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    The Newcomes

    Page 9
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    wicked Mr. Binnie--had all conspired more or less to give Clive Newcome a

      stepmother.

      But he had had an unlucky experience in his own case; and thought within

      himself, "No, I won't give Clive a stepmother. As Heaven has taken his

      own mother from him, why, I must try to be father and mother too to the

      lad." He kept the child as long as ever the climate would allow of his

      remaining, and then sent him home. Then his aim was to save money for the

      youngster. He was of a nature so uncontrollably generous, that to be sure

      he spent five rupees where another would save them, and make a fine show

      besides; but it is not a man's gifts or hospitalities that generally

      injure his fortune. It is on themselves that prodigals spend most. And as

      Newcome had no personal extravagances, and the smallest selfish wants;

      could live almost as frugally as a Hindoo; kept his horses not to race

      but to ride; wore his old clothes and uniforms until they were the

      laughter of his regiment; did not care for show, and had no longer an

      extravagant wife; he managed to lay by considerably out of his liberal

      allowances, and to find himself and Clive growing richer every year.

      "When Clive has had five or six years at school"--that was his scheme--

      "he will be a fine scholar, and have at least as much classical learning

      as a gentleman in the world need possess. Then I will go to England, and

      we will pass three or four years together, in which he will learn to be

      intimate with me, and, I hope, to like me. I shall be his pupil for Latin

      and Greek, and try and make up for lost time. I know there is nothing

      like a knowledge of the classics to give a man good breeding--Ingenuas

      didicisse fideliter artes emollunt mores, nec sinuisse feros. I shall be

      able to help him with my knowledge of the world, and to keep him out of

      the way of sharpers and a pack of rogues who commonly infest young men. I

      will make myself his companion, and pretend to no superiority; for,

      indeed, isn't he my superior? Of course he is, with his advantages. He

      hasn't been an idle young scamp as I was. And we will travel together,

      first through England, Scotland, and Ireland, for every man should know

      his own country, and then we will make the grand tour. Then, by the time

      he is eighteen, he will be able to choose his profession. He can go into

      the army, and emulate the glorious man after whom I named him; or if he

      prefers the church, or the law, they are open to him; and when he goes to

      the university, by which time I shall be in all probability a

      major-general, I can come back to India for a few years, and return by

      the time he has a wife and a home for his old father; or if I die I shall

      have done the best for him, and my boy will be left with the best

      education, a tolerable small fortune, and the blessing of his old

      father."

      Such were the plans of our kind schemer. How fondly he dwelt on them, how

      affectionately he wrote of them to his boy! How he read books of travels

      and looked over the maps of Europe! and said, "Rome, sir, glorious Rome;

      it won't be very long, Major, before my boy and I see the Colosseum, and

      kiss the Pope's toe. We shall go up the Rhine to Switzerland, and over

      the Simplon, the work of the great Napoleon. By Jove, sir, think of the

      Turks before Vienna, and Sobieski clearing eighty thousand of 'em off the

      face of the earth! How my boy will rejoice in the picture-galleries

      there, and in Prince Eugene's prints! You know, I suppose, that Prince

      Eugene, one of the greatest generals in the world, was also one of the

      greatest lovers of the fine arts. Ingenuas didicisse, hey, Doctor! you

      know the rest,--emollunt mores nec----"

      "Emollunt mores! Colonel," says Doctor McTaggart, who perhaps was too

      canny to correct the commanding officer's Latin. "Don't ye noo that

      Prence Eugene was about as savage a Turrk as iver was? Have ye niver rad

      the mimores of the Prants de Leen?"

      "Well, he was a great cavalry officer," answers the Colonel, "and he left

      a great collection of prints--that you know. How Clive will delight in

      them! The boy's talent for drawing is wonderful, sir, wonderful. He sent

      me a picture of our old school--the very actual thing, sir; the

      cloisters, the school, the head gown-boy going in with the rods, and the

      Doctor himself. It would make you die of laughing!"

