I confess that a dinner at the Colonel’s, now he appeared in all his magnificence, was awfully slow. No peaches could look fresher than Rosey’s cheeks,—no damask was fairer than her pretty little shoulders. No one, I am sure, could be happier than she, but she did not impart her happiness to her friends; and replied chiefly by smiles to the conversation of the gentlemen at her side. It is true that these were for the most part elderly dignitaries, distinguished military officers with blue-black whiskers, retired old Indian judges, and the like, occupied with their victuals, and generally careless to please. But that solemn happiness of the Colonel, who shall depict it:—that look of affection with which he greeted his daughter as she entered, flounced to the waist, twinkling with innumerable jewels, holding a dainty pocket-handkerchief, with smiling eyes, dimpled cheeks, and golden ringlets! He would take her hand, or follow her about from group to group, exchanging precious observations about the weather, the Park, the exhibition, nay, the opera, for the old man actually went to the opera with his little girl, and solemnly snoozed by her side in a white waistcoat.
Very likely this was the happiest period of Thomas Newcome’s life. No woman (save one perhaps fifty years ago) had ever seemed so fond of him as that little girl. What pride he had in her, and what care he took of her! If she was a little ailing, what anxiety and hurrying for doctors! What droll letters came from James Binnie, and how they laughed over them: with what respectful attention he acquainted Mrs. Mack with everything that took place: with what enthusiasm that Campaigner replied! Josey’s husband called a special blessing upon his head in the church at Musselburgh; and little Jo herself sent a tinful of Scotch bun to her darling sister, with a request from her husband that he might have a few shares in the famous Indian Company.
The Company was in a highly flourishing condition, as you may suppose, when one of its directors, who at the same time was one of the honestest men alive, thought it was his duty to live in the splendour in which we now behold him. Many wealthy City men did homage to him. His brother Hobson, though the Colonel had quarrelled with the chief of the firm, yet remained on amiable terms with Thomas Newcome, and shared and returned his banquets for a while. Charles Honeyman we may be sure was present at many of them, and smirked a blessing over the plenteous meal. The Colonel’s influence was such with Mr. Sherrick that he pleaded Charles’s cause with that gentleman, and actually brought to a successful termination that little love-affair in which we have seen Miss Sherrick and Charles engaged. Mr. Sherrick was not disposed to part with much money during his lifetime—indeed, he proved to Colonel Newcome that he was not so rich as the world supposed him. But, by the Colonel’s interest, the chaplaincy of Boggley Wollah was procured for the Rev. C. Honeyman, who now forms the delight of that flourishing station.
All this while we have said little about Clive, who in truth was somehow in the background in this flourishing Newcome group. To please the best father in the world; the kindest old friend who endowed his niece with the best part of his savings; to settle that question about marriage and have an end of it;—Clive Newcome had taken a pretty and fond young girl, who respected and admired him beyond all men, and who heartily desired to make him happy. To do as much would not his father have stripped his coat from his back,—have put his head under Juggernaut’s chariot-wheel, have sacrificed any ease, comfort, or pleasure for the youngster’s benefit? One great passion he had had and closed the account of it: a worldly ambitious girl—how foolishly worshipped and passionately beloved no matter—had played with him for years; had flung him away when a dissolute suitor with a great fortune and title had offered himself. Was he to whine and despair because a jilt had fooled him? He had too much pride and courage for any such submission; he would accept the lot in life which was offered to him, no undesirable one surely; he would fulfil the wish of his father’s heart, and cheer his kind declining years. In this way the marriage was brought about. It was but a whisper to Rosey in the drawing-room, a start and a blush from the little girl as he took the little willing hand, a kiss for her from her delighted old father-in-law, a twinkle in good old James’s eyes, and double embrace from the Campaigner as she stood over them in a benedictory attitude;—expressing her surprise at an event for which she had been jockeying ever since she set eyes on young Newcome; and calling upon Heaven to bless her children. So, as a good thing when it is to be done had best be done quickly, these worthy folks went off almost straightway to a clergyman, and were married out of hand—to the astonishment of Captains Hoby and Goby when they came to hear of the event. Well, my gallant young painter and friend of my boyhood! if my wife chooses to be angry at your marriage, shall her husband not wish you happy?
Suppose we had married our first loves, others of us, were we the happier now? Ask Mr. Pendennis, who sulked in his tents when his Costigan, his Briseis, was ravished from him. Ask poor George Warrington, who had his own way, Heaven help him! There was no need why Clive should turn monk because number one refused him; and, that charmer removed, why he should not take to his heart number two. I am bound to say, that when I expressed these opinions to Mrs. Laura, she was more angry and provoked than ever.
It is in the nature of such a simple soul as Thomas Newcome, to see but one side of a question, and having once fixed Ethel’s worldliness in his mind, and her brother’s treason, to allow no argument of advocates of the other side to shake his displeasure. Hence the one or two appeals which Laura ventured to make on behalf of her friend, were checked by the good Colonel with a stern negation. If Ethel was not guiltless, she could not make him see at least that she was not guilty. He dashed away all excuses and palliations. Exasperated as he was, he persisted in regarding the poor girl’s conduct in its most unfavourable light. “She was rejected, and deservedly rejected, by the Marquis of Farintosh,” he broke out to me once, who was not indeed authorised to tell all I knew regarding the story; “the whole town knows it; all the clubs ring with it. I blush, sir, to think that my brother’s child should have brought such a stain upon our name.” In vain, I told him that my wife, who knew all the circumstances much better, judged Miss Newcome far more favourably, and indeed greatly esteemed and loved her. “Pshaw! sir,” breaks out the indignant Colonel, “your wife is an innocent creature, who does not know the world as we men of experience do,—as I do, sir;” and would have no more of the discussion. There is no doubt about it, there was a coolness between my old friend’s father and us.
As for Barnes Newcome, we gave up that worthy, and the Colonel showed him no mercy. He recalled words used by Warrington, which I have recorded in a former page, and vowed that he only watched for an opportunity to crush the miserable reptile. He hated Barnes as a loathsome traitor, coward, and criminal; he made no secret of his opinion; and Clive, with the remembrance of former injuries, of dreadful heart-pangs; the inheritor of his father’s blood, his honesty of nature, and his impetuous enmity against wrong; shared to the full his sire’s antipathy against his cousin, and publicly expressed his scorn and contempt for him. About Ethel he would not speak. “Perhaps what you say, Pen, is true,” he said. “I hope it is. Pray God it is.” But his quivering lips and fierce countenance, when her name was mentioned or her defence attempted, showed that he too had come to think ill of her. “As for her brother, as for that scoundrel,” he would say, clenching his fist, “if ever I can punish him I will. I shouldn’t have the soul of a dog, if ever I forgot the wrongs that have been done me by that vagabond. Forgiveness? Pshaw! Are you dangling to sermons, Pen, at your wife’s leading-strings? Are you preaching that cant? There are some injuries that no honest man should forgive, and I shall be a rogue on the day I shake hands with that villain.”
“Clive has adopted the Iroquois ethics,” says George Warrington, smoking his pipe sententiously, “rather than those which are at present received among us. I am not sure that something is not to be said, as against the Eastern, upon the Western, or Tomahawk, or Ojibbeway side of the question. I should not like,” he added, “to be in a vendetta or feud, and to have you, Clive, and the old Colonel engaged against me.”
“I would rather,” I said, “for my part, have half a dozen such enemies as Clive and the Colonel, than one like Barnes. You never know where or when that villain may hit you.” And before a very short period was over, Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., hit his two hostile kinsmen such a blow, as one might expect from such a quarter.