* I did not know at the time that Mrs. Mackenzie had taken entire superintendence of the family treasury—and that this exemplary woman was putting away, as she had done previously, sundry little sums to meet rainy days.
I took the liberty of asking about debts, and of these Clive gave me to understand there were none—at least none of his or his father’s contracting. “If we were too proud to borrow, and I think we were wrong, Pen, my dear old boy—I think we were wrong now—at least, we were too proud to owe. My colourman takes his bill out in drawings, and I think owes me a trifle. He got me some lessons at fifty sous a ticket—a pound the ten—from an economical swell who has taken a château here, and has two flunkeys in livery. He has four daughters, who take advantage of the lessons, and screws ten per cent upon the poor colourman’s pencils and drawing-paper. It’s pleasant work to give the lessons to the children; and to be patronised by the swell; and not expensive to him, is it, Pen? But I don’t mind that, if I could but get lessons enough: for, you see, besides our expenses here, we must have some more money, and the dear old governor would die outright if poor old Sarah Mason did not get her 50 pounds a year.”
And now there arrived a plentiful supper, and a bottle of good wine, of which the giver was not sorry to partake after the meagre dinner at three o’clock, to which I had been invited by the Campaigner; and it was midnight when I walked back with my friend to his house in the upper town; and all the stars of heaven were shining cheerily; and my dear Clive’s face wore an expression of happiness, such as I remembered in old days, as we shook hands and parted with a “God bless you.”
To Clive’s friend, revolving these things in his mind, as he lay in one of those most snug and comfortable beds at the excellent Hotel des Bains, it appeared that this town of Boulogne was a very bad market for the artist’s talents; and that he had to bring them to London, where a score of old friends would assuredly be ready to help him. And if the Colonel, too, could be got away from the domination of the Campaigner, I felt certain that the dear old gentleman could but profit by his leave of absence. My wife and I at this time inhabited a spacious old house in Queens Square, Westminster, where there was plenty of room for father and son. I knew that Laura would be delighted to welcome these guests—may the wife of every worthy gentleman who reads these pages be as ready to receive her husband’s friends. It was the state of Rosa’s health, and the Campaigner’s authority and permission, about which I was in doubt, and whether this lady’s two slaves would be allowed to go away.
These cogitations kept the present biographer long awake, and he did not breakfast next day until an hour before noon. I had the coffee-room to myself by chance, and my meal was not yet ended when the waiter announced a lady to visit Mr. Pendennis, and Mrs. Mackenzie made her appearance. No signs of care or poverty were visible in the attire or countenance of the buxom widow. A handsome bonnet, decorated within with a profusion of poppies, bluebells; and ears of corn; a jewel on her forehead, not costly, but splendid in appearance, and glittering artfully over that central spot from which her wavy chestnut hair parted to cluster in ringlets round her ample cheeks; a handsome India shawl, smart gloves, a rich silk dress, a neat parasol of blue with pale yellow lining, a multiplicity of glittering rinks, and a very splendid gold watch and chain, which I remembered in former days as hanging round poor Rosey’s white neck;—all these adornments set off the widow’s person, so that you might have thought her a wealthy capitalist’s lady, and never could have supposed that she was a poor, cheated, ruined, robbed, unfortunate Campaigner.
Nothing could be more gracious than the accueil of this lady. She paid me many handsome compliments about my literary work—asked most affectionately for dear Mrs. Pendennis and the dear children—and then, as I expected, coming to business, contrasted the happiness and genteel position of my wife and family with the misery and wrongs of her own blessed child and grandson. She never could call that child by the odious name which he received at his baptism. I knew what bitter reasons she had to dislike the name of Thomas Newcome.
She again rapidly enumerated the wrongs she had received at the hands of that gentleman; mentioned the vast sums of money out of which she and her soul’s darling had been tricked by that poor muddle-headed creature, to say no worse of him; and described finally their present pressing need. The doctors, the burial, Rosey’s delicate condition, the cost of sweetbreads, calf’s-foot jelly, and cod-liver oil, were again passed in a rapid calculation before me; and she ended her speech by expressing her gratification that I had attended to her advice of the previous day, and not given Clive Newcome a direct loan; that the family wanted it, the Campaigner called upon Heaven to witness; that Clive and his absurd poor father would fling guineas out of the window was a fact equally certain; the rest of the argument was obvious, namely, that Mr. Pendennis should administer a donation to herself.
I had brought but a small sum of money in my pocket-book, though Mrs. Mackenzie, intimate with bankers, and having, thank Heaven, in spite of all her misfortunes, the utmost confidence of all her tradesmen, hinted a perfect willingness on her part to accept an order upon her friends, Hobson Brothers of London.
This direct thrust I gently and smilingly parried by asking Mrs. Mackenzie whether she supposed a gentleman who had just paid an electioneering bill, and had, at the best of times, but a very small income, might sometimes not be in a condition to draw satisfactorily upon Messrs. Hobson or any other bankers? Her countenance fell at this remark, nor was her cheerfulness much improved by the tender of one of the two bank-notes which then happened to be in my possession. I said that I had a use for the remaining note, and that it would not be more than sufficient to pay my hotel bill, and the expenses of my party back to London.
My party? I had here to divulge, with some little trepidation, the plan which I had been making overnight; to explain how I thought that Clive’s great talents were wasted at Boulogne, and could only find a proper market in London; how I was pretty certain, through my connection with booksellers, to find some advantageous employment for him, and would have done so months ago had I known the state of the case; but I had believed, until within a very few days since, that the Colonel, in spite of his bankruptcy, was still in the enjoyment of considerable military pensions.