“My boy at Sandhurst has done very well indeed; and Egbert, I am happy to say, thinks of taking orders; he has been very moderate at College. Not so Alfred; but the Guards are a sadly dangerous school for a young man; I have promised to pay his debts, and he is to exchange into the line. Mamma is coming to us at Christmas with Alice; my sister is very pretty indeed, I think, and I am rejoiced she is to marry young Mr. Mumford, who has a tolerable living, and who has been attached to her ever since he was a boy at Rugby School.
“Little Barnes comes on bravely with his Latin; and Mr. Whitestock, a most excellent and valuable person in this place, where there is so much Romanism and Dissent, speaks highly of him. Little Clara is so like her unhappy mother in a thousand ways and actions, that I am shocked often; and see my brother starting back and turning his head away, as if suddenly wounded. I have heard the most deplorable accounts of Lord and Lady Highgate. Oh, dearest friend and sister!-save you, I think I scarce know any one that is happy in the world: I trust you may continue so-you who impart your goodness and kindness to all who come near you-you in whose sweet serene happiness I am thankful to be allowed to repose sometimes. You are the island in the desert, Laura! and the birds sing there, and the fountain flows; and we come and repose by you for a little while, and to-morrow the march begins again, and the toil, and the struggle, and the desert. Good-bye, fountain! Whisper kisses to my dearest little ones from their affectionate Aunt Ethel.
“A friend of his, a Mr. Warrington, has spoken against us several times with extraordinary ability, as Barnes owns. Do you know Mr. W.? He wrote a dreadful article in the Independent, about the last poor lecture, which was indeed sad, sentimental, commonplace: and the critique is terribly comical. I could not help laughing, remembering some passages in it, when Barnes mentioned it: and my brother became so angry! They have put up a dreadful caricature of B. in Newcome: and my brother says he did it, but I hope not. It is very droll, though: he used to make them very funnily. I am glad he has spirits for it. Good-bye again.—E. N.”
“He says he did it!” cries Mr. Pendennis, laying the letter down. “Barnes Newcome would scarcely caricature himself, my dear?”
“‘He’ often means—means Clive—I think,” says Mrs. Pendennis, in an offhand manner.
“Oh! he means Clive, does he, Laura?”
“Yes—and you mean goose, Mr. Pendennis!” that saucy lady replies.
It must have been about the very time when this letter was written, that a critical conversation occurred between Clive and his father, of which the lad did not inform me until much later days; as was the case—the reader has been more than once begged to believe—with many other portions of this biography.
One night the Colonel, having come home from a round of electioneering visits, not half satisfied with himself; exceedingly annoyed (much more than he cared to own) with the impudence of some rude fellows at the public-houses, who had interrupted his fine speeches with odious hiccups and familiar jeers, was seated brooding over his cheroot by the chimney-fire; friend F. B. (of whose companionship his patron was occasionally tired) finding much better amusement with the Jolly Britons in the Boscawen Room below. The Colonel, as an electioneering business, had made his appearance in the club. But that ancient Roman warrior had frightened those simple Britons. His manners were too awful for them: so were Clive’s, who visited them also under Mr. Pott’s introduction; but the two gentlemen, each being full of care and personal annoyance at the time, acted like wet blankets upon the Britons—whereas F. B. warmed them and cheered them, affably partook of their meals with them, and graciously shared their cups. So the Colonel was alone, listening to the far-off roar of the Britons’ choruses by an expiring fire, as he sate by a glass of cold negus and the ashes of his cigar.
I dare say he may have been thinking that his fire was well-nigh out,—his cup of the dregs, his pipe little more now than dust and ashes—when Clive, candle in hand, came into their sitting-room.