Ringwood, to whose protection Philip Firmin's mother confided her boy when he
was first sent to school. Philip Ringwood was Firmin's senior by seven years; he
came to Old Parr Street twice or thrice during his stay at school, condescended
to take the "tips," of which the poor doctor was liberal enough, but never
deigned to take any notice of young Firmin, who looked up to his kinsman with
awe and trembling. From school Philip Ringwood speedily departed to college, and
then entered upon public life. He was the eldest son of Sir John Ringwood, with
whom our friend has of late made acquaintance.
Mr. Ringwood was a much greater personage than the baronet his father. Even when
the latter succeeded to Lord Ringwood's estates and came to London, he could
scarcely be said to equal his son in social rank; and the younger patronized his
parent. What is the secret of great social success? It is not to be gained by
beauty, or wealth, or birth, or wit, or valour, or eminence of any kind. It is a
gift of Fortune, bestowed, like that goddess's favours, capriciously. Look, dear
madam, at the most fashionable ladies at present reigning in London. Are they
better bred, or more amiable, or richer, or more beautiful than yourself? See,
good sir, the men who lead the fashion, and stand in the bow window at Black's;
are they wiser, or wittier, or more agreeable people than you? And yet you know
what your fate would be if you were put up at that club. Sir John Ringwood never
dared to be proposed there, even after his great accession of fortune on the
earl's death. His son did not encourage him. People even said that Ringwood
would blackball his father if he dared to offer himself as a candidate.
I never, I say, could understand the reason of Philip Ringwood's success in
life, though you must acknowledge that he is one of our most eminent dandies. He
is affable to dukes. He patronizes marquises. He is not witty. He is not clever.
He does not give good dinners. How many baronets are there in the British
empire? Look to your book, and see. I tell you there are many of these whom
Philip Ringwood would scarcely admit to wait at one of his bad dinners. By
calmly asserting himself in life, this man has achieved his social eminence. We
may hate him; but we acknowledge his superiority. For instance, I should as soon
think of asking him to dine with me, as I should of slapping the Archbishop of
Canterbury on the back.
Mr. Ringwood has a meagre little house in May Fair, and belongs to a public
office, where he patronizes his chef. His own family bow down before him; his
mother is humble in his company; his sisters are respectful; his father does not
brag of his own liberal principles, and never alludes to the rights of man in
the son's presence. He is called "Mr. Ringwood" in the family. The person who is
least in awe of him is his younger brother, who has been known to make faces
behind the elder's back. But he is a dreadfully headstrong and ignorant child,
and respects nothing. Lady Ringwood, by the way, is Mr. Ringwood's stepmother.
His own mother was the daughter of a noble house, and died in giving birth to
this paragon.
Philip Firmin, who had not set eyes upon his kinsman since they were at school
together, remembered some stories which were current about Ringwood, and by no
means to that eminent dandy's credit??stories of intrigue, of play, of various
libertine exploits on Mr. Ringwood's part. One day, Philip and Charlotte dined
with Sir John, who was talking and chirping, and laying down the law, and
bragging away according to his wont, when his son entered and asked for dinner.
He had accepted an invitation to dine at Garterton House. The duke had one of
his attacks of gout just before dinner. The dinner was off. If Lady Ringwood
would give him a slice of mutton, he would be very much obliged to her. A place
was soon found for him. "And, Philip, this is your namesake, and, our cousin,
Mr. Philip Firmin," said the baronet, presenting his son to his kinsman.
"Your father used to give me sovereigns, when I was at school. I have a faint
recollection of you, too. Little white-headed boy, weren't you? How is the
doctor, and Mrs. Firmin? All right?"
"Why, don't you know his father ran away?" calls out the youngest member of the
family. "Don't kick me, Emily. He did run away!"
Then Mr. Ringwood remembered, and a faint blush tinged his face. "Lapse of time.
I know. Shouldn't have asked after such a lapse of time." And he mentioned a
case in which a duke, who was very forgetful, had asked a marquis about his wife
who had run away with an earl, and made inquiries about the duke's son, who, as
everbody knew, was not on terms with his father.
"This is Mrs. Firmin??Mrs. Philip Firmin!" cried Lady Ringwood, rather
nervously; and I suppose Mrs. Philip blushed, and the blush became her; for Mr.
Ringwood afterwards condescended to say to one of his sisters, that their
new-found relative seemed one of your rough-and-ready sort of gentlemen, but his
wife was really very well bred, and quite a pretty young woman, and presentable
anywhere??really anywhere. Charlotte was asked to sing one or two of her little
songs after dinner. Mr. Ringwood was delighted. Her voice was perfectly true.
