“The Course! the Course is at Calcutta, papa!” cries Rosey. “We drive in the Park.”
“We have a park at Barrackpore too, my dear,” says papa.
“And he calls his grooms saices! He said he was going to send away a saice for being tipsy, and I did not know in the least what he could mean, Laura!”
“Mr. Newcome! you must go and drive on the Course with Rosa now; and the Colonel must sit and talk with me, whom he has not been to see for such a long time.” Clive presently went off in state by Rosey’s side, and then Laura showed Colonel Newcome his beautiful white Cashmere shawl round a successor of that little person who had first been wrapped in that web, now a stout young gentleman whose noise could be clearly heard in the upper regions.
“I wish you could come down with us, Arthur, upon our electioneering visit.”
“That of which you were talking last night? Are you bent upon it?”
“Yes, I am determined on it.”
Laura heard a child’s cry at this moment, and left the room with a parting glance at her husband, who in fact had talked over the matter with Mrs. Pendennis, and agreed with her in opinion.
As the Colonel had opened the question, I ventured to make a respectful remonstrance against the scheme. Vindictiveness on the part of a man so simple and generous, so fair and noble in all his dealings as Thomas Newcome, appeared in my mind unworthy of him. Surely his kinsman had sorrow and humiliation enough already at home. Barnes’s further punishment, we thought, might be left to time, to remorse, to the Judge of right and wrong; Who better understands than we can do, our causes and temptations towards evil actions, Who reserves the sentence for His own tribunal. But when angered, the best of us mistake our own motives, as we do those of the enemy who inflames us. What may be private revenge, we take to be indignant virtue and just revolt against wrong. The Colonel would not hear of counsels of moderation, such as I bore him from a sweet Christian pleader. “Remorse!” he cried out with a laugh, “that villain will never feel it until he is tied up and whipped at the cart’s tail! Time change that rogue! Unless he is wholesomely punished, he will grow a greater scoundrel every year. I am inclined to think, sir,” says he, his honest brows darkling as he looked towards me, “that you too are spoiled by this wicked world, and these heartless, fashionable, fine people. You wish to live well with the enemy, and with us too, Pendennis. It can’t be. He who is not with us is against us. I very much fear, sir, that the women, the women, you understand, have been talking you over. Do not let us speak any more about this subject, for I don’t wish that my son, and my son’s old friend, should have a quarrel.” His face became red, his voice quivered with agitation, and he looked with glances which I was pained to behold in those kind old eyes: not because his wrath and suspicion visited myself, but because an impartial witness, nay, a friend to Thomas Newcome in that family quarrel, I grieved to think that a generous heart was led astray, and to see a good man do wrong. So with no more thanks for his interference than a man usually gets who meddles in domestic strifes, the present luckless advocate ceased pleading.
To be sure, the Colonel and Clive had other advisers, who did not take the peaceful side. George Warrington was one of these; he was for war à l’outrance with Barnes Newcome; for keeping no terms with such a villain. He found a pleasure in hunting him, and whipping him. “Barnes ought to be punished,” George said, “for his poor wife’s misfortune; it was Barnes’s infernal cruelty, wickedness, selfishness, which had driven her into misery and wrong.” Mr. Warrington went down to Newcome, and was present at that lecture whereof mention has been made in a previous chapter. I am afraid his behaviour was very indecorous; he laughed at the pathetic allusions of the respected Member for Newcome; he sneered at the sublime passages; he wrote an awful critique in the Newcome Independent two days after, whereof the irony was so subtle, that half the readers of the paper mistook his grave scorn for respect, and his gibes for praise.