Park Lane
Clive woke up the next morning to be aware of a racking headache, and, by the dim light of his throbbing eyes, to behold his father with solemn face at his bed-foot — a reproving conscience to greet his waking.
“You drank too much wine last night, and disgraced yourself, sir,” the old soldier said. “You must get up and eat humble pie this morning, my boy.”
“Humble what, father?” asked the lad, hardly aware of his words, or the scene before him. “Oh, I’ve got such a headache!”
“Serve you right, sir. Many a young fellow has had to go on parade in the morning, with a headache earned overnight. Drink this water. Now, jump up. Now, dash the water well over your head. There you come! Make your toilette quickly; and let us be off, and find cousin Barnes before he has left home.”
Clive obeyed the paternal orders; dressed himself quickly; and descending, found his father smoking his morning cigar in the apartment where they had dined the night before, and where the tables still were covered with the relics of yesterday’s feast — the emptied bottles, the blank lamps, the scattered ashes and fruits, the wretched heel-taps that have been lying exposed all night to the air. Who does not know the aspect of an expired feast?
“The field of action strewed with the dead, my boy,” says Clive’s father. “See, here’s the glass on the floor yet, and a great stain of claret on the carpet.”
“Oh, father!” says Clive, hanging his head down, “I know I shouldn’t have done it. But Barnes Newcome would provoke the patience of Job; and I couldn’t bear to have my father insulted.”
“I am big enough to fight my own battles, my boy,” the Colonel said good-naturedly, putting his hand on the lad’s damp head. “How your head throbs! If Barnes laughed at my singing, depend upon it, sir, there was something ridiculous in it, and he laughed because he could not help it. If he behaved ill, we should not; and to a man who is eating our salt too, and is of our blood.”
“He is ashamed of our blood, father,” cries Clive, still indignant.
“We ought to be ashamed of doing wrong. We must go and ask his pardon. Once when I was a young man in India,” the father continued very gravely, “some hot words passed at mess — not such an insult as that of last night; I don’t think I could have quite borne that — and people found fault with me for forgiving the youngster who had uttered the offensive expressions over his wine. Some of my acquaintance sneered at my courage, and that is a hard imputation for a young fellow of spirit to bear. But providentially, you see, it was war-time, and very soon after I had the good luck to show that I was not a poule mouillee, as the French call it; and the man who insulted me, and whom I forgave, became my fastest friend, and died by my side — it was poor Jack Cutler — at Argaum. We must go and ask Barnes Newcome’s pardon, sir, and forgive other people’s trespasses, my boy, if we hope forgiveness of our own.” His voice sank down as he spoke, and he bowed his honest head reverently. I have heard his son tell the simple story years afterwards, with tears in his eyes.
Piccadilly was hardly yet awake the next morning, and the sparkling dews and the poor homeless vagabonds still had possession of the grass of Hyde Park, as the pair walked up to Sir Brian Newcome’s house, where the shutters were just opening to let in the day. The housemaid, who was scrubbing the steps of the house, and washing its trim feet in a manner which became such a polite mansion’s morning toilet, knew Master Clive, and smiled at him from under her blousy curl-papers, admitting the two gentlemen into Sir Brian’s dining-room, where they proposed to wait until Mr. Barnes should appear. There they sate for an hour looking at Lawrence’s picture of Lady Anne, leaning over a harp, attired in white muslin; at Harlowe’s portrait of Mrs. Newcome, with her two sons simpering at her knees, painted at a time when the Newcome Brothers were not the bald-headed, red-whiskered British merchants with whom the reader has made acquaintance, but chubby children with hair flowing down their backs, and quaint little swallow-tailed jackets and nankeen trousers. A splendid portrait of the late Earl of Kew in his peer’s robes hangs opposite his daughter and her harp. We are writing of George the Fourth’s reign; I dare say there hung in the room a fine framed print of that great sovereign. The chandelier is in a