonel that
Ethel's family had very different views for that young lady to those
which the simple Colonel had formed. A generous early attachment, the
Colonel thought, is the safeguard of a young man. To love a noble girl;
to wait a while and struggle, and haply do some little achievement in
order to win her; the best task to which his boy could set himself. If
two young people so loving each other were to marry on rather narrow
means, what then? A happy home was better than the finest house in
Mayfair; a generous young fellow, such as, please God, his son was--
loyal, upright, and a gentleman--might pretend surely to his kinswoman's
hand without derogation; and the affection he bore Ethel himself was so
great, and the sweet regard with which she returned it, that the simple
father thought his kindly project was favoured by Heaven, and prayed for
its fulfilment, and pleased himself to think, when his campaigns were
over, and his sword hung on the wall, what a beloved daughter he might
have to soothe and cheer his old age. With such a wife for his son, and
child for himself, he thought the happiness of his last years might repay
him for friendless boyhood, lonely manhood, and cheerless exile; and he
imparted his simple scheme to Ethel's mother, who no doubt was touched as
he told his story; for she always professed regard and respect for him,
and in the differences which afterwards occurred in the family, and the
quarrels which divided the brothers, still remained faithful to the good
Colonel.
But Barnes Newcome, Esquire, was the bead of the house, and the governor
of his father and all Sir Brian's affairs; and Barnes Newcome, Esquire,
hated his cousin Clive, and spoke of him as a beggarly painter, an
impudent snob, an infernal young puppy, and so forth; and Barnes with his
usual freedom of language imparted his opinions to his Uncle Hobson at
the bank, and Uncle Hobson carried them home to Mrs. Newcome in
Bryanstone Square; and Mrs. Newcome took an early opportunity of telling
the Colonel her opinion on the subject, and of bewailing that love for
aristocracy which she saw actuated some folks; and the Colonel was
brought to see that Barnes was his boy's enemy, and words very likely
passed between them, for Thomas Newcome took a new banker at this time,
and, as Clive informed me, was in very great dudgeon because Hobson
Brothers wrote to him to say that he had overdrawn his account. "I am
sure there is some screw loose," the sagacious youth remarked to me; "and
the Colonel and the people in Park Lane are at variance, because he goes
there very little now; and he promised to go to Court when Ethel was
presented, and he didn't go."
Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie's niece and sister in Fitzroy
Square, the fraternal quarrel between the Newcomes must have come to an
end--for that time at least--and was followed by a rather ostentatious
reconciliation. And pretty little Rosey Mackenzie was the innocent and
unconscious cause of this amiable change in the minds of the three
brethren, as I gathered from a little conversation with Mrs. Newcome, who
did me the honour to invite me to her table. As she had not vouchsafed
this hospitality to me for a couple of years previously, and perfectly
stifled me with affability when we met,--as her invitation came quite at
the end of the season, when almost everybody was out of town, and a
dinner to a man is no compliment,--I was at first for declining this
invitation, and spoke of it with great scorn when Mr. Newcome orally
delivered it to me at Bays's Club.
"What," said I, turning round to an old man of the world, who happened to
be in the room at the time, "what do these people mean by asking a fellow
to dinner in August, and taking me up after dropping me for two years?"
"My good fellow," says my friend--it was my kind old Uncle Major
Pendennis, indeed--"I have lived long enough about town never to ask
myself questions of that sort. In the world people drop you and take you
up every day. You know Lady Chedd
ar by sight? I have known her husband
for forty years: I have stayed with them in the country, for weeks at a
time. She knows me as well as she knows King Charles at Charing Cross,
and a doosid deal better, and yet for a whole season she will drop me--
pass me by, as if there was no such person in the world. Well, sir, what
do I do? I never see her. I give you my word I am never conscious of her
existence; and if I meet her at dinner, I'm no more aware of her than the
fellows in the play are of Banquo. What's the end of it? She comes round
--only last Toosday she came round--and said Lord Cheddar wanted me to go
down to Wiltshire. I asked after the family (you know Henry Churningham
is engaged to Miss Rennet?--a doosid good match for the Cheddars). We
shook hands and are as good friends as ever. I don't suppose she'll cry
when I die, you know," said the worthy old gentleman with a grin. "Nor
shall I go into very deep mourning if anything happens to her. You were
quite right to say to Newcome that you did not know whether you were free
or not, and would look at your engagements when you got home, and give
him an answer. A fellow of that rank has no right to give himself airs.
But they will, sir. Some of those bankers are as high and mighty as the
oldest families. They marry noblemen's daughters, by Jove, and think
nothing is too good for 'em. But I should go, if I were you, Arthur. I
dined there a couple of months ago; and the bankeress said something
about you: that you and her nephew were much together, that you were sad
wild dogs, I think--something of that sort. 'Gad, ma'am,' says I, 'boys
will be boys.' 'And they grow to be men!' says she, nodding her head.
Queer little woman, devilish pompous. Dinner confoundedly long, stoopid,
scientific."
The old gentleman was on this day inclined to be talkative and
confidential, and I set down some more remarks which he made concerning
my friends. "Your Indian Colonel," says he, "seems a worthy man." The
Major quite forgot having been in India himself, unless he was in company
with some very great personage. "He don't seem to know much of the world,
and we are not very intimate. Fitzroy Square is a dev'lish long way off
for a fellow to go for a dinner, and entre nous, the dinner is rather
queer and the company still more so. It's right for you who are a
literary man to see all sorts of people; but I'm different, you know, so
Newcome and I are not very thick together. They say he wanted to marry
your friend to Lady Anne's daughter, an exceedingly fine girl; one of the
prettiest girls come out this season. I hear the young men say so. 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. Mark my words, they intend Miss Newcome for Lord Kew. Those
banker fellows are wild after grand marriages. Kew will sow his wild
oats, and they'll marry her to him; or if not to him, to some man of high
rank. His father Walham was a weak young man; but his grandmother, old
Lady Kew, is a monstrous clever old woman, too severe with her children,
one of whom ran away and married a poor devil without a shilling. 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
dooce 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." And the worthy Major gives his nephew two fingers,
and trots off to the next club in St. James's Street, of which he is a
member.
The virtuous hostess of Bryanstone Square was quite civil and
good-humoured when Mr. Pendennis appeared at her house; and my surprise
was not inconsiderable when I found the whole party from Saint Pancras
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