"Good heavens, Colonel, what is it? don't frighten my beloved child," cries the Campaigner, rushing towards her darling, and enveloping her in her robust arms. "What can have happened, don't agitate this darling child, sir," and she looked indignantly towards the poor Colonel.

"We have received the very worst news from Calcutta, a confirmation of the news by the last mail, Clivey, my boy."

"It is no news to me. I have always been expecting it, father," says Clive, holding down his head.

"Expecting what? What have you been keeping back from us? In what have you been deceiving us, Colonel Newcome?" shrieks the Campaigner; and Rosa, crying out, "Oh, mamma, mamma!" begins to whimper.

"The chief of the bank in India is dead," the Colonel went on. "He has left its affairs in worse than disorder. We are, I fear, ruined, Mrs. Mackenzie." And the Colonel went on to tell how the bank could not open on Monday morning, and its bills to a great amount had already been protested in the City that day.

Rosey did not understand half these news, or comprehend the calamity which was to follow; but Mrs. Mackenzie, rustling in great wrath, made a speech, of which the anger gathered as he proceeded; in which she vowed and protested that her money, which the Colonel, she did not know from what motives, had induced her to subscribe, should not be sacrificed, and that have it she would, the bank shut or not, the next Monday morning—that her daughter had a fortune of her own which her poor dear brother James should have divided and would have divided much more fairly, had he not been wrongly influenced—she would not say by whom, and she commanded Colonel Newcome upon that instant, if he was, as he always pretended to be, an honourable man, to give an account of her blessed darling's property, and to pay back her own, every sixpence of it. She would not lend it for an hour longer, and to see that that dear blessed child now sleeping unconsciously upstairs, and his dear brothers and sisters who might follow, for Rosey was a young woman, a poor innocent creature, too young to be married, and never would have been married had she listened to her mamma's advice. She demanded that the baby, and all succeeding babies, should have their rights, and should be looked to by their grandmother, if their father's father was so unkind, and so wicked, and so unnatural, as to give their money to rogues, and deprive them of their just bread.

Rosey began to cry more loudly than ever during the utterance of mamma's sermon, so loudly that Clive peevishly cried out, "Hold your tongue," on which the Campaigner, clutching her daughter to her breast again, turned on her son-in-law, and abused him as she had abused his father before him, calling out that they were both in a conspiracy to defraud her child, and the little darling upstairs of its bread, and she would speak, yes, she would, and no power should prevent her, and her money she would have on Monday, as sure as her poor dear husband, Captain Mackenzie, was dead, and she never would have been cheated so, yes, cheated, if he had been alive.

At the word "cheated" Clive broke out with an execration—the poor Colonel with a groan of despair—the widow's storm continued, and above that howling tempest of words rose Mrs. Clive's piping scream, who went off into downright hysterics at last, in which she was encouraged by her mother, and in which she gasped out frantic ejaculations regarding baby; dear, darling, ruined baby, and so forth.

The sorrow-stricken Colonel had to quell the women's tongues and shrill anger, and his son's wrathful replies, who could not bear the weight of Mrs. Mackenzie upon him; and it was not until these three were allayed, that Thomas Newcome was able to continue his sad story, to explain what had happened, and what the actual state of the case was, and to oblige the terror-stricken women at length to hear something like reason.

He then had to tell them, to their dismay, that he would inevitably be declared a bankrupt in the ensuing week; that the whole of his property in that house, as elsewhere, would be seized and sold for the creditors' benefit; and that his daughter had best immediately leave a home where she would be certainly subject to humiliation and annoyance. "I would have Clive, my boy, take you out of the country, and—and return to me when I have need of him, and shall send for him," the father said fondly in reply to a rebellious look on his son's face. "I would have you quit this house as soon as possible. Why not to-night? The law blood-hound may be upon us ere an hour is over—at this moment for what I know."

At that moment the door-bell was heard to ring, and the women gave a scream apiece, as if the bailiffs were actually coming to take possession. Rosey went off in quite a series of screams, peevishly repressed by her husband, and always encouraged by mamma, who called her son-in-law an unfeeling wretch. It must be confessed that Mrs. Clive Newcome did not exhibit much strength of mind, or comfort her husband much at a moment when he needed consolation.

From angry rebellion and fierce remonstrance, this pair of women now passed to an extreme terror and desire for instantaneous flight. They would go that moment—they would wrap the blessed child up in its shawls—and nurse should take it anywhere—anywhere, poor neglected thing. "My trunks," cries Mrs. Mackenzie, "you know are ready packed—I am sure it is not the treatment which I have received—it is nothing but my duty and my religion—and the protection which I owe to this blessed unprotected—yes, unprotected, and robbed, and cheated, darling child—which have made me stay a single day in this house. I never thought I should have been robbed in it, or my darlings with their fine fortunes flung naked on the world. If my Mac was here, you never had dared to have done this, Colonel Newcome—no, never. He had his faults—Mackenzie had—but he would never have robbed his own children! Come away, Rosey, my blessed love, come let us pack your things, and let us go and hide our heads in sorrow somewhere. Ah! didn't I tell you to beware of all painters, and that Clarence was a true gentleman, and loved you with all his heart, and would never have cheated you out of your money, for which I will have justice as sure as there is justice in England."

During this outburst the Colonel sat utterly scared and silent, supporting his poor head between his hands. When the harem had departed he turned sadly to his son. Clive did not believe that his father was a cheat and a rogue. No, thank God! The two men embraced with tender cordiality and almost happy emotion on the one side and the other. Never for one moment could Clive think his dear old father meant wrong—though the speculations were unfortunate in which he had engaged—though Clive had not liked them; it was a relief to his mind that they were now come to an end; they should all be happier now, thank God! those clouds of distrust being removed. Clive felt not one moment's doubt but that they should be able to meet fortune with a brave face; and that happier, much happier days were in store for him than ever they had known since the period of this confounded prosperity.

"Here's a good end to it," says Clive, with flashing eyes and a flushed face, "and here's a good health till to-morrow, father!" and he filled into two glasses the wine still remaining in the flask. "Good-bye to our fortune, and bad luck go with her—I puff the prostitute away—Si celeres quatit pennas, you remember what we used to say at Grey Friars—resign quae dedit, et mea virtute me involve, probamque pauperiem sine dote quaero." And he pledged his father, who drank his wine, his hand shaking as he raised the glass to his lips, and his kind voice trembling as he uttered the well-known old school words, with an emotion that was as sacred as a prayer. Once more, and with hearts full of love, the two men embraced. Clive's voice would tremble now if he told the story, as it did when he spoke it to me in happier times, one calm summer evening when we sat together and talked of dear old days.

Thomas Newcome explained to his son the plan, which, to his mind, as he came away from the City after the day's misfortunes, he thought it was best to pursue. The women and the child were clearly best out of the way. "And you too, my boy, must be on duty with them until I send for you, which I will do if your presence can be of the least service to me, or is called for by—by—our honour," said the old man with a drop in his voice. "You must obey me in this, dear Clive, as you have done in everything, and been a good and dear, and obedient son to me. God pardon me for having trusted to my own simple old brains too much, and not to you who know so much better. You will obey me this once more, my boy—you will promise me this?" and the old man as he spoke took Clive's hand in both his, and fondly caressed it.

Then with a shaking hand he took out of his pocket his old purse with the steel rings, which he had worn for many and many a long year. Clive remembered it, and his father's face how it would beam with delight, when he used to take that very purse out in Clive's boyish days and tip him just after he left school. "Here are some notes and some gold," he said. "It is Rosey's, honestly, Clive dear, her half-year's dividend, for which you will give an order, please, to Sherrick. He has been very kind and good, Sherrick. All the servants were providentially paid last week—there are only the outstanding week's bills out—we shall manage to meet those, I dare say. And you will see that Rosey only takes away such clothes for herself and her baby as are actually necessary, won't you, dear? the plain things, you know—none of the fineries—they may be packed in a petara or two, and you will take them with you—but the pomps and vanities, you know, we will leave behind—the pearls and bracelets, and the plate, and all that rubbish—and I will make an inventory of them to-morrow when you are gone, and give them up, every rupee's worth, sir, every anna, by Jove, to the creditors."

The darkness had fallen by this time, and the obsequious butler entered to light the dining-room lamps. "You have been a very good and kind servant to us, Martin," says the Colonel, making him a low bow. "I should like to shake you by the hand. We must part company now, and I have no doubt you and your fellow servants will find good places, all of you, as you merit, Martin—as you merit. Great losses have fallen upon our family—we are ruined, sir—we are ruined! The great Bundelcund Banking Company has stopped payment in India, and our branch here must stop on Monday. Thank my friends downstairs for their kindness to me and my family." Martin bowed in silence with great respect. He and his comrades in the servants'-hall had been expecting this catastrophe, quite as long as the Colonel himself who thought he had kept his affairs so profoundly secret.