canvas bag; the vast sideboard, whereon are erected open frames for the support of Sir Brian Newcome’s grand silver trays, which on dinner days gleam on that festive board, now groans under the weight of Sir Brian’s bluebooks. An immense receptacle for wine, shaped like a Roman sarcophagus, lurks under the sideboard. Two people sitting at that large dining-table must talk very loud so as to make themselves heard across those great slabs of mahogany covered with damask. The butler and servants who attend at the table take a long time walking round it. I picture to myself two persons of ordinary size sitting in that great room at that great table, far apart, in neat evening costume, sipping a little sherry, silent, genteel, and glum; and think the great and wealthy are not always to be envied, and that there may be more comfort and happiness in a snug parlour, where you are served by a brisk little maid, than in a great dark, dreary dining-hall, where a funereal major-domo and a couple of stealthy footmen minister to you your mutton-chops. They come and lay the cloth presently, wide as the main-sheet of some tall ammiral. A pile of newspapers and letters for the master of the house; the Newcome Sentinel, old county paper, moderate conservative, in which our worthy townsman and member is praised, his benefactions are recorded, and his speeches given at full length; the Newcome Independent, in which our precious member is weekly described as a ninny, and informed almost every Thursday morning that he is a bloated aristocrat, as he munches his dry toast. Heaps of letters, county papers, Times and Morning Herald for Sir Brian Newcome; little heaps of letters (dinner and soiree cards most of these) and Morning Post for Mr. Barnes. Punctually as eight o’clock strikes, that young gentleman comes to breakfast; his father will lie yet for another hour; the Baronet’s prodigious labours in the House of Commons keeping him frequently out of bed till sunrise.
As his cousin entered the room, Clive turned very red, and perhaps a faint blush might appear on Barnes’s pallid countenance. He came in, a handkerchief in one hand, a pamphlet in the other, and both hands being thus engaged, he could offer neither to his kinsmen.
“You are come to breakfast, I hope,” he said — calling it “weakfast,” and pronouncing the words with a most languid drawl —“or, perhaps, you want to see my father? He is never out of his room till half-past nine. Harper, did Sir Brian come in last night before or after me?” Harper, the butler, thinks Sir Brian came in after Mr. Barnes.
When that functionary had quitted the room, Barnes turned round to his uncle in a candid, smiling way, and said, “The fact is, sir, I don’t know when I came home myself very distinctly, and can’t, of course, tell about my father. Generally, you know, there are two candles left in the hall, you know; and if there are two, you know, I know of course that my father is still at the House. But last night, after that capital song you sang, hang me if I know what happened to me. I beg your pardon, sir, I’m shocked at having been so overtaken. Such a confounded thing doesn’t happen to me once in ten years. I do trust I didn’t do anything rude to anybody, for I thought some of your friends the pleasantest fellows I ever met in my life; and as for the claret, ‘gad, as if I hadn’t had enough after dinner, I brought a quantity of it away with me on my shirt-front and waistcoat!”
“I beg your pardon, Barnes,” Clive said, blushing deeply, “and I’m very sorry indeed for what passed; I threw it.”
The Colonel, who had been listening with a queer expression of wonder and doubt on his face, here interrupted Mr. Barnes. “It was Clive that — that spilled the wine over you last night,” Thomas Newcome said; “the young rascal had drunk a great deal too much wine, and had neither the use of his head nor his hands, and this morning I have given him a lecture, and he has come to ask your pardon for his clumsiness; and if you have forgotten your share in the night’s transaction, I hope you have forgotten his, and will accept his hand and his apology.”
“Apology: There’s no apology,” cries Barnes, holding out a couple of fingers of his hand, but looking towards the Colonel. “I don’t know what happened any more than the dead. Did we have a row? Were there any glasses broken? The best way in such cases is to sweep ’em up. We can’t mend them.”
