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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 293
justice, unless it is tinged with a little romance, gets no respect
from them.
So, forsooth, because Philip has performed this certainly most
generous, most dashing, most reckless piece of extravagance, he is
to be held up as a perfect preux chevalier. The most riotous
dinners are ordered for him. We are to wait until he comes to
breakfast, and he is pretty nearly always late. The children are
to be sent round to kiss Uncle Philip, as he is now called. The
children ? I wonder the mother did not jump up and kiss him
too. Elle en était capable. As for the osculations which took place
between Mrs. Pendennis and her new-found young friend, Miss Charlotte
Baynes, they were perfectly ridiculous; two school children
could not have behaved more absurdly ; and I don't know which
seemed to be the younger of these two. There were colloquies,
assignations, meetings on the ramparts, on the pier, where know I ?
—and the servants and little children of the two establishments
were perpetually trotting to and fro with letters from dearest Laura
to dearest Charlotte, and dearest Charlotte to her dearest Mrs.
Pendennis. Why, my wife absolutely went the length of saying
that dearest Charlotte's mother, Mrs. Baynes, was a worthy clever
woman, and a good mother—a woman whose tongue never ceased
clacking about the regiment, and all the officers, and all the
officers' wives; of whom, by the way, she had very little good
to tell.
"A worthy mother, is she, my dear?" I say. "But, oh,
mercy ! Mrs. Baynes would be an awful mother-in-law !"
I shuddered at the thought of having such a commonplace, hard,
ill-bred woman in a state of quasi-authority over me.
On this Mrs. Laura must break out in quite a petulant tone—
" Oh, how stale this kind of thing is, Arthur, from a man qui veut
passer pour un homme d'esprit ! You are always attacking
mothers-in-law !"
" Witness Mrs. Mackenzie, my love—Clive Newcome's motherin-law.
That's a nice creature ; not selfish, not wicked, not ________ "
" Not nonsense, Arthur !"
"Mrs. Baynes knew Mrs. Mackenzie in the West Indies, as
she knew all the female army. She considers Mrs. Mackenzie was
a most elegant handsome dashing woman—only a little too fond of
the admiration of our sex. There was, I own, a fascination about
Captain Goby. Do you remember, my love, that man with the
stays and dyed hair, who ________ "
" Oh, Arthur ! When our girls marry, I suppose you will teach
their husbands to abuse, and scorn, and mistrust their motherin-law.
Will he, my darlings? will he, my blessings?" (This