      He regaled the ladies of the regiment with Clive's letters, and those of

      Miss Honeyman, which contained an account of the boy. He even bored some

      of his bearers with this prattle; and sporting young men would give or

      take odds that the Colonel would mention Clive's name, once before five

      minutes, three times in ten minutes, twenty-five times in the course of

      dinner, and so on. But they who laughed at the Colonel laughed very

      kindly; and everybody who knew him, loved him; everybody, that is, who

      loved modesty, and generosity, and honour.

      At last the happy time came for which the kind father had been longing

      more passionately than any prisoner for liberty, or schoolboy for

      holiday. Colonel Newcome has taken leave of his regiment, leaving Major

      Tomkinson, nothing loth, in command. He has travelled to Calcutta; and

      the Commander-in-Chief, in general orders, has announced that in giving

      to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Newcome, C.B., of the Bengal Cavalry, leave

      for the first time, after no less than thirty-four years' absence from

      home, "he (Sir George Hustler) cannot refrain from expressing his sense

      of the great and meritorious services of this most distinguished officer,

      who has left his regiment in a state of the highest discipline and

      efficiency." And now the ship has sailed, the voyage is over, and once

      more, after so many long years, the honest soldier's foot is on his

      native shore.

      CHAPTER VI

      Newcome Brothers

      Besides his own boy, whom he worshipped, this kind Colonel had a score,

      at least, of adopted children, to whom he chose to stand in the light of

      a father. He was for ever whirling away in postchaises to this school and

      that, to see Jack Brown's boys, of the Cavalry; or Mrs. Smith's girls, of

      the Civil Service; or poor Tom Hicks's orphan, who had nobody to look

      after him now that the cholera had carried off Tom, and his wife too. On

      board the ship in which he returned from Calcutta were a dozen of little

      children, of both sexes, some of whom he actually escorted to their

      friends before he visited his own; and though his heart was longing for

      his boy at Grey Friars. The children at the schools seen, and largely

      rewarded out of his bounty (his loose white trousers had great pockets,

      always heavy with gold and silver, which he jingled when he was not

      pulling his mustachios--to see the way in which he tipped children made

      one almost long to be a boy again); and when he had visited Miss

      Pinkerton's establishment, or Doctor Ramshorn's adjoining academy at

      Chiswick, and seen little Tom Davis or little Fanny Holmes the honest

      fellow would come home and write off straightway a long letter to Tom's

      or Fanny's parents, far away in the Indian country, whose hearts he made

      happy by his accounts of
    their children, as he had delighted the children

      themselves by his affection and bounty. All the apple- and orange-women

      (especially such as had babies as well as lollipops at their stalls), all

      the street-sweepers on the road between Nerot's and the Oriental, knew

      him, and were his pensioners. His brothers in Threadneedle Street cast up

      their eyes at the cheques which he drew.

      One of the little people of whom the kind Newcome had taken charge

      luckily dwelt near Portsmouth; and when the faithful Colonel consigned

      Miss Fipps to her grandmother, Mrs. Admiral Fipps, at Southampton, Miss

      Fipps clung to her guardian, and with tears and howls was torn away from

      him. Not until her maiden aunts had consoled her with strawberries, which

      she never before had tasted, was the little Indian comforted for the

      departure of her dear Colonel. Master Cox, Tom Cox's boy, of the Native

      Infantry, had to be carried asleep from the "George" to the mail that

      night. Master Cox woke up at the dawn wondering, as the coach passed

      through the pleasant green roads of Bromley. The good gentleman consigned

      the little chap to his uncle, Dr. Cox, Bloomsbury Square, before he went

      to his own quarters, and then on the errand on which his fond heart was

      bent.

      He had written to his brothers from Portsmouth, announcing his arrival,

      and three words to Clive, conveying the same intelligence. The letter was

      served to the boy along with one bowl of tea and one buttered roll, of

      eighty such which were distributed to fourscore other boys, boarders of

      the same house with our young friend. How the lad's face must have

      flushed, and his eyes brightened, when he read the news! When the master

      of the house, the Rev. Mr. Popkinson, came into the long-room, with a

      good-natured face, and said, "Newcome, you're wanted," he knows who is

      come. He does not heed that notorious bruiser, Old Hodge, who roars out,

      "Confound you, Newcome: I'll give it you for upsetting your tea over my

      new trousers." He runs to the room where the stranger is waiting for him.

