In which Mrs. Clive Newcome’s Carriage is ordered
All the friends of the Newcome family, of course, knew the disaster which had befallen the good Colonel, and I was aware, for my own part, that not only his own, but almost the whole of Rosa Newcome’s property was involved in the common ruin. Some proposals of temporary relief were made to our friends from more quarters than one, but were thankfully rejected — and we were led to hope that the Colonel, having still his pension secured to him, which the law could not touch, might live comfortably enough the retirement to which, of course, he would betake himself, when the melancholy proceedings consequent on the bankruptcy were brought to an end. It was shown that he had been egregiously duped in the transaction — that his credulity had cost him and his family a large fortune — that he had given up every penny which belonged to him — that there could not be any sort of stain upon his honest reputation. The judge before whom he appeared spoke with feeling and regard of the unhappy gentleman — the lawyer who examined him respected the grief and fall of that simple old man. Thomas Newcome took a little room near the court where his affairs and the affairs of the company were adjudged — lived with a frugality which never was difficult to him — And once when perchance I met him in the City, avoided me, with a bow and courtesy that was quite humble, though proud and somehow inexpressibly touching to me. Fred Bayham was the only person whom he admitted. Fred always faithfully insisted upon attending him in and out of court. J. J. came to me immediately after he heard of the disaster, eager to place all his savings at the service of his friends. Laura and I came to London, and were urgent with similar offers. Our good friend declined to see any of us. F. B., again, with tears trickling on his rough cheeks, and a break in his voice, told me he feared that affairs must be very bad indeed, for the Colonel absolutely denied himself a cheroot to smoke. Laura drove to his lodgings and took him a box, which was held up to him as he came to open the door to my wife’s knock by our smiling little boy, He patted the child on his golden head and kissed him. My wife wished he would have done as much for her — but he would not — though she owned she kissed his hand. He drew it across his eyes and thanked her in a very calm and stately manner — but he did not invite her within the threshold of his door, saying simply, that such a room was not a fit place to receive a lady, “as you ought to know very well, Mrs. Smith,” he said to the landlady, who had accompanied my wife up the stairs. “He will eat scarcely anything,” the woman told us, “his meals come down untouched; his candles are burning all night, almost, as he sits poring over his papers.”
“He was bent — he who used to walk so uprightly,” Laura said. He seemed to have grown many years older, and was, indeed, quite a decrepit old man.
“I am glad they have left Clive out of the bankruptcy,” the Colonel said to Bayham; it was almost the only time when his voice exhibited any emotion. “It was very kind of them to leave out Clive, poor boy, and I have thanked the lawyers in court.” Those gentlemen, and the judge himself, were very much moved at this act of gratitude. The judge made a very feeling speech to the Colonel when he came up for his certificate. He passed very different comments on the conduct of the Manager of the Bank, when that person appeared for examination. He wished that the law had power to deal with those gentlemen who had come home with large fortunes from India, realised but a few years before the bankruptcy. Those gentlemen had known how to take care of themselves very well; and as for the Manager, is not his wife giving elegant balls at her elegant house at Cheltenham at this very day?
What weighed most upon the Colonel’s mind, F. B. imagined, was the thought that he had been the means of inducing many poor friends to embark their money in this luckless speculation. Take J. J.‘s money after he had persuaded old Ridley to place 200 pounds in Indian shares! Good God, he and his family should rather perish than he would touch a farthing of it! Many fierce words were uttered to him by Mrs. Mackenzie, for instance — by her angry daughter at Musselburgh — Josey’s husband, by Mr. Smee, R.A., and two or three Indian officers, friends of his own, who had entered into the speculation on his recommendation. These rebukes Thomas Newcome bore with an affecting meekness, as his faithful F. B. described to me, striving with many oaths and much loudness to carry off bis own emotion. But what moved the Colonel most of all, was a letter which came at this time from Honeyman in India, saying that he was doing well — that of course he knew of his benefactor’s misfortune, and that he sent a remittance which, D. V., should be annual, in payment of his debt to the Colonel, and his good sister at Brighton. “On receipt of this letter,” said F. B., “the old man was fairly beaten — the letter, with the bill in it, dropped out of his hands. He clasped them together, shaking in every limb, and his head dropped down on his breast as he said, ‘I thank my God Almighty for this!’ and he sent the cheque off to Mrs. Honeyman by the post that night, sir, every shilling of it; and he passed his old arm under mine — and we went out to Tom’s Coffee-House, and he ate some dinner the first time for ever so long, and drank a couple of glasses of port wine, and F. B. stood it, sir, and would stand his heart’s blood that dear old boy.”