The Colonel said gravely —“that he was thankful to find that the disturbance of the night before had no worse result.” He pulled the tail of Clive’s coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his talk. “The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy,” he said, “and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself. Wine has given you a warning too, which I hope you will remember all your life; no one has seen me the worse for drink these forty years, and I hope both you young gentlemen will take counsel by an old soldier, who fully preaches what he practises, and beseeches you to beware of the bottle.”
After quitting their kinsman, the kind Colonel further improved the occasion with his son; and told him out of his own experience many stories of quarrels, and duels, and wine; — how the wine had occasioned the brawls, and the foolish speech overnight the bloody meeting at morning; how he had known widows and orphans made by hot words uttered in idle orgies: how the truest honour was the manly confession of wrong; and the best courage the courage to avoid temptation. The humble-minded speaker, whose advice contained the best of all wisdom, that which comes from a gentle and reverent spirit, and a pure and generous heart, never for once thought of the effect which he might be producing, but uttered his simple say according to the truth within him. Indeed, he spoke out his mind pretty resolutely on all subjects which moved or interested him; and Clive, his son, and his honest chum, Mr. Binnie, who had a great deal more reading and much keener intelligence than the Colonel, were amused often at his naive opinion about men, or books, or morals. Mr. Clive had a very fine natural sense of humour, which played perpetually round his father’s simple philosophy with kind and smiling comments. Between this pair of friends the superiority of wit lay, almost from the very first, on the younger man’s side; but, on the other hand, Clive felt a tender admiration for his father’s goodness, a loving delight in contemplating his elder’s character, which he has never lost, and which in the trials of their future life inexpressibly cheered and consoled both of them! Beati illi! O man of the world, whose wearied eyes may glance over this page, may those who come after you so regard you! O generous boy, who read in it, may you have such a friend to trust and cherish in youth, and in future days fondly and proudly to remember!
Some four or five weeks after the quasi-reconciliation between Clive and his kinsman, the chief part of Sir Brian Newcome’s family were assembled at the breakfast-table together, where the meal was taken in common, and at the early hour of eight (unless the senator was kept too late in the House of Commons overnight); and Lady Anne and her nursery were now returned to London again, little Alfred being perfectly set up by a month of Brighton air. It was a Thursday morning; on which day of the week, it has been said, the Newcome Independent and the Newcome Sentinel both made their appearance upon the Baronet’s table. The household from above and from below; the maids and footmen from the basement; the nurses, children, and governesses from the attics; all poured into the room at the sound of a certain bell.
I do not sneer at the purpose for which, at that chiming eight-o’clock bell, the household is called together. The urns are hissing, the plate is shining; the father of the house, standing up, reads from a gilt book for three or four minutes in a measured cadence. The members of the family are around the table in an attitude of decent reverence; the younger children whisper responses at their mother’s knees; the governess worships a little apart; the maids and the large footmen are in a cluster before their chairs, the upper servants performing their devotion on the other side of the sideboard; the nurse whisks about the unconscious last-born, and tosses it up and down during the ceremony. I do not sneer at that — at the act at which all these people are assembled — it is at the rest of the day I marvel; at the rest of the day, and what it brings. At the very instant when the voice has ceased speaking and the gilded book is shut, the world begins again, and for the next twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes all that household is given up to it. The servile squad rises up and marches away to its basement, whence, should it happen to be a gala-day, those tall gentlemen at present attired in Oxford mixture will issue forth with flour plastered on their heads, yellow coats, pink breeches, sky-blue waistcoats, silver lace, buckles in their shoes, black silk bags on their backs, and I don’t know what insane emblems of servility and absurd bedizenments of folly. Their very manner of speaking to what we call their masters and mistresses will be a like monstrous masquerade. You know no more of that race which inhabits the basement floor, than of the men and brethren of Timbuctoo, to whom some among us send missionaries. If you met some of your servants in the streets (I respectfully suppose for a moment that the reader is a person of high fashion and a great establishment), you would not know their faces. You might sleep under the same roof for half a century an............