What she sang, she sang admirably. And he was good enough to hum over one of her
songs (during which performance he showed that his voice was not exempt from
little frailties), and to say he had heard Lady Philomela Shakerley sing that
very song at Glenmavis, last autumn; and it was such a favourite that the
duchess asked for it every night??actually every night. When our friends were
going home, Mr. Ringwood gave Philip almost the whole of one finger to shake;
and while Philip was inwardly raging at his impertinence, believed that he had
entirely fascinated his humble relatives, and that he had been most good-natured
and friendly.
I cannot tell why this man's patronage chafed and goaded our worthy friend so as
to drive him beyond the bounds of all politeness and reason. The artless remarks
of the little boy, and the occasional simple speeches of the young ladies, had
only tickled Philip's humour, and served to amuse him when he met his relatives.
I suspect it was a certain free-and-easy manner which Mr. Ringwood chose to
adopt towards Mrs. Philip, which annoyed her husband. He had said nothing at
which offence could be taken: perhaps he was quite unconscious of offending;
nay, thought himself eminently pleasing: perhaps he was not more impertinent
towards her than towards other women: but in talking about him, Mr. Firmin's
eyes flashed very fiercely, and he spoke of his new acquaintance and relative,
with his usual extreme candour, as an upstart, and an arrogant conceited puppy,
whose ears he would like to pull.
How do good women learn to discover men who are not good? Is it by instinct? How
do they learn those stories about men? I protest I never told my wife anything
good or bad regarding this Mr. Ringwood, though of course, as a man about town,
I have heard?? who has not???little anecdotes regarding his career. His conduct
in t
hat affair with Miss Willowby was heartless and cruel; his behaviour to that
unhappy Blanche Painter nobody can defend. My wife conveys her opinion regarding
Philip Ringwood, his life, principles, and morality, by looks and silences which
are more awful and killing than the bitterest words of sarcasm or reproof.
Philip Firmin, who knows her ways, watches her features, and, as I have said,
humbles himself at her feet, marked the lady's awful looks, when he came to
describe to us his meeting with his cousin, and the magnificent patronizing airs
which Mr. Ringwood assumed.
"What?" he said, "you don't like him any more than I do? I thought you would
not; and I am so glad."
Philip's friend said she did not know Mr. Ringwood, and had never spoken a word
to him in her life.
"Yes; but you know of him," cries the impetuous Firmin. "What do you know of
him, with his monstrous puppyism and arrogance?" Oh, Mrs. Laura knew very little
of him. She did not believe??she had much rather not believe??what the world
said about Mr. Ringwood.
"Suppose we were to ask the Woolcombs their opinion of your character, Philip?"
cries the gentleman's biographer, with a laugh.
"My dear!" says Laura, with a yet severer look, the severity of which glance I
must explain. The differences of Woolcomb and his wife were notorious. Their
unhappiness was known to all the world. Society was beginning to look with a
very, very cold face upon Mrs. Woolcomb. After quarrels, jealousies, battles,
reconciliations, scenes of renewed violence and furious language, had come
indifference, and the most reckless gaiety on the woman's part. Her home was
splendid, but mean and miserable; all sorts of stories were rife regarding her
husband's brutal treatment of poor Agnes, and her own imprudent behaviour. Mrs.
Laura was indignant when this unhappy woman's name was ever mentioned, except
when she thought how our warm, true-hearted Philip had escaped from the
heartless creature. "What a blessing it was that you were ruined, Philip, and
that she deserted you!" Laura would say. "What fortune would repay you for
marring such a woman?"
"Indeed it was worth all I had to lose her," says Philip, "and so the doctor and
I are quits. If he had not spent my fortune, Agnes would have married me. If she
had married me, I might have turned Othello, and have been hung for smothering
her. Why, if I had not been poor, I should never have been married to little
Char??and fancy not being married to Char!" The worthy fellow here lapses into
silence, and indulges in an inward rapture at the idea of his own excessive
happiness. Then he is scared again at the thought which his own imagination has
raised.
"I say! Fancy being without the kids and Char!" he cries with a blank look.
"That horrible father??that dreadful mother??pardon me, Philip; but when I think
of the worldliness of those unhappy people, and how that poor unhappy woman has
been bred in it, and ruined by it??I am so, so, so??enraged, that I can't keep
my temper!" cries the lady. "Is the woman answerable, or the parents, who
hardened her heart, and sold her??sold her to that ??O!" Our illustrious friend
Woolcomb was signified by "that O," and the lady once more paused, choked with
wrath as she thought about that O, and that O's wife.