Clive went up into his women's apartments, looking with but little regret, I dare say, round those cheerless nuptial chambers with all their gaudy fittings; the fine looking-glasses, in which poor Rosey's little person had been reflected; the silken curtains under which he had lain by the poor child's side, wakeful and lonely. Here he found his child's nurse, and his wife, and wife's mother, busily engaged with a multiplicity of boxes; with flounces, feathers, fal-lals, and finery, which they were stowing away in this trunk and that; while the baby lay on its little pink pillow breathing softly, a little pearly fist placed close to its mouth. The aspect of the tawdry vanities scattered here and there chafed and annoyed the young man. He kicked the robes over with his foot. When Mrs. Mackenzie interposed with loud ejaculations, he sternly bade her to be silent, and not wake the child. His words were not to be questioned when he spoke in that manner. "You will take nothing with you, Rosey, but what is strictly necessary—only two or three of your plainest dresses, and what is required for the boy. What is in this trunk?" Mrs. Mackenzie stepped forward and declared, and the nurse vowed upon her honour, and the lady's-maid asserted really now upon honour too, that there was nothing but what was most strictly necessary in that trunk, to which affidavits, when Clive applied to his wife, she gave a rather timid assent.

"Where are the keys of that trunk?" Upon Mrs. Mackenzie's exclamation of "What nonsense!" Clive, putting his foot upon the flimsy oil-covered box, vowed he would kick the lid off unless it was instantly opened. Obeying this grim summons, the fluttering women produced the keys, and the black box was opened before him.

The box was found to contain a number of objects which Clive pronounced to be by no means necessary to his wife's and child's existence. Trinket-boxes and favourite little gimcracks, chains, rings and pearl necklaces, the tiara poor Rosey had worn at court—the feathers and the gorgeous train which had decorated the little person—all these were found packed away in this one receptacle; and in another box, I am sorry to say, were the silver forks and spoons (the butler wisely judging that the rich and splendid electrotype ware might as well be left behind)—all the silver forks, spoons, and ladles, and our poor old friend the cocoa-nut tree, which these female robbers would have carried out of the premises.

Mr. Clive Newcome burst out into fierce laughter when he saw the cocoa-nut tree; he laughed so loud that baby woke, and his mother-in-law called him a brute, and the nurse ran to give its accustomed quietus to the little screaming infant. Rosey's eyes poured forth a torrent of little protests, and she would have cried yet more loudly than the other baby, had not her husband, again fiercely checking her, sworn with a dreadful oath, that unless she told him the whole truth, "By heavens she should leave the house with nothing but what covered her." Even the Campaigner could not make head against Clive's stern resolution; and the incipient insurrection of the maids and the mistresses was quelled by his spirit. The lady's-maid, a flighty creature, received her wages and took her leave: but the nurse could not find it in her heart to quit her little nursling so suddenly, and accompanied Clive's household in the journey upon which those poor folks were bound. What stolen goods were finally discovered when the family reached foreign parts were found in Mrs. Mackenzie's trunks, not in her daughter's: a silver filigree basket, a few teaspoons, baby's gold coral, and a costly crimson velvet-bound copy of the Hon. Miss Grimstone's Church Service, to which articles, having thus appropriated them, Mrs. Mackenzie henceforward laid claim as her own.

So when the packing was done a cab was called to receive the modest trunks of this fugitive family—the coachman was bidden to put his horses to again, and for the last time poor Rosey Newcome sate in her own carriage, to which the Colonel conducted her with his courtly old bow, kissing the baby as it slept once more unconscious in its nurse's embrace, and bestowing a very grave and polite parting salute upon the Campaigner.

Then Clive and his father entered a cab on which the trunks were borne, and they drove to the Tower Stairs, where the ship lay which was to convey them out of England; and, during that journey, no doubt, they talked over their altered prospects, and I am sure Clive's father blessed his son fondly, and committed him and his family to a good God's gracious keeping, and thought of him with sacred love when they had parted, and Thomas Newcome had returned to his lonely house to watch and to think of his ruined fortunes, and to pray that he might have courage under them; that he might bear his own fate honourably; and that a gentle one might be dealt to those beloved beings for whom his life had been sacrificed in vain.



CHAPTER LXXII. Belisarius

When the sale of Colonel Newcome's effects took place, a friend of the family bought in for a few shillings those two swords which had hung, as we have said, in the good man's chamber, and for which no single broker present had the heart to bid. The head of Clive's father, painted by himself, which had always kept its place in the young man's studio, together with a lot of his oil-sketchings, easels, and painting apparatus, were purchased by the faithful J. J., who kept them until his friend should return to London and reclaim them, and who showed the most generous solicitude in Clive's behalf. J. J. was elected of the Royal Academy this year, and Clive, it was evident, was working hard at the profession which he had always loved; for he sent over three pictures to the Academy, and I never knew man more mortified than the affectionate J. J., when two of these unlucky pieces were rejected by the committee for the year. One pretty little piece, called "The Stranded Boat," got a fair place on the Exhibition walls, and, you may be sure, was loudly praised by a certain critic in the Pall Mall Gazette. The picture was sold on the first day of the exhibition at the price of twenty-five pounds, which the artist demanded; and when the kind J. J. wrote to inform his friend of this satisfactory circumstance, and to say that he held the money at Clive's disposal, the latter replied with many expressions of sincere gratitude, at the same time begging him directly to forward the money, with our old friend Thomas Newcome's love, to Mrs. Sarah Mason, at Newcome. But J. J. never informed his friend that he himself was the purchaser of the picture; nor was Clive made acquainted with the fact until some time afterwards, when he found it hanging in Ridley's studio.

I have said that we none of us were aware at this time what was the real state of Colonel Newcome's finances, and hoped that, after giving up every shilling of his property which was confiscated to the creditors of the Bank, he had still, from his retiring pension and military allowances, at least enough reputably to maintain him. On one occasion, having business in the City, I there met Mr. Sherrick. Affairs had been going ill with that gentleman—he had been let in terribly, he informed me, by Lord Levant's insolvency—having had large money transactions with his lordship. "There's none of them so good as old Newcome," Mr. Sherrick said with a sigh; "that was a good one—that was an honest man if ever I saw one—with no more guile, and no more idea of business than a baby. Why didn't he take my advice, poor old cove?—he might be comfortable now. Why did he sell away that annuity, Pendennis? I got it done for him when nobody else perhaps could have got it done for him—for the security ain't worth twopence if Newcome wasn't an honest man;—but I know he is, and would rather starve and eat the nails off his fingers than not keep his word, the old trump. And when he came to me, a good two months before the smash of the Bank, which I knew it, sir, and saw that it must come—when he came and raised three thousand pounds to meet them d—d electioneering bills, having to pay lawyers, commission, premium, life-insurance—you know the whole game, Mr. P.—I as good as went down on my knees to him—I did—at the North and South American Coffee-house, where he was to meet the party about the money, and said, 'Colonel, don't raise it—I tell you, let it stand over—let it go in along with the bankruptcy that's a-coming,'—but he wouldn't—he went on like an old Bengal tiger, roaring about his honour; he paid the bills every shilling—infernal long bills they were, and it's my belief that, at this minute, he ain't got fifty pounds a year of his own to spend. I would send him back my commission—I would by Jove—only times is so bad, and that rascal Levant let me in. It went to my heart to take the old cock's money—but it's gone—that and ever so much more—and Lady Whittlesea's Chapel too, Mr. P. Hang that young Levant."

Squeezing my hand after this speech, Sherrick ran across the street after some other capitalist who was entering the Diddlesex Insurance Office, and left me very much grieved and dismayed at finding that my worst fears in regard to Thomas Newcome were confirmed. Should we confer with his wealthy family respecting the Colonel's impoverished condition? Was his brother Hobson Newcome aware of it? As for Sir Barnes, the quarrel between him and his uncle had been too fierce to admit of hopes of relief from that quarter. Barnes had been put to very heavy expenses in the first contested election; had come forward again immediately on his uncle's resignation, but again had been beaten by a more liberal candidate, his quondam former friend, Mr. Higg—who formally declared against Sir Barnes, and who drove him finally out of the representation of Newcome. From this gentleman it was vain of course for Colonel Newcome's friends to expect relief.

How to aid him? He was proud—past work—nearly seventy years old. "Oh, why did those cruel Academicians refuse Clive's pictures?" cries Laura. "I have no patience with them—had the pictures been exhibited I know who might have bought them—but that is vain now. He would suspect at once, and send her money away. Oh, Pen! why, why didn't he come when I wrote that letter to Brussels?"