It was on a Monday morning that those melancholy shutters were seen over the offices of the Bundelcund Bank in Lothbury, which were not to come down until the rooms were handed over to some other, and, let us trust, more fortunate speculators. The Indian bills had arrived, and been protested in the City on the previous Saturday. The Campaigner and Mrs. Rosey had arranged a little party to the theatre that evening, and the gallant Captain Goby had agreed to quit the delights of the Flag Club, in order to accompany the ladies. Neither of them knew what was happening in the City, or could account otherwise than by the common domestic causes, for Clive’s gloomy despondency and his father’s sad reserve. Clive had not been in the City on this day. He had spent it, as usual, in his studio, boude by his wife, and not disturbed by the messroom raillery of the Campaigner. They had dined early, in order to be in time for the theatre. Goby entertained them with the latest jokes from the smoking-room at the Flag, and was in his turn amused by the brilliant plans for the season which Rosey and her mamma sketched out the entertainments which Mrs. Clive proposed to give, the ball — she was dying for a masked ball just such a one as that was described in the Pall Mall Gazette of last week, out of that paper with the droll title, the Bengal Hurkaru, which the merchant-prince, the head of the bank, you know, in India, had given at Calcutta. “We must have a ball, too,” says Mrs. Mackenzie; “society demands it of you.” “Of course it does,” echoes Captain Goby, and he bethought him of a brilliant circle of young fellows from the Flag, whom he would bring in splendid uniform to dance with the pretty Mrs. Clive Newcome.
After the dinner — they little knew it was to be their last in that fine house — the ladies retired to give their parting kiss to baby — a parting look to the toilettes, with which they proposed to fascinate the inhabitants of the pit and the public boxes at the Olympic. Goby made vigorous play with the claret-bottle during the brief interval of potation allowed to him; he, too, little deeming that he should never drink bumper there again; Clive looking on with the melancholy and silent acquiescence which had, of late, been his part in the household. The carriage was announced — the ladies came down — pretty capotes on the lovely Campaigner, Goby vowed, looking as young and as handsome as her daughter, by Jove, and the ball door was opened to admit the two gentlemen and ladies to their carriage, when, as they were about to step in, a hansom cab drove up rapidly, in which was perceived Thomas Newcome’s anxious face. He got out of the vehicle — his own carriage making way for him — the ladies still on the steps. “Oh, the play! I forgot,” said the Colonel.
“Of course we are going to the play, papa,” cries little Rosey, with a gay little tap of her hand.
“I think you had better not,” Colonel Newcome said gravely.
“Indeed my darling child has set her heart upon it, and I would not have her disappointed for the world in her situation,” cries the Campaigner, tossing up her head.
The Colonel for reply bade his coachman drive to the stables, and come for further orders; and, turning to his daughter’s guest, expressed to Captain Goby his regret that the proposed party could not take place on that evening, as he had matter of very great importance to communicate to his family. On hearing these news, and understanding that his further company was not desirable, the Captain, a man of great presence of mind, arrested the hansom cabman, who was about to take his departure, and who blithely, knowing the Club and its inmates full well, carried off the jolly Captain to finish his evening at the Flag.
“Has it come, father?” said Clive with a sure prescience, looking in his father’s face.
The father took and grasped the hand which his son held out. “Let us go back into the dining-room,” he said. They entered it, and he filled himself a glass of wine out of the bottle still standing amidst the dessert. He bade the butler retire, who was lingering about the room and sideboard, and only wanted to know whether his master would have dinner, that was all. And, this gentleman having withdrawn, Colonel Newcome finished his glass of sherry and broke a biscuit; the Campaigner assuming an attitude of surprise and indignation, whilst Rosey had leisure to remark that papa looked very ill, and that something must have happened.
The Colonel took both her hands and drew her towards him and kissed her, whilst Rosey’s mamma, flouncing down on a chair, beat a tattoo upon the tablecloth with her fan. “Something has happened, my love,” the Colonel said very sadly; “you must show all your strength of mind, for a great misfortune has befallen us.”
“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-inlaw, 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............