      We will shut the door, if you please, upon that scene.

      If Clive had not been as fine and handsome a young lad as any in that

      school or country, no doubt his fond father would have been just as well

      pleased, and endowed him with a hundred fanciful graces; but in truth, in

      looks and manners he was every thing which his parent could desire; and I

      hope the artist who illustrates this work will take care to do justice to

      his portrait. Mr. Clive himself, let that painter be assured, will not be

      too well pleased if his countenance and figure do not receive proper

      attention. He is not yet endowed with those splendid mustachios and

      whiskers which he has himself subsequently depicted, but he is the

      picture of health, strength, activity, and good-humour. He has a good

      forehead, shaded with a quantity of waving light hair; a complexion which

      ladies might envy; a mouth which seems accustomed to laughing; and a pair

      of blue eyes that sparkle with intelligence and frank kindness. No wonder

      the pleased father cannot refrain from looking at him. He is, in a word,

      just such a youth as has a right to be the hero of a novel.

      The bell rings for second school, and Mr. Popkinson, arrayed in cap and

      gown, comes in to shake Colonel Newcome by the hand, and to say he

      supposes it's to be a holiday for Newcome that day. He does not say a

      word about Clive's scrape of the day before, and that awful row in the

      bedrooms, where the lad and three others were discovered making a supper

      off a pork-pie and two bottles of prime old port from the Red Cow

      public-house in Grey Friars Lane. When the bell has done ringing, and all

      these busy little bees have swarmed into their hive, there is a solitude

      in the place. The Colonel and his son walked the playground together,

      that gravelly flat, as destitute of herbage as the Arabian desert, but,

      nevertheless, in the language of the place called the green. They walk

      the green, and they pace the cloisters, and Clive shows his father his

      own name of Thomas Newcome carved upon one of the arches forty years ago.

      As they talk, the boy gives sidelong glances at his new friend, and

      wonders at the Colonel's loose trousers, long mustachios, and yellow

      face. He looks very odd, Clive thinks, very odd and very kind, and he

      looks like a gentleman, every inch of him:--not like Martin's father, who

      came to see his son lately in high-lows, and a shocking bad hat, and

      actually flung coppers amongst the boys for a scramble. He bursts out

      a-laughing at the exquisitely ludicrous idea of a gentleman of his

      fashion scrambling for coppers.

      And now, enjoining the boy to be ready against his return (and you may be

      sure Mr. Clive was on the look-out long before his sire appeared), the

      Colonel whirled away in his cab to the City to shake hands with his

      brothers, whom he had not seen since they were demure little men in blue

      jackets, under charge of a serious tutor.

      He rushed through the clerks and the banking-house, he broke into the

      parlour where the lords of the establishment were seated. He astonished

      those trim quiet gentlemen by the warmth of his greeting, by the vigour

      of his hand-shake, and the loud high tones of his voice, which penetrated

      the glass walls of the parlour, and might actually be heard by the busy

      clerks in the hall without. He knew Brian from Hobson at once--that

      unlucky little accident in the go-cart having left its mark for ever on

      the nose of Sir Brian Newcome, the elder of the twins. Sir Brian had a

      bald head and light hair, a short whisker cut to his cheek, a buff

      waistcoat, very neat boots and hands. He looked like the "Portrait of a

      Gentleman" at the Exhibition, as the worthy is represented: dignified in

      attitude, bland, smiling, and statesmanlike, sitting at a table unsealing

      letters, with a despatch-box and a silver inkstand before him, a column

      and a scarlet curtain behind, and a park in the distance, with a great

      thunderstorm lowering in the sky. Such a portrait, in fact, hangs over

      the great sideboard at Newcome to this day, and above the three great

      silver waiters, which the gratitude of as many Companies has presented to

      their respected director and chairman.