From persons so poorly endowed with money as ourselves, any help, but of the merest temporary nature, was out of the question. We knew our friends too well not to know that they would disdain to receive it. It was agreed between me and Laura that at any rate I should go and see Clive. Our friends indeed were at a very short distance from us, and, having exiled themselves from England, could yet see its coasts from their windows upon any clear day. Boulogne was their present abiding-place—refuge of how many thousands of other unfortunate Britons—and to this friendly port I betook myself speedily, having the address of Colonel Newcome. His quarters were in a quiet grass-grown old street of the Old Town. None of the family were at home when I called. There was indeed no servant to answer the bell, but the good-natured French domestic of a neighbouring lodger told me that the young monsieur went out every day to make his designs, and that I should probably find the elder gentleman upon the rampart, where he was in the custom of going every day. I strolled along by those pretty old walks and bastions, under the pleasant trees which shadow them, and the grey old gabled houses from which you look down upon the gay new city, and the busy port, and the piers stretching into the shining sea, dotted with a hundred white sails or black smoking steamers, and bounded by the friendly lines of the bright English shore. There are few prospects more charming than the familiar view from those old French walls—few places where young children may play, and ruminating old age repose more pleasantly than on those peaceful rampart gardens.

I found our dear old friend seated on one of the benches, a newspaper on his knees, and by his side a red-cheeked little French lass, upon whose lap Thomas Newcome the younger lay sleeping. The Colonel's face flushed up when he saw me. As he advanced a step or two towards me I could see that he trembled in his walk. His hair had grown almost quite white. He looked now to be more than his age—he whose carriage last year had been so erect, whose figure had been so straight and manly. I was very much moved at meeting him, and at seeing the sad traces which pain and grief had left in the countenance of the dear old man.

"So you are come to see me, my good young friend," cried the Colonel, with a trembling voice. "It is very, very kind of you. Is not this a pretty drawing-room to receive our friends in? We have not many of them now; Boy and I come and sit here for hours every day. Hasn't he grown a fine boy? He can say several words now, sir, and can walk surprisingly well. Soon he will be able to walk with his grandfather, and then Marie will not have the trouble to wait upon either of us." He repeated this sentiment in his pretty old French, and turning with a bow to Marie. The girl said monsieur knew very well that she did not desire better than to come out with baby; that it was better than staying at home, pardieu; and, the clock striking at this moment, she rose up with her child, crying out that it was time to return or madame would scold.

"Mrs. Mackenzie has rather a short temper," the Colonel said with a gentle smile. "Poor thing, she has had a great deal to bear in consequence, Pen, of my imprudence. I am glad you never took shares in our bank. I should not be so glad to see you as I am now, if I had brought losses upon you as I have upon so many of my friends." I, for my part, trembled to hear the good old man was under the domination of the Campaigner.

"Bayham sends me the paper regularly; he is a very kind faithful creature. How glad I am that he has got a snug berth in the City! His company really prospers, I am happy to think, unlike some companies you know of, Pen. I have read your two speeches, sir, and Clive and I liked them very much. The poor boy works all day at his pictures. You know he has sold one at the exhibition, which has given us a great deal of heart—and he has completed two or three more—and I am sitting to him now for—what do you think, sir? for Belisarius. Will you give Belisarius and the Obolus kind word?"

"My dear, dear old friend," I said in great emotion, "if you will do me the kindness to take my Obolus or to use my services in any way, you will give me more pleasure than ever I had from your generous bounties in old days. Look, sir, I wear the watch which you gave me when you went to India. Did you not tell me then to look over Clive and serve him if I could? Can't I serve him now?" and I went on further in this strain, asseverating with great warmth and truth that my wife's affection and my own were most sincere for both of them, and that our pride would be to be able to help such dear friends.

The Colonel said I had a good heart, and my wife had, though—though—he did not finish this sentence, but I could interpret it without need of its completion. My wife and the two ladies of Colonel Newcome's family never could be friends, however much my poor Laura tried to be intimate with these women. Her very efforts at intimacy caused a frigidity and hauteur which Laura could not overcome. Little Rosey and her mother set us down as two aristocratic personages; nor for our parts were we very much disturbed at this opinion of the Campaigner and little Rosa.

I talked with the Colonel for half an hour or more about his affairs, which indeed were very gloomy, and Clive's prospects, of which he strove to present as cheering a view as possible. He was obliged to confirm the news which Sherrick had given me, and to own, in fact, that all his pension was swallowed up by a payment of interest and life insurance for sums which he had been compelled to borrow. How could he do otherwise than meet his engagements? Thank God, he had Clive's full approval for what he had done—had communicated the circumstance to his son almost immediately after it took place, and that was a comfort to him—an immense comfort. "For the women are very angry," said the poor Colonel; "you see they do not understand the laws of honour, at least as we understand them: and perhaps I was wrong in hiding the truth as I certainly did from Mrs. Mackenzie, but I acted for the best—I hoped against hope that some chance might turn in our favour. God knows, I had a hard task enough in wearing a cheerful face for months, and in following my little Rosa about to her parties and balls; but poor Mrs. Mackenzie has a right to be angry, only I wish my little girl did not side with her mother so entirely, for the loss of her affection gives me great pain."

So it was as I suspected. The Campaigner ruled over this family, and added to all their distresses by her intolerable presence and tyranny. "Why, sir," I ventured to ask, "if, as I gather from you—and I remember," I added with a laugh, "certain battles-royal which Clive described to me in old days—if you and the Campai—Mrs. Mackenzie do not agree, why should she continue to live with you, when you would all be so much happier apart?"

"She has a right to live in the house," says the Colonel; "It is I who have no right in it. I am a poor old pensioner, don't you see, subsisting on Rosey's bounty? We live on the hundred a year, secured to her at her marriage, and Mrs. Mackenzie has her forty pounds of pension which she adds to the common stock. It is I who have made away with every shilling of Rosey's 17,000 pounds, God help me, and with 1500 pounds of her mother's. They put their little means together, and they keep us—me and Clive. What can we do for a living? Great God! What can we do? Why, I am so useless that even when my poor boy earned 25 pounds for his picture, I felt we were bound to send it to Sarah Mason, and you may fancy when this came to Mrs. Mackenzie's ears, what a life my boy and I led. I have never spoken of these things to any mortal soul—I even don't speak of them with Clive—but seeing your kind and honest face has made me talk—you must pardon my garrulity—I am growing old, Arthur. This poverty and these quarrels have beaten my spirit down—there, I shall talk on this subject no more. I wish, sir, I could ask you to dine with us, but"—and here he smiled—"we must get the leave of the higher powers."

I was determined, in spite of prohibitions and Campaigners, to see my old friend Clive, and insisted on walking back with the Colonel to his lodgings, at the door of which we met Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter. Rosa blushed up a little—looked at her mamma—and then greeted me with a hand and a curtsey. The Campaigner also saluted me in a majestic but amicable manner, made no objection even to my entering her apartments and seeing the condition to which they were reduced: this phrase was uttered with particular emphasis and a significant look towards the Colonel, who bowed his meek head and preceded me into the lodgings, which were in truth very homely, pretty, and comfortable. The Campaigner was an excellent manager—restless, bothering, brushing perpetually. Such fugitive gimcracks as they had brought away with them decorated the little salon. Mrs. Mackenzie, who took the entire command, even pressed me to dine and partake, if so fashionable a gentleman would condescend to partake, of a humble exile's fare. No fare was perhaps very pleasant to me in company with that woman, but I wanted to see my dear old Clive, and gladly accepted his voluble mother-in-law's not disinterested hospitality. She beckoned the Colonel aside; whispered to him, putting something into his hand; on which he took his hat and went away. Then Rosey was dismissed upon some other pretext, and I had the felicity to be left alone with Mrs. Captain Mackenzie.

She instantly improved the occasion; and with great eagerness and volubility entered into her statement of the present affairs and position of this unfortunate family. She described darling Rosey's delicate state, poor thing—nursed with tenderness and in the lap of luxury—brought up with every delicacy and the fondest mother—never knowing in the least how to take care of herself, and likely to fall down and perish unless the kind Campaigner were by to prop and protect her. She was in delicate health—very delicate—ordered cod-liver oil by the doctor. Heaven knows how he could be paid for those expensive medicines out of the pittance to which the imprudence—the most culpable and designing imprudence, and extravagance, and folly of Colonel Newcome had reduced them! Looking out from the window as she spoke I saw—we both saw—the dear old gentleman sadly advancing towards the house, a parcel in his hand. Seeing his near approach, and that our interview was likely to come to an end, Mrs. Mackenzie rapidly whispered to me that she knew I had a good heart—that I had been blessed by Providence with a fine fortune, which I knew how to keep better than some folks—and that if, as no doubt was my intention—for with what other but a charitable view could I have come to see them?—and most generous and noble was it of you to come, and I always thought it of you, Mr. Pendennis, whatever other people said to the contrary. If I proposed to give them relief, which was most needful—and for which a mother's blessings would follow me—let it be to her, the Campaigner, that my loan should be confided—for as for the Colonel, he is not fit to be trusted with a shilling, and has already flung away immense sums upon some old woman he keeps in the country, leaving his darling Rosey without the actual necessaries of life.

