As we traversed the court the Poor Brothers were coming from dinner. A couple of score, or more, of old gentlemen in black gowns, issued from the door of their refectory, and separated over the court, betaking themselves to their chambers. Ethel’s arm trembled under mine as she looked at one and another, expecting to behold her dear uncle’s familiar features. But he was not among the brethren. We went to his chamber, of which the door was open: a female attendant was arranging the room; she told us Colonel Newcome was out for the day, and thus our journey had been made in vain.
Ethel went round the apartment and surveyed its simple decorations; she looked at the pictures of Clive and his boy; the two sabres crossed over the mantelpiece, the Bible laid on the table, by the old latticed window. She walked slowly up to the humble bed, and sat down on a chair near it. No doubt her heart prayed for him who slept there; she turned round where his black pensioner’s cloak was hanging on the wall, and lifted up the homely garment, and kissed it. The servant looked on admiring, I should think, her melancholy and her gracious beauty. I whispered to the woman that the young lady was the Colonel’s niece. “He has a son who comes here, and is very handsome, too,” said the attendant.
The two women spoke together for a while. “Oh, miss!” cried the elder and humbler, evidently astonished at some gratuity which Miss Newcome bestowed upon her, “I didn’t want this to be good to him. Everybody here loves him for himself; and I would sit up for him for weeks—that I would.”
My companion took a pencil from her bag, and wrote “Ethel” on a piece of paper, and laid the paper on the Bible. Darkness had again fallen by this time, feeble lights were twinkling in the chamber windows of the Poor Brethren as we issued into the courts;—feeble lights illumining a dim, grey, melancholy old scene. Many a career, once bright, was flickering out here in the darkness; many a night was closing in. We went away silently from that quiet place; and in another minute were in the flare and din and tumult of London.
“The Colonel is most likely gone to Clive’s,” I said. Would not Miss Newcome follow him thither? We consulted whether she should go. She took heart and said yes. “Drive, cabman, to Howland Street!” The horse was, no doubt, tired, for the journey seemed extraordinarily long; I think neither of us spoke a word on the way.
I ran upstairs to prepare our friends for the visit. Clive, his wife, his father, and his mother-in-law were seated by a dim light in Mrs. Clive’s sitting-room. Rosey on the sofa, as usual; the little boy on his grandfather’s knees.
I hardly made a bow to the ladies, so eager was I to communicate with Colonel Newcome. “I have just been to your quarters at Grey Friars, sir,” said I. “That is——”
“You have been to the Hospital, sir! You need not be ashamed to mention it, as Colonel Newcome is not ashamed to go there,” cried out the Campaigner. “Pray speak in your own language, Clive, unless there is something not fit for ladies to hear.” Clive was growling out to me in German that there had just been a terrible scene, his father having, a quarter of an hour previously, let slip the secret about Grey Friars.
“Say at once, Clive!” the Campaigner cried, rising in her might, and extending a great strong arm over her helpless child, “that Colonel Newcome owns that he has gone to live as a pauper in a hospital! He who has squandered his own money. He who has squandered my money. He who has squandered the money of that darling helpless child—compose yourself, Rosey my love!—has completed the disgrace of the family, by his present mean and unworthy—yes, I say, mean and unworthy and degraded conduct. Oh, my child, my blessed child! to think that your husband’s father should have come to a workhouse!” Whilst this maternal agony bursts over her, Rosa, on the sofa, bleats and whimpers amongst the faded chintz cushions.
I took Clive’s hand, which was cast up to his head striking his forehead with mad impotent rage, whilst this fiend of a woman lashed his good father. The veins of his great fist were swollen, his whole body was throbbing and trembling with the helpless pain under which he writhed. “Colonel Newcome’s friends, ma’am,”, I said, “think very differently from you; and that he is a better judge than you, or any one else, of his own honour. We all, who loved him in his prosperity, love and respect him more than ever for the manner in which he bears his misfortune. Do you suppose that his noble friend, the Earl of H——, would have counselled him to a step unworthy of a gentleman; that the Prince de Moncontour would applaud his conduct as he does, if he did not think it admirable?” I can hardly say with what scorn I used this argument, or what depth of contempt I felt for the woman whom I knew it would influence. “And at this minute,” I added, “I have come from visiting the Gray Friars with one of the Colonel’s relatives, whose love and respect for him is boundless; who longs to be reconciled to him, and who is waiting below, eager to shake his hand, and embrace Clive’s wife.”