“He was bent—he who used to walk so uprightly,” Laura said. He seemed to have grown many years older, and was, indeed, quite a decrepit old man.
“I am glad they have left Clive out of the bankruptcy,” the Colonel said to Bayham; it was almost the only time when his voice exhibited any emotion. “It was very kind of them to leave out Clive, poor boy, and I have thanked the lawyers in court.” Those gentlemen, and the judge himself, were very much moved at this act of gratitude. The judge made a very feeling speech to the Colonel when he came up for his certificate. He passed very different comments on the conduct of the Manager of the Bank, when that person appeared for examination. He wished that the law had power to deal with those gentlemen who had come home with large fortunes from India, realised but a few years before the bankruptcy. Those gentlemen had known how to take care of themselves very well; and as for the Manager, is not his wife giving elegant balls at her elegant house at Cheltenham at this very day?
What weighed most upon the Colonel’s mind, F. B. imagined, was the thought that he had been the means of inducing many poor friends to embark their money in this luckless speculation. Take J. J.’s money after he had persuaded old Ridley to place 200 pounds in Indian shares! Good God, he and his family should rather perish than he would touch a farthing of it! Many fierce words were uttered to him by Mrs. Mackenzie, for instance—by her angry daughter at Musselburgh—Josey’s husband, by Mr. Smee, R.A., and two or three Indian officers, friends of his own, who had entered into the speculation on his recommendation. These rebukes Thomas Newcome bore with an affecting meekness, as his faithful F. B. described to me, striving with many oaths and much loudness to carry off his own emotion. But what moved the Colonel most of all, was a letter which came at this time from Honeyman in India, saying that he was doing well—that of course he knew of his benefactor’s misfortune, and that he sent a remittance which, D. V., should be annual, in payment of his debt to the Colonel, and his good sister at Brighton. “On receipt of this letter,” said F. B., “the old man was fairly beaten—the letter, with the bill in it, dropped out of his hands. He clasped them together, shaking in every limb, and his head dropped down on his breast as he said, ‘I thank my God Almighty for this!’ and he sent the cheque off to Mrs. Honeyman by the post that night, sir, every shilling of it; and he passed his old arm under mine—and we went out to Tom’s Coffee-House, and he ate some dinner the first time for ever so long, and drank a couple of glasses of port wine, and F. B. stood it, sir, and would stand his heart’s blood that dear old boy.”
It was on a Monday morning that those melancholy shutters were seen over the offices of the Bundelcund Bank in Lothbury, which were not to come down until the rooms were handed over to some other, and, let us trust, more fortunate speculators. The Indian bills had arrived, and been protested in the City on the previous Saturday. The Campaigner and Mrs. Rosey had arranged a little party to the theatre that evening, and the gallant Captain Goby had agreed to quit the delights of the Flag Club, in order to accompany the ladies. Neither of them knew what was happening in the City, or could account otherwise than by the common domestic causes, for Clive’s gloomy despondency and his father’s sad reserve. Clive had not been in the City on this day. He had spent it, as usual, in his studio, boudé by his wife, and not disturbed by the messroom raillery of the Campaigner. They had dined early, in order to be in time for the theatre. Goby entertained them with the latest jokes from the smoking-room at the Flag, and was in his turn amused by the brilliant plans for the season which Rosey and her mamma sketched out the entertainments which Mrs. Clive proposed to give, the ball—she was dying for a masked ball just such a one as that was described in the Pall Mall Gazette of last week, out of that paper with the droll title, the Bengal Hurkaru, which the merchant-prince, the head of the bank, you know, in India, had given at Calcutta. “We must have a ball, too,” says Mrs. Mackenzie; “society demands it of you.” “Of course it does,” echoes Captain Goby, and he bethought him of a brilliant circle of young fellows from the Flag, whom he would bring in splendid uniform to dance with the pretty Mrs. Clive Newcome.
After the dinner—they little knew it was to be their last in that fine house—the ladies retired to give their parting kiss to baby—a parting look to the toilettes, with which they proposed to fascinate the inhabitants of the pit and the public boxes at the Olympic. Goby made vigorous play with the claret-bottle during the brief interval of potation allowed to him; he, too, little deeming that he should never drink bumper there again; Clive looking on with the melancholy and silent acquiescence which had, of late, been his part in the household. The carriage was announced—the ladies came down—pretty capotes on the lovely Campaigner, Goby vowed, looking as young and as handsome as her daughter, by Jove, and the ball door was opened to admit the two gentlemen and ladies to their carriage, when, as they were about to step in, a hansom cab drove up rapidly, in which was perceived Thomas Newcome’s anxious face. He got out of the vehicle—his own carriage making way for him—the ladies still on the steps. “Oh, the play! I forgot,” said the Colonel.
“Of course we are going to the play, papa,” cries little Rosey, with a gay little tap of her hand.
“I think you had better not,” Colonel Newcome said gravely.
“Indeed my darling child has set her heart upon it, and I would not have her disappointed for the world in her situation,” cries the Campaigner, tossing up her head.
The Colonel for reply bade his coachman drive to the stables, and come for further orders; and, turning to his daughter’s guest, expressed to Captain Goby his regret that the proposed party could not take place on that evening, as he had matter of very great importance to communicate to his family. On hearing these news, and understanding that his further company was not desirable, the Captain, a man of great presence of mind, arrested the hansom cabman, who was about to take his departure, and who blithely, knowing the Club and its inmates full well, carried off the jolly Captain to finish his evening at the Flag.
“Has it come, father?” said Clive with a sure prescience, looking in his father’s face.