The woman's greed and rapacity—the flattery with which she chose to belabour me at dinner, so choked and disgusted me, that I could hardly swallow the meal, though my poor old friend had been sent out to purchase a pate from the pastrycook's for my especial refection. Clive was not at the dinner. He seldom returned till late at night on sketching days. Neither his wife nor his mother-in-law seemed much to miss him; and seeing that the Campaigner engrossed the entire share of the conversation, and proposed not to leave me for five minutes alone with the Colonel, I took leave rather speedily of my entertainers, leaving a message for Clive, and a prayer that he would come and see me at my hotel.



CHAPTER LXXIII. In which Belisarius returns from Exile

I was sitting in the dusk in my room at Hotel des Bains, when the visitor for whom I hoped made his appearance in the person of Clive, with his broad shoulders, and broad hat, and a shaggy beard, which he had thought fit in his quality of painter to assume. Our greeting it need not be said was warm; and our talk, which extended far into the night, very friendly and confidential. If I make my readers confidants in Mr. Clive's private affairs, I ask my friend's pardon for narrating his history in their behoof. The world had gone very ill with my poor Clive, and I do not think that the pecuniary losses which had visited him and his father afflicted him near so sorely as the state of his home. In a pique with the woman he loved, and from that generous weakness which formed part of his character, and which led him to acquiesce in most wishes of his good father, the young man had gratified the darling desire of the Colonel's heart, and taken the wife whom his two old friends brought to him. Rosey, who was also, as we have shown, of a very obedient and ductile nature, had acquiesced gladly enough in her mamma's opinion, that she was in love with the rich and handsome young Clive, and accepted him for better or worse. So undoubtedly would this good child have accepted Captain Hoby, her previous adorer, have smilingly promised fidelity to the Captain at church, and have made a very good, happy, and sufficient little wife for that officer,—had not mamma commanded her to jilt him. What wonder that these elders should wish to see their two dear young ones united? They began with suitable age, money, good temper, and parents' blessings. It is not the first time that, with all these excellent helps to prosperity and happiness, a marriage has turned out unfortunately—a pretty, tight ship gone to wreck that set forth on its voyage with cheers from the shore, and every prospect of fair wind and fine weather.

We have before quoted poor Clive's simile of the shoes with which his good old father provided him—as pretty a little pair of shoes as need be—only they did not fit the wearer. If they pinched him at first, how they blistered and tortured him now! If Clive was gloomy and discontented even when the honeymoon had scarce waned, and he and his family sat at home in state and splendour under the boughs of the famous silver cocoa-nut tree, what was the young man's condition now in poverty, when they had no love along with a scant dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged each morsel which his poor old father ate—when a vulgar, coarse-minded woman pursued with brutal sarcasm and deadly rancour one of the tenderest and noblest gentlemen in the world—when an ailing wife, always under some one's domination, received him with helpless hysterical cries and reproaches—when a coarse female tyrant, stupid, obstinate, utterly unable to comprehend the son's kindly genius, or the father's gentle spirit, bullied over both, using the intolerable undeniable advantage which her actual wrongs gave her to tyrannise over these two wretched men! He had never heard the last of that money which they had sent to Mrs. Mason, Clive said. When the knowledge of the fact came to the Campaigner's ears, she raised such a storm as almost killed the poor Colonel, and drove his son half mad. She seized the howling infant, vowing that its unnatural father and grandfather were bent upon starving it—she consoled and sent Rosey into hysterics—she took the outlawed parson to whose church they went, and the choice society of bankrupt captains, captains' ladies, fugitive stockbrokers' wives, and dingy frequenters of billiard-rooms, and refugees from the Bench, into her councils; and in her daily visits amongst these personages, and her walks on the pier, whither she trudged with poor Rosey in her train, Mrs. Mackenzie made known her own wrongs and her daughter's—showed how the Colonel, having robbed and cheated them previously, was now living upon them; insomuch that Mrs. Bolter, the levanting auctioneer's wife, would not make the poor old man a bow when she met him—that Mrs. Captain Kitely, whose husband had lain for seven years past in Boulogne gaol ordered her son to cut Clive; and when, the child being sick, the poor old Colonel went for arrowroot to the chemist's, young Snooks, the apothecary's assistant, refused to allow him to take the powder away without previously depositing the money.

He had no money, Thomas Newcome. He gave up every farthing. After having impoverished all around him, he had no right, he said, to touch a sixpence of the wretched pittance remaining to them—he had even given up his cigar, the poor old man, the companion and comforter of forty years. He was "not fit to be trusted with money," Mrs. Mackenzie said, and the good man owned as he ate his scanty crust, and bowed his noble old head in silence under that cowardly persecution.

And this, at the end of threescore and seven or eight years, was to be the close of a life which had been spent in freedom and splendour, and kindness and honour; this the reward of the noblest heart that ever beat—the tomb and prison of a gallant warrior who had ridden in twenty battles—whose course through life had been a bounty wherever it had passed—whose name had been followed by blessings, and whose career was to end here—here—in a mean room, in a mean alley of a foreign town—a low furious woman standing over him and stabbing the kind defenceless heart with killing insult and daily outrage!

As we sat together in the dark, Clive told me this wretched story, which was wrung from him with a passionate emotion that I could not but keenly share. He wondered the old man lived, Clive said. Some of the women's taunts and gibes, as he could see, struck his father so that he gasped and started back as if some one had lashed him with a whip. "He would make away with himself," said poor Clive, "but he deems this is his punishment, and that he must bear it as long as it pleases God. He does not care for his own losses, as far as they concern himself: but these reproaches of Mrs. Mackenzie, and some things which were said to him in the Bankruptcy Court, by one or two widows of old friends, who were induced through his representations, to take shares in that infernal bank, have affected him dreadfully. I hear him lying awake and groaning at night, God bless him. Great God! what can I do—what can I do?" burst out the young man in a dreadful paroxysm of grief. "I have tried to get lessons—I went to London on the deck of a steamer, and took a lot of drawings with me—tried picture-dealers—pawnbrokers—Jews—Moss, whom you may remember at Gandish's, and who gave me for forty-two drawings, eighteen pounds. I brought the money back to Boulogne. It was enough to pay the doctor, and bury our last poor little dead baby. Tenez, Pen, you must give me some supper: I have had nothing all day but a pain de deux sous; I can't stand it at home. My heart's almost broken—you must give me some money, Pen, old boy. I know you will. I thought of writing to you, but I wanted to support myself, you see. When I went to London with the drawings I tried George's chambers, but he was in the country, I saw Crackthorpe on the street in Oxford Street, but I could not face him, and bolted down Hanway Yard. I tried, and I could not ask him, and I got the eighteen pounds from Moss that day, and came home with it."

Give him money? of course I would give him money—my dear old friend! And, as an alterative and a wholesome shock to check that burst of passion and grief in which the poor fellow indulged, I thought fit to break into a very fierce and angry invective on my own part, which served to disguise the extreme feeling of pain and pity that I did not somehow choose to exhibit. I rated Clive soundly, and taxed him with unfriendliness and ingratitude for not having sooner applied to friends who would think shame of themselves whilst he was in need. Whatever he wanted was his as much as mine. I could not understand how the necessity of the family should, in truth, be so extreme as he described it, for after all many a poor family lived upon very much less; but I uttered none of these objections, checking them with the thought that Clive, on his first arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of economy, might have imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced him to this present destitution. (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 chateau 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 fifty 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.

This statement, of course, elicited from the widow a number of remarks not complimentary to my dear old Colonel. He might have kept his pensions had he not been a fool—he was a baby about money matters—misled himself and everybody—was a log in the house, etc. etc. etc.

I suggested that his annuities might possibly be put into some more satisfactory shape—that I had trustworthy lawyers with whom I would put him in communication—that he had best come to London to see to these matters—and that my wife had a large house where she would most gladly entertain the two gentlemen.

This I said with some reasonable dread—fearing, in the first place, her refusal; in the second, her acceptance of the invitation, with a proposal, as our house was large, to come herself and inhabit it for a while. Had I not seen that Campaigner arrive for a month at poor James Binnie's house in Fitzroy Square, and stay there for many years? Was I not aware that when she once set her foot in a gentleman's establishment, terrific battles must ensue before she could be dislodged? Had she not once been routed by Clive? and was she not now in command and possession? Do I not, finally, know something of the world; and have I not a weak, easy temper? I protest it was with terror that I awaited the widow's possible answer to my proposal.