      In face, Hobson Newcome, Esq., was like his elder brother, but was more

      portly in person. He allowed his red whiskers to grow wherever nature had

      planted them, on his cheeks and under his chin. He wore thick shoes with

      nails in them, or natty round-toed boots, with tight trousers and a

      single strap. He affected the country gentleman in his appearance. His

      hat had a broad brim, and the ample pockets of his cut-away coat were

      never destitute of agricultural produce, samples of beans or corn, which

      he used to bite and chew even on 'Change, or a whip-lash, or balls for

      horses: in fine, he was a good old country gentleman. If it was fine in

      Threadneedle Street, he would say it was good weather for the hay; if it

      rained, the country wanted rain; if it was frosty, "No hunting to-day,

      Tomkins, my boy," and so forth. As he rode from Bryanstone Square to the

      City you would take
    him--and he was pleased to be so taken--for a jolly

      country squire. He was a better man of business than his more solemn and

      stately brother, at whom he laughed in his jocular way; and he said

      rightly, that a gentleman must get up very early in the morning who

      wanted to take him in.

      The Colonel breaks into the sanctum of these worthy gentlemen; and each

      receives him in a manner consonant with his peculiar nature. Sir Brian

      regretted that Lady Anne was away from London, being at Brighton with the

      children, who were all ill of the measles. Hobson said, "Maria can't

      treat you to such good company as my lady could give you, but when will

      you take a day and come and dine with us? Let's see, to-day's Wednesday;

      to-morrow we've a party. No, we're engaged." He meant that his table was

      full, and that he did not care to crowd it; but there was no use in

      imparting this circumstance to the Colonel. "Friday, we dine at Judge

      Budge's--queer name, Judge Budge, ain't it? Saturday, I'm going down to

      Marblehead, to look after the hay. Come on Monday, Tom, and I'll

      introduce you to the missus and the young 'uns."

      "I will bring Clive," says Colonel Newcome, rather disturbed at this

      reception. "After his illness my sister-in-law was very kind to him."

      "No, hang it, don't bring boys; there's no good in boys; they stop the

      talk downstairs, and the ladies don't want 'em in the drawing-room. Send

      him to dine with the children on Sunday, if you like, and come along down

      with me to Marblehead, and I'll show you such a crop of hay as will make

      your eyes open. Are you fond of farming?"

      "I have not seen my boy for years," says the Colonel; "I had rather pass

      Saturday and Sunday with him, if you please, and some day we will go to

      Marblehead together."

      "Well, an offer's an offer. I don't know any pleasanter thing than

      getting out of this confounded City and smelling the hedges, and looking

      at the crops coming up, and passing the Sunday in quiet." And his own

      tastes being thus agricultural, the honest gentleman thought that

      everybody else must delight in the same recreation.

      "In the winter, I hope we shall see you at Newcome," says the elder

      brother, blandly smiling. "I can't give you any tiger-shooting, but I'll

      promise you that you shall find plenty of pheasants in our jungle," and

      he laughed very gently at this mild sally.

      The Colonel gave him a queer look. "I shall be at Newcome before the

      winter. I shall be there, please God, before many days are over."

      "Indeed!" says the Baronet, with an air of great surprise. "You are going

      down to look at the cradle of our race. I believe the Newcomes were there

      before the Conqueror. It was but a village in our grandfather's time, and

      it is an immense flourishing town now, for which I hope to get--I expect

      to get--a charter."

      "Do you?" says the Colonel. "I am going down there to see a relation."

      "A relation! What relatives have we there?" cries the Baronet. "My

      children, with the exception of Barnes. Barnes, this is your uncle

      Colonel Thomas Newcome. I have great pleasure, brother, in introducing

      you to my eldest son."

      A fair-haired young gentleman, languid and pale, and arrayed in the very

      height of fashion, made his appearance at this juncture in the parlour,

      and returned Colonel Newcome's greeting with a smiling acknowledgment of

      his own. "Very happy to see you, I'm sure," said the young man. "You find

      London very much changed since you were here? Very good time to come--the

      very full of the season."

      Poor Thomas Newcome was quite abashed by this strange reception. Here was

      a man, hungry for affection, and one relation asked him to dinner next

      Monday, and another invited him to shoot pheasants at Christmas. Here was

      a beardless young sprig, who patronised him, and vouchsafed to ask him

     


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