Yes, but when things were so quiet and comfortable, when the ladies of the two families had met at the Congress of Baden, and liked each other so much, when Barnes and his papa the Baronet, recovered from his illness, were actually on their journey from Aix-la-Chapelle, and Lady Kew in motion from Kissingen to the Congress of Baden, why on earth should Jack Belsize, haggard, wild, having been winning great sums, it was said, at Hombourg, forsake his luck there, and run over frantically to Baden? He wore a great thick beard, a great slouched hat—he looked like nothing more or less than a painter or an Italian brigand. Unsuspecting Clive, remembering the jolly dinner which Jack had procured for him at the Guards’ mess in St. James’s, whither Jack himself came from the Horse Guards—simple Clive, seeing Jack enter the town, hailed him cordially, and invited him to dinner, and Jack accepted, and Clive told him all the news he had of the place; how Kew was there, and Lady Anne Newcome, and Ethel; and Barnes was coming. “I am not very fond of him either,” says Clive, smiling, when Belsize mentioned his name. So Barnes was coming to marry that pretty little Lady Clara Pulleyn. The knowing youth! I dare say he was rather pleased with his knowledge of the fashionable world, and the idea that Jack Belsize would think he, too, was somebody.
Jack drank an immense quantity of champagne, and the dinner over, as they could hear the band playing from Clive’s open windows in the snug clean little Hôtel de France, Jack proposed they should go on the promenade. M. de Florac was of the party; he had been exceedingly jocular when Lord Kew’s name was mentioned, and said, “Ce petit Kiou! M. le Duc d’Ivry, mon oncle, l’honore d’une amitié toute particulière.” These three gentlemen walked out; the promenade was crowded, the was band playing “Home, sweet Home” very sweetly, and the very first persons they met on the walk were the Lords of Kew and Dorking, on the arm of which latter venerable peer his daughter Lady Clara was hanging.
Jack Belsize, in a velvet coat, with a sombrero slouched over his face, with a beard reaching to his waist, was, no doubt, not recognised at first by the noble lord of Dorking, for he was greeting the other two gentlemen with his usual politeness and affability; when, of a sudden, Lady Clara looking up, gave a little shriek and fell down lifeless on the gravel walk. Then the old earl recognised Mr. Belsize, and Clive heard him say, “You villain, how dare you come here?”
Belsize had flung himself down to lift up Clara, calling her frantically by her name, when old Dorking sprang to seize him.
“Hands off, my lord,” said the other, shaking the old man from his back. “Confound you, Jack, hold your tongue,” roars out Kew. Clive runs for a chair, and a dozen were forthcoming. Florac skips back with a glass of water. Belsize runs towards the awakening girl: and the father, for an instant losing all patience and self-command, trembling in every limb, lifts his stick, and says again, “Leave her, you ruffian.” “Lady Clara has fainted again, sir,” says Captain Belsize. “I am staying at the Hôtel de France. If you touch me, old man” (this in a very low voice), “by Heaven I shall kill you. I wish you good morning;” and taking a last long look at the lifeless girl, he lifts his hat and walks away. Lord Dorking mechanically takes his hat off, and stands stupidly gazing after him. He beckoned Clive to follow him, and a crowd of the frequenters of the place are by this time closed round the fainting young lady.
Here was a pretty incident in the Congress of Baden!
CHAPTER XXIX.
In which Barnes comes a-wooing
Ethel had all along known that her holiday was to be a short one, and that, her papa and Barnes arrived, there was to be no more laughing and fun and sketching and walking with Clive; so she took the sunshine while it lasted, determined to bear with a stout heart the bad weather.
Sir Brian Newcome and his eldest born arrived at Baden on the very night of Jack Belsize’s performance upon the promenade; of course it was necessary to inform the young bridegroom of the facts. His acquaintances of the public, who by this time know his temper, and are acquainted with his language, can imagine the explosions of the one and the vehemence of the other; it was a perfect feu d’artifice of oaths which he sent up. Mr. Newcome only fired off these volleys of curses when he was in a passion, but then he was in a passion very frequently.
As for Lady Clara’s little accident, he was disposed to treat that very lightly. “Poor dear Clara, of course, of course,” he said, “she’s been accustomed to fainting fits; no wonder she was agitated on the sight of that villain, after his infernal treatment of her. If I had been there” (a volley of oaths comes here along the whole line) “I should have strangled the scoundrel; I should have murdered him.”