To my great relief, she expressed the utmost approval of both my plans. I was uncommonly kind, she was sure, to interest myself about the two gentlemen, and for her blessed Rosa's sake, a fond mother thanked me. It was most advisable that he should earn some money by that horrid profession which he had chosen to adopt—a trade, she called it. She was clearly anxious get rid both of father and son, and agreed that the sooner they went the better.

We walked back arm-in-arm to the Colonel's quarters in the Old Town, Mrs. Mackenzie, in the course of our walk, doing me the honour to introduce me by name to several dingy acquaintances, whom we met sauntering up the street, and imparting to me, as each moved away, the pecuniary cause of his temporary residence in Boulogne. Spite of Rosey's delicate state of health, Mrs. Mackenzie did not hesitate to break the news to her of the gentlemen's probable departure, abruptly and eagerly, as if the intelligence was likely to please her:—and it did, rather than otherwise. The young woman, being in the habit of letting mamma judge for her, continued it in this instance; and whether her husband stayed or went, seemed to be equally content or apathetic. "And is it not most kind and generous of dear Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis to propose to receive Mr. Newcome and the Colonel?" This opportunity for gratitude being pointed out to Rosey, she acquiesced in it straightway—it was very kind of me, Rosey was sure. "And don't you ask after dear Mrs. Pendennis and the dear children—you poor dear suffering darling child?" Rosey, who had neglected this inquiry, immediately hoped Mrs. Pendennis and the children were well. The overpowering mother had taken utter possession of this poor little thing. Rosey's eyes followed the Campaigner about, and appealed to her at all moments. She sat under Mrs. Mackenzie as a bird before a boa-constrictor, doomed—fluttering—fascinated—scared and fawning as a whipt spaniel before a keeper.

The Colonel was on his accustomed bench on the rampart at this sunny hour. I repaired thither, and found the old gentleman seated by his grandson, who lay, as yesterday, on the little bonne's lap, one of his little purple hands closed round the grandfather's finger. "Hush!" says the good man, lifting up his other finger to his moustache, as I approached, "Boy's asleep. Il est bien joli quand il dort—le Boy, n'est-ce pas, Marie?" The maid believed monsieur well—the boy was a little angel. "This maid is a most trustworthy, valuable person, Pendennis," the Colonel said, with much gravity.

The boa-constrictor had fascinated him, too—the lash of that woman at home had cowed that helpless, gentle, noble spirit. As I looked at the head so upright and manly, now so beautiful and resigned—the year of his past life seemed to pass before me somehow in a flash of thought. I could fancy the accursed tyranny—the dumb acquiescence—the brutal jeer—the helpless remorse—the sleepless nights of pain and recollection—the gentle heart lacerated with deadly stabs—and the impotent hope. I own I burst into a sob at the sight, and thought of the noble suffering creature, and hid my face, and turned away.

He sprang up, releasing his hand from the child's, and placing it, the kind shaking hand, on my shoulder. "What is it, Arthur—my dear boy?" he said, looking wistfully in my face. "No bad news from home, my dear? Laura and the children well?"

The emotion was mastered in a moment, I put his arm under mine, and as we slowly sauntered up and down the sunny walk of the old rampart, I told him how I had come with special commands from Laura to bring him for a while to stay with us, and to settle his business, which I was sure had been wofully mismanaged, and to see whether we could not find the means of getting some little out of the wreck of the property for the boy yonder.

At first Colonel Newcome would not hear of quitting Boulogne, where Rosey would miss him—he was sure she would want him—but before the ladies of his family, to whom we presently returned, Thomas Newcome's resolution was quickly recalled. He agreed to go, and Clive coming in at this time was put in possession of our plan and gladly acquiesced in it. On that very evening I came with a carriage to conduct my two friends to the steamboat. Their little packets were made and ready. There was no pretence of grief at parting on the women's side, but Marie, the little maid, with Boy in her arms, cried sadly; and Clive heartily embraced the child; and the Colonel, going back to give it one more kiss, drew out of his neckcloth a little gold brooch which he wore, and which, trembling, he put into Marie's hand, bidding her take good care of Boy till his return.

"She is a good girl—a most faithful, attached girl, Arthur, do you see," the kind old gentleman said; "and I had no money to give her—no, not one single rupee."



CHAPTER LXXIV. In which Clive begins the World

We are ending our history, and yet poor Clive is but beginning the world. He has to earn the bread which he eats henceforth; and, as I saw his labours, his trials, and his disappointments, I could not but compare his calling with my own.

The drawbacks and penalties attendant upon our profession are taken into full account, as we well know, by literary men, and their friends. Our poverty, hardships, and disappointments are set forth with great emphasis, and often with too great truth by those who speak of us; but there are advantages belonging to our trade which are passed over, I think, by some of those who exercise it and describe it, and for which, in striking the balance of our accounts, we are not always duly thankful. We have no patron, so to speak—we sit in ante-chambers no more, waiting the present of a few guineas from my lord, in return for a fulsome dedication. We sell our wares to the book-purveyor, between whom and us there is no greater obligation than between him and his paper-maker or printer. In the great towns in our country immense stores of books are provided for us, with librarians to class them, kind attendants to wait upon us, and comfortable appliances for study. We require scarce any capital wherewith to exercise our trade. What other so-called learned profession is equally fortunate? A doctor, for example, after carefully and expensively educating himself, must invest in house and furniture, horses, carriage, and menservants, before the public patient will think of calling him in. I am told that such gentlemen have to coax and wheedle dowagers, to humour hypochondriacs, to practise a score of little subsidiary arts in order to make that of healing profitable. How many many hundreds of pounds has a barrister to sink upon his stock-in-trade before his returns are available? There are the costly charges of university education—the costly chambers in the Inn of Court—the clerk and his maintenance—the inevitable travels on circuit—certain expenses all to be defrayed before the possible client makes his appearance, and the chance of fame or competency arrives. The prizes are great, to be sure, in the law, but what a prodigious sum the lottery-ticket costs! If a man of letters cannot win, neither does he risk so much. Let us speak of our trade as we find it, and not be too eager in calling out for public compassion.

The artists, for the most part, do not cry out their woes as loudly as some gentlemen of the literary fraternity, and yet I think the life of many of them is harder; their chances even more precarious, and the conditions of their profession less independent and agreeable than ours. I have watched Smee, Esq., R.A., flattering and fawning, and at the same time boasting and swaggering, poor fellow, in order to secure a sitter. I have listened to a Manchester magnate talking about fine arts before one of J. J.'s pictures, assuming the airs of a painter, and laying down the most absurd laws respecting the art. I have seen poor Tomkins bowing a rich amateur through a private view, and noted the eager smiles on Tomkins' face at the amateur's slightest joke, the sickly twinkle of hope in his eyes as Amateur stopped before his own picture. I have been ushered by Chipstone's black servant through hall after hall peopled with plaster gods and heroes, into Chipstone's own magnificent studio, where he sat longing vainly for an order, and justly dreading his landlord's call for the rent. And, seeing how severely these gentlemen were taxed in their profession, I have been grateful for my own more fortunate one, which necessitates cringing to no patron; which calls for no keeping up of appearances; and which requires no stock-in-trade save the workman's industry, his best ability, and a dozen sheets of paper.

Having to turn with all his might to his new profession, Clive Newcome, one of the proudest men alive, chose to revolt and to be restive at almost every stage of his training. He had a natural genius for his art, and had acquired in his desultory way a very considerable skill. His drawing was better than his painting (an opinion which, were my friend present, he of course would utterly contradict); his designs and sketches were far superior to his finished compositions. His friends, presuming to judge of this artist's qualifications, ventured to counsel him accordingly, and were thanked for their pains in the usual manner. We had in the first place to bully and browbeat Clive most fiercely, before he would take fitting lodgings for the execution of those designs which we had in view for him. "Why should I take expensive lodgings?" says Clive, slapping his fist on the table. "I am a pauper, and can scarcely afford to live in a garret. Why should you pay me for drawing your portrait and Laura's and the children? What the deuce does Warrington want with the effigy of his old mug? You don't want them a bit—you only want to give me money.—It would be much more honest of me to take the money at once and own that I am a beggar; and I tell you what, Pen, the only money which I feel I come honestly by, is that which is paid me by a little printseller in Long Acre who buys my drawings, one with another, at fourteen shillings apiece, and out of whom I can earn pretty nearly two hundred a year. I am doing Coaches for him, sir, and Charges of Cavalry; the public like the Mail Coaches best—on a dark paper—the horses and miles picked out white—yellow dust—cobalt distance, and the guard and coachman of course in vermilion. That's what a gentleman can get his bread by—portraits, pooh! it's disguised beggary, Crackthorpe, and a half-dozen men of his regiment came, like good fellows as they are, and sent me five pounds apiece for their heads, but I tell you I am ashamed to take the money." Such used to be the tenor of Clive Newcome's conversation as he strode up and down our room after dinner, pulling his moustache, and dashing his long yellow hair off his gaunt face.

