“It is at present at an uncle’s,” Mr. Bayham said, with great gravity, “and I take your hospitality as you offer it, Colonel Newcome, cordially and frankly.”
Honest Mr. Binnie made his appearance a short time before the appointed hour for receiving the guests, arrayed in a tight little pair of trousers, and white silk stockings and pumps, his bald head shining like a billiard-ball, his jolly gills rosy with good-humour. He was bent on pleasure. “Hey, lads!” says he; “but we’ll make a night of it. We haven’t had a night since the farewell dinner off Plymouth.”
“And a jolly night it was, James,” ejaculates the Colonel.
“Egad, what a song that Tom Norris sings!”
“And your ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’ is as good as a play, Jack.”
“And I think you beat iny one I iver hard in ‘Tom Bowling,’ yourself, Tom!” cries the Colonel’s delighted chum. Mr. Pendennis opened the eyes of astonishment at the idea of the possibility of renewing these festivities, but he kept the lips of prudence closed. And now the carriages began to drive up, and the guests of Colonel Newcome to arrive.
CHAPTER XIII.
In which Thomas Newcome sings his Last Song
The earliest comers were the first mate and the medical officer of the ship in which the two gentlemen had come to England. The mate was a Scotchman: the doctor was a Scotchman; of the gentlemen from the Oriental Club, three were Scotchmen.
The Southrons, with one exception, were the last to arrive, and for a while we stood looking out of the windows awaiting their coming. The first mate pulled out a penknife and arranged his nails. The doctor and Mr. Binnie talked of the progress of medicine. Binnie had walked the hospitals of Edinburgh before getting his civil appointment to India. The three gentlemen from Hanover Square and the Colonel had plenty to say about Tom Smith of the Cavalry, and Harry Hall of the Engineers: how Topham was going to marry poor little Bob Wallis’s widow; how many lakhs Barber had brought home, and the like. The tall grey-headed Englishman, who had been in the East too, in the King’s service, joined for a while in this conversation, but presently left it, and came and talked with Clive; “I knew your father in India,” said the gentleman to the lad; “there is not a more gallant or respected officer in that service. I have a boy too, a stepson, who has just gone into the army; he is older than you, he was born at the end of the Waterloo year, and so was a great friend of his and mine, who was at your school, Sir Rawdon Crawley.”
“He was in Gown Boys, I know,” says the boy; “succeeded his uncle Pitt, fourth Baronet. I don’t know how his mother—her who wrote the hymns, you know, and goes to Mr. Honeyman’s chapel—comes to be Rebecca, Lady Crawley. His father, Colonel Rawdon Crawley, died at Coventry Island, in August, 182-, and his uncle, Sir Pitt, not till September here. I remember, we used to talk about it at Grey Friars, when I was quite a little chap; and there were bets whether Crawley, I mean the young one, was a Baronet or not.”