“Quite time!” said the severe possessor of the eagle beak. “Baden is a bad place for young men. They make acquaintances here of which very little good can come. They frequent the gambling-tables, and live with the most disreputable French Viscounts. We have heard of your goings-on, sir. It is a great pity that Colonel Newcome did not take you with him to India.”
“My dear mamma,” cries Lady Anne, “I am sure Clive has been a very good boy indeed.” The old lady’s morality put a stop to Clive’s pathetic mood, and he replied with a great deal of spirit, “Dear Lady Anne, you have been always very good, and kindness is nothing surprising from you; but Lady Kew’s advice, which I should not have ventured to ask, is an unexpected favour; my father knows the extent of the gambling transactions to which your ladyship was pleased to allude, and introduced me to the gentleman whose acquaintance you don’t seem to think eligible.”
“My good young man, I think it is time you were off,” Lady Kew said, this time with great good-humour; she liked Clive’s spirit, and as long as he interfered with none of her plans, was quite disposed to be friendly with him. “Go to Rome, go to Florence, go wherever you like, and study very hard, and make very good pictures, and come back again, and we shall all be very glad to see you. You have very great talents—these sketches are really capital.”
“Is not he very clever, mamma?” said kind Lady Anne, eagerly. Clive felt the pathetic mood coming on again, and an immense desire to hug Lady Anne in his arms, and to kiss her. How grateful are we—how touched a frank and generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful interview with the surgeon.
That cool old operator, who had taken Mr. Clive’s case in hand, now produced her shining knife, and executed the first cut with perfect neatness and precision. “We are come here, as I suppose you know, Mr. Newcome, upon family matters, and I frankly tell you that I think, for your own sake, you would be much better away. I wrote my daughter a great scolding when I heard that you were in this place.”
“But it was by the merest chance, mamma, indeed it was,” cries Lady Anne.
“Of course, by the merest chance, and by the merest chance I heard of it too. A little bird came and told me at Kissingen. You have no more sense, Anne, than a goose. I have told you so a hundred times. Lady Anne requested you to stay, and I, my good young friend, request you to go away.”
“I needed no request,” said Clive. “My going, Lady Kew, is my own act. I was going without requiring any guide to show me to the door.”
“No doubt you were, and my arrival is the signal for Mr. Newcome’s bon jour. I am Bogey, and I frighten everybody away. By the scene which you witnessed yesterday, my good young friend, and all that painful esclandre on the promenade, you must see how absurd, and dangerous, and wicked—yes, wicked it is for parents to allow intimacies to spring up between young people, which can only lead to disgrace and unhappiness. Lady Dorking was another good-natured goose. I had not arrived yesterday ten minutes, when my maid came running in to tell me of what had occurred on the promenade; and, tired as I was, I went that instant to Jane Dorking and passed the evening with her, and that poor little creature to whom Captain Belsize behaved so cruelly. She does not care a fig for him—not one fig. Her childish inclination is passed away these two years, whilst Mr. Jack was performing his feats in prison; and if the wretch flatters himself that it was on his account she was agitated yesterday, he is perfectly mistaken, and you may tell him Lady Kew said so. She is subject to fainting fits. Dr. Finck has been attending her ever since she has been here. She fainted only last Tuesday at the sight of a rat walking about their lodgings (they have dreadful lodgings, the Dorkings), and no wonder she was frightened at the sight of that great coarse tipsy wretch! She is engaged, as you know, to your connexion, my grandson, Barnes:—in all respects a most eligible union. The rank of life of the parties suits them to one another. She is a good young woman, and Barnes has experienced from persons of another sort such horrors, that he will know the blessing of domestic virtue. It was high time he should. I say all this in perfect frankness to you.
“Go back again and play in the garden, little brats” (this to the innocents who came frisking in from the lawn in front of the windows). “You have been? And Barnes sent you in here? Go up to Miss Quigley. No, stop. Go and tell Ethel to come down; bring her down with you. Do you understand?”