When Clive was inducted into the new lodgings at which his friends counselled him to hang up his ensign, the dear old Colonel accompanied his son, parting with a sincere regret from our little ones at home, to whom he became greatly endeared during his visit to us, and who always hailed him when he came to see us with smiles and caresses and sweet infantile welcome. On that day when he went away, Laura went up and kissed him with tears in her eyes. "You know how long I have been wanting to do it," this lady said to her husband. Indeed I cannot describe the behaviour of the old man during his stay with us, his gentle gratitude, his sweet simplicity and kindness, his thoughtful courtesy. There was not a servant in our little household but was eager to wait upon him. Laura's maid was as tender-hearted at his departure as her mistress. He was ailing for a short time, when our cook performed prodigies of puddings and jellies to suit his palate. The youth who held the offices of butler and valet in our establishment—a lazy and greedy youth whom Martha scolded in vain—would jump up and leave his supper to carry a message to our Colonel. My heart is full as I remember the kind words which he said to me at parting, and as I think that we were the means of giving a little comfort to that stricken and gentle soul.

Whilst the Colonel and his son stayed with us, letters of course passed between Clive and his family at Boulogne, but my wife remarked that the receipt of those letters appeared to give our friend but little pleasure. They were read in a minute, and he would toss them over to his father, or thrust them into his pocket with a gloomy face. "Don't you see," groans out Clive to me one evening, "that Rosa scarcely writes the letters, or if she does, that her mother is standing over her? That woman is the Nemesis of our life, Pen. How can I pay her off? Great God! how can I pay her off?" And so having spoken, his head fell between his hands, and as I watched him I saw a ghastly domestic picture before me of helpless pain, humiliating discord, stupid tyranny.

What, I say again, are the so-called great ills of life compared to these small ones?

The Colonel accompanied Clive to the lodgings which we had found for the young artist, in a quarter not far removed from the old house in Fitzroy Square, where some happy years of his youth had been spent. When sitters came to Clive—as at first they did in some numbers, many of his early friends being anxious to do him a service—the old gentleman was extraordinarily cheered and comforted. We could see by his face that affairs were going on well at the studio. He showed us the rooms which Rosey and the boy were to occupy. He prattled to our children and their mother, who was never tired of hearing him, about his grandson. He filled up the future nursery with a hundred little knick-knacks of his own contriving; and with wonderful cheap bargains, which he bought in his walks about Tottenham Court Road. He pasted a most elaborate book of prints and sketches for Boy. It was astonishing what notice Boy already took of pictures. He would have all the genius of his father. Would he had had a better grandfather than the foolish old man who had ruined all belonging to him!

However much they like each other, men in the London world see their friends but seldom. The place is so vast that even next door is distant; the calls of business, society, pleasure, so multifarious that mere friendship can get or give but an occasional shake of the hand in the hurried moments of passage. Men must live their lives; and are perforce selfish, but not unfriendly. At a great need you know where to look for your friend, and he that he is secure of you. So I went very little to Howland Street, where Clive now lived; very seldom to Lamb Court, where my dear old friend Warrington still sate in his old chambers, though our meetings were none the less cordial when they occurred, and our trust in one another always the same. Some folks say the world is heartless: he who says so either prates commonplaces (the most likely and charitable suggestion), or is heartless himself, or is most singular and unfortunate in having made no friends. Many such a reasonable mortal cannot have: our nature, I think, not sufficing for that sort of polygamy. How many persons would you have to deplore your death; or whose death would you wish to deplore? Could our hearts let in such a harem of dear friendships, the mere changes and recurrences of grief and mourning would be intolerable, and tax our lives beyond their value. In a word, we carry our own burthen in the world; push and struggle along on our own affairs; are pinched by our own shoes—though Heaven forbid we should not stop and forget ourselves sometimes, when a friend cries out in his distress, or we can help a poor stricken wanderer in his way. As for good women—these, my worthy reader, are different from us—the nature of these is to love, and to do kind offices, and devise untiring charities:—so I would have you to know, that, though Mr. Pendennis was parcus suorum cultor et infrequens, Mrs. Laura found plenty of time to go from Westminster to Bloomsbury; and to pay visits to her Colonel and her Clive, both of whom she had got to love with all her heart again, now misfortune was on them; and both of whom returned her kindness with an affection blessing the bestower and the receiver; and making the husband proud and thankful whose wife had earned such a noble regard. What is the dearest praise of all to a man? his own—or that you should love those whom he loves? I see Laura Pendennis ever constant and tender and pure, ever ministering in her sacred office of kindness—bestowing love and followed by blessings. Which would I have, think you; that priceless crown hymeneal, or the glory of a Tenth Edition?

Clive and his father had found not only a model friend in the lady above mentioned, but a perfect prize landlady in their happy lodgings. In her house, besides those apartments which Mr. Newcome had originally engaged, were rooms just sufficient to accommodate his wife, child, and servant, when they should come to him, with a very snug little upper chamber for the Colonel, close by Boy's nursery, where he liked best to be. "And if there is not room for the Campaigner, as you call her," says Mrs. Laura, with a shrug of her shoulders, "why, I am very sorry, but Clive must try and bear her absence as well as possible. After all, my dear Pen, you know he is married to Rosa and not to her mamma; and so, and so I think it will be quite best that they shall have their menage as before."

The cheapness of the lodgings which the prize landlady let, the quantity of neat new furniture which she put in, the consultations which she had with my wife regarding these supplies, were quite singular to me. "Have you pawned your diamonds, you reckless little person, in order to supply all this upholstery?" "No, sir, I have not pawned my diamonds," Mrs. Laura answers; and I was left to think (if I thought on the matter at all) that the landlady's own benevolence had provided these good things for Clive. For the wife of Laura's husband was perforce poor; and she asked me for no more money at this time than at any other.

At first, in spite of his grumbling, Clive's affairs looked so prosperous, and so many sitters came to him from amongst his old friends, that I was half inclined to believe with the Colonel and my wife, that he was a prodigious genius, and that his good fortune would go on increasing. Laura was for having Rosey return to her husband. Every wife ought to be with her husband. J. J. shook his head about the prosperity. "Let us see whether the Academy will have his pictures this year, and what a place they will give him," said Ridley. To do him justice, Clive thought far more humbly of his compositions than Ridley did. Not a little touching was it to us, who had known the young men in former days, to see them in their changed positions. It was Ridley, whose genius and industry had put him in the rank of a patron—Ridley, the good industrious apprentice, who had won the prize of his art—and not one of his many admirers saluted his talent and success with such a hearty recognition as Clive, whose generous soul knew no envy, and who always fired and kindled at the success of his friends.

When Mr. Clive used to go over to Boulogne from time to time to pay his dutiful visits to his wife, the Colonel did not accompany his son, but, during the latter's absence, would dine with Mrs. Pendennis.

Though the preparations were complete in Howland Street, and Clive dutifully went over to Boulogne, Mrs. Pendennis remarked that he seemed still to hesitate about bringing his wife to London.

Upon this Mr. Pendennis observed that some gentlemen were not particularly anxious about the society of their wives, and that this pair were perhaps better apart. Upon which Mrs. Pendennis, drubbing on the ground with a little foot, said, "Nonsense, for shame, Arthur! How can you speak so flippantly? Did he not swear before Heaven to love and cherish her, never to leave her, sir? Is not his duty his duty, sir?" (a most emphatic stamp of the foot). "Is she not his for better, or for worse?"

"Including the Campaigner, my dear?" says Mr. P.

"Don't laugh, sir! She must come to him. There is no room in Howland Street for Mrs. Mackenzie."

"You artful scheming creature! We have some spare rooms. Suppose we ask Mrs. Mackenzie to come and live with us, my dear? and we could then have the benefit of the garrison anecdotes, and mess jocularities of your favourite, Captain Goby."

"I could never bear the horrid man!" cried Mrs. Pendennis. And how can I tell why she disliked him?

