“What, George?” asked Warrington’s friend.
“Well, an ogling, leering, scheming, artful old campaigner,” grumbled the misogynist. “As for the little girl, I should like to have her to sing to me all night long. Depend upon it she would make a much better wife for Clive than that fashionable cousin of his he is hankering after. I heard him bellowing about her the other day in chambers, as I was dressing. What the deuce does the boy want with a wife at all?” And Rosey’s song being by this time finished, Warrington went up with a blushing face and absolutely paid a compliment to Miss Mackenzie—an almost unheard-of effort on George’s part.
“I wonder whether it is every young fellow’s lot,” quoth George, as we trudged home together, “to pawn his heart away to some girl that’s not worth the winning? Psha! it’s all mad rubbish this sentiment. The women ought not to be allowed to interfere with us: married if a man must be, a suitable wife should be portioned out to him, and there an end of it. Why doesn’t the young man marry this girl, and get back to his business and paint his pictures? Because his father wishes it—and the old Nabob yonder, who seems a kindly-disposed, easy-going, old heathen philosopher. Here’s a pretty little girl: money I suppose in sufficiency—everything satisfactory, except, I grant you, the campaigner. The lad might daub his canvases, christen a child a year, and be as happy as any young donkey that browses on this common of ours—but he must go and heehaw after a zebra forsooth! a lusus naturæ is she! I never spoke to a woman of fashion, thank my stars—I don’t know the nature of the beast; and since I went to our race-balls, as a boy, scarcely ever saw one; as I don’t frequent operas and parties in London like you young flunkeys of the aristocracy. I heard you talking about this one; I couldn’t help it, as my door was open and the young one was shouting like a madman. What! does he choose to hang on on sufferance and hope to be taken, provided Miss can get no better? Do you mean to say that is the genteel custom, and that women in your confounded society do such things every day? Rather than have such a creature I would take a savage woman, who should nurse my dusky brood; and rather than have a daughter brought up to the trade I would bring her down from the woods and sell her in Virginia.” With which burst of indignation our friend’s anger ended for that night.
Though Mr. Clive had the felicity to meet his cousin Ethel at a party or two in the ensuing weeks of the season, every time he perused the features of Lady Kew’s brass knocker in Queen Street, no result came of the visit. At one of their meetings in the world Ethel fairly told him that her grandmother would not receive him. “You know, Clive, I can’t help myself: nor would it be proper to make you signs out of the window. But you must call for all that: grandmamma may become more good-humoured: or if you don’t come she may suspect I told you not to come: and to battle with her day after day is no pleasure, sir, I assure you. Here is Lord Farintosh coming to take me to dance. You must not speak to me all the evening, mind that, sir,” and away goes the young lady in a waltz with the Marquis.
On the same evening—as he was biting his nails, or cursing his fate, or wishing to invite Lord Farintosh into the neighbouring garden of Berkeley Square, whence the policeman might carry to the station-house the corpse of the survivor,—Lady Kew would bow to him with perfect graciousness; on other nights her ladyship would pass and no more recognise him than the servant who opened the door.
If she was not to see him at her grandmother’s house, and was not particularly unhappy at his exclusion, why did Miss Newcome encourage Mr. Clive so that he should try and see her? If Clive could not get into the little house in Queen Street, why was Lord Farintosh’s enormous cab-horse looking daily into the first-floor windows of that street? Why were little quiet dinners made for him, before the opera, before going to the play, upon a half-dozen occasions, when some of the old old Kew port was brought out of the cellar, where cobwebs had gathered round it ere Farintosh was born? The dining-room was so tiny that not more than five people could sit at the little round table: that is, not more than Lady Kew and her granddaughter, Miss Crochet, the late vicar’s daughter, at Kewbury, one of the Miss Toadins, and Captain Walleye, or Tommy Henchman, Farintosh’s kinsman, and admirer, who were of no consequence, or old Fred Tiddler, whose wife was an invalid, and who was always ready at a moment’s notice? Crackthorpe once went to one of these dinners, but that young soldier being a frank and high-spirited youth, abused the entertainment and declined more of them. “I tell you what I was wanted for,” the Captain told his mess and Clive at the Regent’s Park barracks afterwards, “I was expected to go as Farintosh’s Groom of the Stole, don’t you know, to stand, or if I could sit, in the back seat of the box, whilst his Royal Highness made talk with the Beauty; to go out and fetch the carriage, and walk downstairs with that d—— crooked old dowager, that looks as if she usually rode on a broomstick, by Jove, or else with that bony old painted sheep-faced companion, who’s raddled like an old bell-wether. I think, Newcome, you seem rather hit by the Belle Cousine—so was I last season; so were ever so many of the fellows. By Jove, sir! there’s nothing I know more comfortable or inspiritin’ than a younger son’s position, when a marquis cuts in with fifteen thousand a year! We fancy we’ve been making running, and suddenly we find ourselves nowhere. Miss Mary, or Miss Lucy, or Miss Ethel, saving your presence, will no more look at us, than my dog will look at a bit of bread, when I offer her this cutlet. Will you—old woman! no, you old slut, that you won’t!” (to Mag, an Isle of Skye terrier, who, in fact, prefers the cutlet, having snuffed disdainfully at the bread)—“that you won’t, no more than any of your sex. Why, do you suppose, if Jack’s eldest brother had been dead—Barebones Belsize they used to call him (I don’t believe he was a bad fellow, though he was fond of psalm-singing)—do you suppose that Lady Clara would have looked at that cock-tail Barney Newcome? Beg your pardon, if he’s your cousin—but a more odious little snob I never saw.”
“I give you up Barnes,” said Clive, laughing; “anybody may shy at him and I shan’t interfere.”
“I understand, but at nobody else of the family. Well, what I mean is, that that old woman is enough to spoil any young girl she takes in hand. She dries ’em up, and poisons ’em, sir; and I was never more glad than when I heard that Kew had got out of her old clutches. Frank is a fellow that will always be led by some woman or another; and I’m only glad it should be a good one. They say his mother’s serious, and that; but why shouldn’t she bet?” continues honest Crackthorpe, puffing his cigar with great energy. “They say the old dowager doesn’t believe in God nor devil: but that she’s in such a funk to be left in the dark that she howls, and raises the doose’s own delight if her candle goes out. Toppleton slept next room to her at Groningham, and heard her; didn’t you, Top?”
“Heard her howling like an old cat on the tiles,” says Toppleton,—“thought she was at first. My man told me that she used to fling all sorts of things—boot-jacks and things, give you my honour—at her maid, and that the woman was all over black and blue.”
“Capital head that is Newcome has done of Jack Belsize!” says Crackthorpe, from out of his cigar.