So he was back amongst us, and it seemed but yesterday he had quitted us. To Londoners everything seems to have happened but yesterday; nobody has time to miss his neighbour who goes away. People go to the Cape, or on a campaign, or on a tour round the world, or to India, and return with a wife and two or three children, and we fancy it was only the other day they left us, so engaged is every man in his individual speculations, studies, struggles; so selfish does our life make us:—selfish but not ill-natured. We are glad to see an old friend, though we do not weep when he leaves us. We humbly acknowledge, if fate calls us away likewise, that we are no more missed than any other atom.
After talking for a while, Mr. Clive must needs go into the City, whither I accompanied him. His interview with Messrs. Jolly and Baines, at the house in Fog Court, must have been very satisfactory; Clive came out of the parlour with a radiant countenance. “Do you want any money, old boy?” says he; “the dear old governor has placed a jolly sum to my account, and Mr. Baines has told me how delighted Mrs. Baines and the girls will be to see me at dinner. He says my father has made a lucky escape out of one house in India, and a famous investment in another. Nothing could be more civil; how uncommonly kind and friendly everybody is in London! Everybody!” Then bestowing ourselves in a hansom cab, which had probably just deposited some other capitalist in the City, we made for the West End of the town, where Mr. Clive had some important business to transact with his tailors. He discharged his outstanding little account with easy liberality, blushing as he pulled out of his pocket a new chequebook, page 1 of which he bestowed on the delighted artist. From Mr. B.’s shop to Mr. Truefitt’s, is but a step. Our young friend was induced to enter the hairdresser’s, and leave behind him a great portion of the flowing locks and the yellow beard, which he had brought with him from Rome. With his mustachios he could not be induced to part; painters and cavalry officers having a right to those decorations. And why should not this young fellow wear smart clothes, and a smart moustache, and look handsome, and take his pleasure, and bask in his sun when it shone? Time enough for flannel and a fire when the winter comes; and for grey hair and cork-soled boots in the natural decline of years.
Then we went to pay a visit at a hotel in Jermyn Street to our friend Florac who was now magnificently lodged there. A powdered giant lolling in the hall, his buttons emblazoned with prodigious coronets, took our cards up to the Prince. As the door of an apartment on the first floor opened, we heard a cry as of joy; and that nobleman in a magnificent Persian dressing-gown, rushing from the room, plunged down the stairs, and began kissing Clive, to the respectful astonishment of the Titan in livery.
“Come that I present you, my friends,” our good little Frenchman exclaimed “to Madame la—to my wife!” We entered the drawing-room; a demure little little lady, of near sixty years of age, was seated there, and we were presented in form to Madame Princesse de Moncontour, nee Higg, of Manchester. She made us a stiff little curtsey, but looked not ill-natured; indeed, few women could look at Clive Newcome’s gallant figure and brave smiling countenance and keep a frown on their own very long.
“I have ’eard of you from somebodys else besides the Prince,” said the lady, with rather a blush “Your uncle has spoke to me hoften about you, Mr. Clive, and about your good father.”
“C’est son Directeur,” whispers Florac to me. I wondered which of the firm of Newcome had taken that office upon him.
“Now you are come to England,” the lady continued (whose Lancashire pronunciation being once indicated, we shall henceforth, out of respect to the Princess’s rank generally pretermit),—“now you are come to England we hope to see you often. Not here in this noisy hotel, which I can’t bear, but in the country. Our house is only three miles from Newcome—not such a grand place as your uncle’s; but I hope we shall see you there a great deal, and your friend Mr Pendennis, if he is passing that way.” The invitation to Mr. Pendennis, I am bound to say, was given in terms by no means so warm as those in which the Princess’s hospitality to Clive were professed.
“Shall we meet you at your Huncle ’Obson’s?” the lady continued to Clive; “his wife is a most charming, well-informed woman, has been most kind and civil and we dine there to-day. Barnes and his wife is gone to spend the honeymoon at Newcome. Lady Clara is a sweet dear thing, and her pa and ma most affable, I am sure. What a pity Sir Brian couldn’t attend the marriage! There was everybody there in London, a’most. Sir Harvey Diggs says he is mending very slowly. In life we are in death, Mr. Newcome! Isn’t it sad to think of him, in the midst of all his splendour and prosperity, and he so infirm and unable to enjoy them! But let us hope for the best, and that his health will soon come round!”
With these and similar remarks, in which poor Florac took but a very small share (for he seemed dumb and melancholy in the company of the Princess, his elderly spouse), the visit sped on. Mr. Pendennis, to whom very little was said, having leisure to make his silent observations upon the person to whom he had been just presented.
As there lay on the table two neat little packages, addressed “The Princess de Moncontour”—an envelope to the same address, with “The Prescription, No. 9396,” further inscribed on the paper, and a sheet of notepaper, bearing cabalistic characters, and the signature of that most fashionable physician, Sir Harvey Diggs, I was led to believe that the lady of Moncontour was, or fancied herself, in a delicate state of health. By the side of the physic for the body was medicine for the soul—a number of pretty little books in middle-age bindings, in antique type many of theist, adorned with pictures of the German school, representing demure ecclesiastics, with their heads on one side, children in long starched nightgowns, virgins bearing lilies, and so forth, from which it was to be concluded that the owner of the volumes was not so hostile to Rome as she had been at an earlier period of her religious life; and that she had migrated (in spirit) from Clapham to Knightsbridge—so many wealthy mercantile families have likewise done in the body. A long strip of embroidery, of the Gothic pattern, furthermore betrayed her present inclinations; and the person observing these things, whilst nobody was taking any notice of him, was amused when the accuracy of his conjectures was confirmed by the reappearance of the gigantic footman, calling out “’Oneyman,” in a loud voice, and preceding that divine into the room.