Everything being now ready for the reception of Clive's little family, we counselled our friend to go over to Boulogne, and bring back his wife and child, and then to make some final stipulation with the Campaigner. He saw, as well as we, that the presence and tyranny of that fatal woman destroyed his father's health and spirits—that the old man knew no peace or comfort in her neighbourhood, and was actually hastening to his grave under that dreadful and unremitting persecution. Mrs. Mackenzie made Clive scarcely less wretched than his father—she governed his household—took away his weak wife's allegiance and affection from him—and caused the wretchedness of every single person round about her. They ought to live apart. If she was too poor to subsist upon her widow's pension, which, in truth, was but a very small pittance, let Clive give up to her, say, the half of his wife's income of one hundred pounds a year. His prospects and present means of earning money were such that he might afford to do without that portion of his income; at any rate, he and his father would be cheaply ransomed at that price from their imprisonment to this intolerable person. "Go, Clive," said his counsellors, "and bring back your wife and child, and let us all be happy together." For, you see, those advisers opined that if we had written over to Mrs. Newcome—"Come"—she would have come with the Campaigner in her suite.

Vowing that he would behave like a man of courage—and we knew that Clive had shown himself to be such in two or three previous battles—Clive crossed the water to bring back his little Rosey. Our good Colonel agreed to dine at our house during the days of his son's absence. I have said how beloved he was by young and old there—and he was kind enough to say afterwards, that no woman had made him so happy as Laura. We did not tell him—I know not from what reticence—that we had advised Clive to offer a bribe of fifty pounds a year to Mrs. Mackenzie; until about a fortnight after Clive's absence, and a week after his return, when news came that poor old Mrs. Mason was dead at Newcome, whereupon we informed the Colonel that he had another pensioner now in the Campaigner.

Colonel Newcome was thankful that his dear old friend had gone out of the world in comfort and without pain. She had made a will long since, leaving all her goods and chattels to Thomas Newcome—but having no money to give, the Colonel handed over these to the old lady's faithful attendant, Keziah.

Although many of the Colonel's old friends had parted from him or quarrelled with him in consequence of the ill success of the B. B. C., there were two old ladies who yet remained faithful to him—Miss Cann, namely, and honest little Miss Honeyman of Brighton, who, when she heard of the return to London of her nephew and brother-in-law, made a railway journey to the metropolis (being the first time she ever engaged in that kind of travelling), rustled into Clive's apartments in Howland Street in her neatest silks, and looking not a day older than on that when we last beheld her; and after briskly scolding the young man for permitting his father to enter into money affairs—of which the poor dear Colonel was as ignorant as a baby—she gave them both to understand that she had a little sum at her banker's at their disposal—and besought the Colonel to remember that her house was his, and that she should be proud and happy to receive him as soon and as often and for as long a time as he would honour her with his company. "Is not my house full of your presents"—cried the stout little old lady—"have I not reason to be grateful to all the Newcomes—yes, to all the Newcomes;—for Miss Ethel and her family have come to me every year for months, and I don't quarrel with them, and I won't, although you do, sir? Is not this shawl—are not these jewels that I wear," she continued, pointing to those well-known ornaments, "my dear Colonel's gift? Did you not relieve my brother Charles in this country and procure for him his place in India? Yes, my dear friend—and though you have been imprudent in money matters, my obligations towards you, and my gratitude, and my affection are always the same." Thus Miss Honeyman spoke, with somewhat of a quivering voice at the end of her little oration, but with exceeding state and dignity—for she believed that her investment of two hundred pounds in that unlucky B. B. C., which failed for half a million, was a sum of considerable importance, and gave her a right to express her opinion to the Managers.

Clive came back from Boulogne in a week, as we have said—but he came back without his wife, much to our alarm, and looked so exceedingly fierce and glum when we demanded the reason of his return without his family, that we saw wars and battles had taken place, and thought that in this last continental campaign the Campaigner had been too much for her friend.

The Colonel, to whom Clive communicated, though with us the poor lad held his tongue, told my wife what had happened:—not all the battles; which no doubt raged at breakfast, dinner, supper, during the week of Clive's visit to Boulogne,—but the upshot of these engagements. Rosey, not unwilling in her first private talk with her husband to come to England with him and the boy, showed herself irresolute on the second day at breakfast, when the fire was opened on both sides; cried at dinner when fierce assaults took place, in which Clive had the advantage; slept soundly, but besought him to be very firm, and met the enemy at breakfast with a quaking heart; cried all that day during which, pretty well without cease, the engagement lasted; and when Clive might have conquered and brought her off, but the weather was windy and the sea was rough, and he was pronounced a brute to venture on it with a wife in Rosey's situation.

Behind that "situation" the widow shielded herself. She clung to her adored child, and from that bulwark discharged abuse and satire at Clive and his father. He could not rout her out of her position. Having had the advantage on the first two or three days, on the four last he was beaten, and lost ground in each action. Rosey found that in her situation she could not part from her darling mamma. The Campaigner for her part averred that she might be reduced to beggary; that she might be robbed of her last farthing and swindled and cheated; that she might see her daughter's fortune flung away by unprincipled adventurers, and her blessed child left without even the comforts of life; but desert her in such a situation, she never would—no, never! Was not dear Rosa's health already impaired by the various shocks which she had undergone? Did she not require every comfort, every attendance? Monster! ask the doctor! She would stay with her darling child in spite of insult and rudeness and vulgarity. (Rosey's father was a King's officer, not a Company's officer, thank God!) She would stay as long at least as Rosey's situation continued, at Boulogne, if not in London, but with her child. They might refuse to send her money, having robbed her of all her own, but she would pawn her gown off her back for her child. Whimpers from Rosey—cries of "Mamma, mamma, compose yourself,"—convulsive sobs—clenched knuckles—flashing eyes—embraces rapidly clutched—laughs—stamps—snorts—from the dishevelled Campaigner; grinding teeth—livid fury and repeated breakages of the third commandment by Clive—I can fancy the whole scene. He returned to London without his wife, and when she came she brought Mrs. Mackenzie with her.



CHAPTER LXXV. Founder's Day at the Grey Friars

Rosey came, bringing discord and wretchedness with her to her husband, and the sentence of death or exile to his dear old father, all of which we foresaw—all of which Clive's friends would have longed to prevent—all of which were inevitable under the circumstances. Clive's domestic affairs were often talked over by our little set. Warrington and F. B. knew of his unhappiness. We three had strongly opined that the women being together at Boulogne, should stay there and live there, Clive sending them over pecuniary aid as his means permitted. "They must hate each other pretty well by this time," growls George Warrington. "Why on earth should they not part?" "What a woman that Mrs. Mackenzie is!" cries F. B. "What an infernal tartar and catamaran! She who was so uncommonly smiling and soft-spoken, and such a fine woman, by jingo! What puzzles all women are!" F. B. sighed, and drowned further reflection in beer.

On the other side, and most strongly advocating Rosey's return to Clive, was Mrs. Laura Pendennis; with certain arguments for which she had chapter and verse, and against which we of the separatist party had no appeal. "Did he marry her only for the days of her prosperity?" asked Laura. "Is it right, is it manly, that he should leave her now she is unhappy—poor little creature—no woman had ever more need of protection; and who should be her natural guardian save her husband? Surely, Arthur, you forget—have you forgotten them yourself, sir?—the solemn vows which Clive made at the altar. Is he not bound to his wife to keep only unto her so long as they both shall live, to love and comfort her, honour her, and keep her in sickness and health?"

"To keep her, yes—but not to keep the Campaigner," cries Mr. Pendennis. "It is a moral bigamy, Laura, which you advocate, you wicked, immoral young woman!"

But Laura, though she smiled at this notion, would not be put off from her first proposition. Turning to Clive, who was with us, talking over his doleful family circumstances, she took his hand, and pleaded the cause of right and religion with sweet artless fervour. She agreed with us that it was a hard lot for Clive to bear. So much the nobler the task, and the fulfilment of duty in enduring it. A few months too would put an end to his trials. When his child was born Mrs. Mackenzie would take her departure. It would even be Clive's duty to separate from her then, as it now was to humour his wife in her delicate condition, and to soothe the poor soul who had had a great deal of ill-health, of misfortune, of domestic calamity to wear and shatter her. Clive acquiesced with a groan, but—with a touching and generous resignation as we both thought. "She is right, Pen," he said, "I think your wife is always right. I will try, Laura, and bear my part, God help me! I will do my duty and strive my best to soothe and gratify my poor dear little woman. They will be making caps and things, and will not interrupt me in my studio. Of nights I can go to Clipstone Street and work at the Life. There's nothing like the Life, Pen. So you see I shan't be much at home except at meal-times, when by nature I shall have my mouth full, and no opportunity of quarrelling with poor Mrs. Mac." So he went home, followed and cheered by the love and pity of my dear wife, and determined stoutly to bear this heavy yoke which fate had put on him.

