“Clive does not go to sleep after dinner when Mr. Ridley comes here,” cries Rosa.
“No; I think it is my turn then,” says the Colonel, with a glance of kindness. The anger has disappeared from under his brows; at that moment the menaced battle is postponed.
“And yet I know that it must come,” says poor Clive, telling me the story as he hangs on my arm, and we pace through the Park. “The Colonel and I are walking on a mine, and that poor little wife of mine is perpetually flinging little shells to fire it. I sometimes wish it were blown up, and I were done for, Pen. I don’t think my widow would break her heart about me. No; I have no right to say that; it’s a shame to say that; she tries her very best to please me, poor little dear. It’s the fault of my temper, perhaps, that she can’t. But they neither understand me, don’t you see? the Colonel can’t help thinking I am a degraded being, because I am fond of painting. Still, dear old boy, he patronises Ridley; a man of genius, whom those sentries ought to salute, by Jove, sir, when he passes. Ridley patronised by an old officer of Indian dragoons, a little bit of a Rosey, and a fellow who is not fit to lay his palette for him! I want sometimes to ask J. J.’s pardon, after the Colonel has been talking to him in his confounded condescending way, uttering some awful bosh about the fine arts. Rosey follows him, and trips round J. J.’s studio, and pretends to admire, and says, ‘How soft; how sweet!’ recalling some of mamma-in-law’s dreadful expressions, which make me shudder when I hear them. If my poor old father had a confidant into whose arm he could hook his own, and whom he could pester with his family griefs as I do you, the dear old boy would have his dreary story to tell too. I hate banks, bankers, Bundelcund, indigo, cotton, and the whole business. I go to that confounded board, and never hear one syllable that the fellows are talking about. I sit there because he wishes me to sit there; don’t you think he sees that my heart is out of the business; that I would rather be at home in my painting-room? We don’t understand each other, but we feel each other, as it were by instinct. Each thinks in his own way, but knows what the other is thinking. We fight mute battles, don’t you see, and, our thoughts, though we don’t express them, are perceptible to one another, and come out from our eyes, or pass out from us somehow, and meet, and fight, and strike, and wound.”
Of course Clive’s confidant saw how sore and unhappy the poor fellow was, and commiserated his fatal but natural condition. The little ills of life are the hardest to bear, as we all very well know. What would the possession of a hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the applause of one’s countrymen, or the loveliest and best-beloved woman,—of any glory, and happiness, or good-fortune avail to a gentleman, for instance, who was allowed to enjoy them only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple of nails or sharp pebbles inside it? All fame and happiness would disappear, and plunge down that shoe. All life would rankle round those little nails. I strove, by such philosophic sedatives as confidants are wont to apply on these occasions, to soothe my poor friend’s anger and pain; and I dare say the little nails hurt the patient just as much as before.
Clive pursued his lugubrious talk through the Park, and continued it as far as the modest-furnished house which we then occupied in the Pimlico region. It so happened that the Colonel and Mrs. Clive also called upon us that day, and found this culprit in Laura’s drawing-room, when they entered it, descending out of that splendid barouche in which we have already shown Mrs. Clive to the public.
“He has not been here for months before; nor have you Rosa; nor have you, Colonel; though we have smothered our indignation, and been to dine with you, and to call, ever so many times!” cries Laura.
The Colonel pleaded his business engagements; Rosa, that little woman of the world, had a thousand calls to make, and who knows how much to do? since she came out. She had been to fetch papa, at Bays’s, and the porter had told the Colonel that Mr. Clive and Mr. Pendennis had just left the club together.
“Clive scarcely ever drives with me,” says Rosa; “papa almost always does.”
“Rosey’s is such a swell carriage, that I feel ashamed,” says Clive.
“I don’t understand you young men. I don’t see why you need be ashamed to go on the Course with your wife in her carriage, Clive,” remarks the Colonel.