To do Mrs. Mackenzie justice, that lady backed up with all her might the statement which my wife had put forward, with a view of soothing poor Clive, viz., that the residence of his mother-in-law in his house was only to be temporary. "Temporary!" cries Mrs. Mac (who was kind enough to make a call on Mrs. Pendennis, and treat that lady to a piece of her mind). "Do you suppose, madam, that it could be otherwise? Do you suppose that worlds would induce me to stay in a house where I have received such treatment; where, after I and my daughter had been robbed of every shilling of our fortune, where we are daily insulted by Colonel Newcome and his son? Do you suppose, ma'am, that I do not know that Clive's friends hate me, and give themselves airs and look down upon my darling child, and try and make differences between my sweet Rosa and me—Rosa who might have been dead, or might have been starving, but that her dear mother came to her rescue? No, I would never stay. I loathe every day that I remain in the house—I would rather beg my bread—I would rather sweep the streets and starve—though, thank God, I have my pension as the widow of an officer in Her Majesty's Service, and I can live upon that—and of that Colonel Newcome cannot rob me; and when my darling love needs a mother's care no longer, I will leave her. I will shake the dust off my feet and leave that house. I will—And Mr. Newcome's friends may then sneer at me and abuse me, and blacken my darling child's heart towards me if they choose. And I thank you, Mrs. Pendennis, for all your kindness towards my daughter's family, and for the furniture which you have sent into the house, and for the trouble you have taken about our family arrangements. It was for this I took the liberty of calling upon you, and I wish you a very good morning." So speaking, the Campaigner left my wife; and Mrs. Pendennis enacted the pleasing scene with great spirit to her husband afterwards, concluding the whole with a splendid curtsey and toss of the head, such as Mrs. Mackenzie performed as her parting salute.

Our dear Colonel had fled before. He had acquiesced humbly with the decree of fate; and, lonely, old and beaten, marched honestly on the path of duty. It was a great blessing, he wrote to us, to him to think that in happier days and during many years he had been enabled to benefit his kind and excellent relative, Miss Honeyman. He could thankfully receive her hospitality now, and claim the kindness and shelter which this old friend gave him. No one could be more anxious to make him comfortable. The air of Brighton did him the greatest good; he had found some old friends, some old Bengalees there, with whom he enjoyed himself greatly, etc. How much did we, who knew his noble spirit, believe of this story? To us Heaven had awarded health, happiness, competence, loving children, united hearts, and modest prosperity. To yonder good man, whose long life shone with benefactions, and whose career was but kindness and honour, fate decreed poverty, disappointment, separation, a lonely old age. We bowed our heads, humiliated at the contrast of his lot and ours; and prayed Heaven to enable us to bear our present good fortune meekly, and our evil days, if they should come, with such a resignation as this good Christian showed.

I forgot to say that our attempts to better Thomas Newcome's money affairs were quite in vain, the Colonel insisting upon paying over every shilling of his military allowances and retiring pension to the parties from whom he had borrowed money previous to his bankruptcy. "Ah! what a good man that is," says Mr. Sherrick with tears in his eyes, "what a noble fellow, sir! He would die rather than not pay every farthing over. He'd starve, sir, that he would. The money ain't mine, sir, or if it was do you think I'd take it from the poor old boy? No, sir; by Jove! I honour and reverence him more now he ain't got a shilling in his pocket, than ever I did when we thought he was a-rolling in money."

My wife made one or two efforts at Samaritan visits in Howland Street, but was received by Mrs. Clive with such a faint welcome, and by the Campaigner with so grim a countenance, so many sneers, innuendoes, insults almost, that Laura's charity was beaten back, and she ceased to press good offices thus thanklessly received. If Clive came to visit us, as he very rarely did, after an official question or two regarding the health of his wife and child, no further mention was made of his family affairs. His painting, he said, was getting on tolerably well; he had work, scantily paid it is true, but work sufficient. He was reserved, uncommunicative, unlike the frank Clive of former times, and oppressed by his circumstances, as it was easy to see. I did not press the confidence which he was unwilling to offer, and thought best to respect his silence. I had a thousand affairs of my own; who has not in London? If you die to-morrow, your dearest friend will feel for you a hearty pang of sorrow, and go to his business as usual. I could divine, but would not care to describe, the life which my poor Clive was now leading; the vulgar misery, the sordid home, the cheerless toil, and lack of friendly companionship which darkened his kind soul. I was glad Clive's father was away. The Colonel wrote to us twice or thrice; could it be three months ago?—bless me, how time flies! He was happy, he wrote, with Miss Honeyman, who took the best care of him.

Mention has been made once or twice in the course of this history of the Grey Friars school,—where the Colonel and Clive and I had been brought up,—an ancient foundation of the time of James I., still subsisting in the heart of London city. The death-day of the founder of the place is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the school, and the fourscore old men of the Hospital, the founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice: emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy carved allegories. There is an old Hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time; an old Hall? many old halls; old staircases, passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits, walking in the midst of which we walk as it were in the early seventeenth century. To others than Cistercians, Grey Friars is a dreary place possibly. Nevertheless, the pupils educated there love to revisit it; and the oldest of us grow young again for an hour or two as we come back into those scenes of childhood.

The custom of the school is, that on the 12th of December, the Founder's Day, the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise of Fundatoris Nostri, and upon other subjects; and a goodly company of old Cistercians is generally brought together to attend this oration: after which we go to chapel and hear a sermon; after which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speeches are made. Before marching from the oration-hall to chapel, the stewards of the day's dinner, according to old-fashioned rite, have wands put into their hands, walk to church at the head of the procession, and sit there in places of honour. The boys are already in their seats, with smug fresh faces, and shining white collars; the old black-gowned pensioners are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, and Founder's Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were here, and how the doctor—not the present doctor, the doctor of our time—used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering boys, on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us would kick our shins during service time, and how the monitor would cane us afterwards because our shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some threescore old gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,—the old reverend blackgowns. Is Codd Ajax alive, you wonder?—the Cistercian lads called these old gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore—I know not wherefore—but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder? or Codd Soldier? or kind old Codd Gentleman, or has the grave closed over them? A plenty of candles lights up this chapel, and this scene of age and youth, and early memories, and pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place wherein childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service for Founder's Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected being the thirty-seventh, and we hear—

23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way.

24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.

25. I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.

As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up from my book towards the swarm of black-coated pensioners: and amongst them—amongst them—sate Thomas Newcome.

His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book—there was no mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey Friars. His order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The steps of this good man had been ordered him hither by Heaven's decree: to this almshouse! Here it was ordained that a life all love, and kindness, and honour, should end! I heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon, after that. How dared I to be in a place of mark, and he, he yonder among the poor? Oh, pardon, you noble soul! I ask forgiveness of you for being of a world that has so treated you—you my better, you the honest, and gentle, and good! I thought the service would never end, or the organist's voluntaries, or the preacher's homily.

The organ played us out of chapel at length, and I waited in the ante-chapel until the pensioners took their turn to quit it. My dear, dear old friend! I ran to him with a warmth and eagerness of recognition which no doubt showed themselves in my face and accents, as my heart was moved at the sight of him. His own face flushed up when he saw me, and his hand shook in mine. "I have found a home, Arthur," said he. "Don't you remember before I went to India, when we came to see the old Grey Friars, and visited Captain Scarsdale in his room?—a poor brother like me—an old Peninsular man. Scarsdale is gone now, sir, and is where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; and I thought then, when we saw him,—here would be a place for an old fellow when his career was over, to hang his sword up; to humble his soul, and to wait thankfully for the end. Arthur. My good friend, Lord H., who is a Cistercian like ourselves, and has just been appointed a governor, gave me his first nomination. Don't be agitated, Arthur my boy, I am very happy. I have good quarters, good food, good light and fire, and good friends; blessed be God! my dear kind young friend—my boy's friend; you have always been so, sir; and I take it uncommonly kind of you, and I thank God for you, sir. Why, sir, I am as happy as the day is long." He uttered words to this effect as he walked through the courts of the building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and comfortable, with a brisk fire crackling on the hearth; a little tea-table laid out, a Bible and spectacles by the side of it, and over the mantelpiece a drawing of his grandson by Clive.

"You may come and see me here, sir, whenever you like, and so may your dear wife and little ones, tell Laura, with my love;—but you must not stay now. You must go back to your dinner." In vain I pleaded that I had no stomach for it. He gave me a look, which seemed to say he desired to be alone, and I had to respect that order and leave him.

Of course I came to him on the very next day; though not with my wife and children, who were in truth absent in the country at Rosebury, where they were to pass the Christmas holidays; and where, this school-dinner over, I was to join them. On my second visit to Grey Friars my good friend entered more at length into the reasons why he had assumed the Poor Brother's gown; and I cannot say but that I acquiesced in his reasons, and admired that noble humility and contentedness of which he gave me an example.