"I wonder he has not Othello'd her," remarks Philip, with his hands in his
pockets. "I should, if she had been mine, and gone on as they say she is going
on."
"It is dreadful, dreadful to contemplate!" continues the lady. "To think she was
sold by her own parents, poor thing, poor thing! The guilt is with them who led
her wrong."
"Nay," says one of the three interlocutors. "Why stop at poor Mr. and Mrs.
Twysden? Why not let them off, and accuse their parents? who lived worldly too
in their generation. Or, stay; they descend from William the Conqueror. Let us
absolve poor Weldone Twysden, and his heartless wife, and have the Norman into
court."
"Ah, Arthur! Did not our sin begin with the beginning," cries the lady, "and
have we not its remedy? Oh, this poor creature, this poor creature! May she know
where to take refuge from it, and learn to repent in time!"
The Georgian and Circassian girls, they say, used to submit to their lot very
complacently, and were quite eager to get to market at Constantinople and be
sold. Mrs. Woolcomb wanted nobody to tempt her away from poor Philip. She hopped
away from the old love, as soon as ever the new one appeared with his bag of
money. She knew quite well to whom she was selling herself, and for what. The
tempter needed no skill, or artifice, or eloquence. He had none. But he showed
her a purse, and three fine houses??and she came. Innocent child, forsooth! She
knew quite as much about the world as papa and mamma; and the lawyers did not
look to her settlement more warily, and coolly, than she herself did. Did she
not live on it afterwards? I do not say she lived reputably, but most
comfortably: as Paris, and Rome, and Naples, and Florence can tell you, where
she is well known; where she receives a great deal of a certain kind of company;
where she is scorned and flattered, and splendid, and lonely, and miserable. She
is not miserable when she sees children: she does not care for other persons'
children, as she never did for her own, even when they were taken from her. She
is of course hurt and angry, when quite common, vulgar people, not in society,
you understand, turn away from her, and avoid her, and won't come to her
parties. She gives excellent dinners which jolly fogeys, rattling bachelors, and
doubtful ladies frequent: but she is alone and unhappy??unhappy because she does
not see parents, sister, or brother? Allons, mon bon monsieur! She never cared
for parents, sister, or brother; or for baby: or for man (except once for Philip
a little, little bit, when her pulse would sometimes go up two beats in a minute
at his appearance). But she is unhappy, because she is losing her figure, and
from tight lacing her nose has become very red, and the pearl powder won't lie
on it somehow. And though you may have thought Woolcomb an odious, ignorant, and
underbred little wretch, you must own that at least he had red blood in his
veins. Did he not spend a great part of his fortune for the possession of this
cold wife. For whom did she ever make a sacrifice, or feel a pang? I am sure a
greater misfortune than any which has befallen friend Philip might have happened
to him, and so congratulate him on his escape.
Having vented his wrath upon the arrogance and impertinence of this solemn puppy
of a Philip Ringwood, our friend went away somewhat soothed to his club in St.
James's Street. The Megatherium Club is only a very few doors from the much more
aristocratic establishment of Black's. Mr. Philip Ringwood and Mr. Woolcomb were
standing on the steps of Black's. Mr. Ringwood waved a graceful little
kid-gloved hand to Philip, and smiled on him. Mr. Woolcomb glared at our friend
out of his opal eyeballs. Philip had once proposed to kick Woolcomb into the
sea. He someh
ow felt as if he would like to treat Ringwood to the same bath.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ringwood laboured under the notion that he and his new-found
acquaintance were on the very best possible terms.
At one time poor little Woolcomb loved to be seen with Philip Ringwood. He
thought he acquired distinction from the companionship of that man of fashion,
and would hang on Ringwood as they walked the Pall Mall pavement.
"Do you know that great hulking, overbearing brute?" says Woolcomb to his
companion on the steps of Black's. Perhaps somebody overheard them from the
bow-window. (I tell you everything is overheard in London, and a great deal more
too.)
"Brute, is he?" says Ringwood; "seems a rough, overbearing sort of chap."
"Blackguard doctor's son. Bankrupt father ran away," says the dusky man with the
opal eyeballs.
"I have heard he was a rogue??the doctor; but I like him. Remember he gave me
three sovereigns when I was at school. Always like a fellow who tips you when
you are at school." And here Ringwood beckoned his brougham which was in
waiting.
"Shall we see you at dinner? Where are you going?" asked Mr. Woolcomb. "If you
are going towards??"
"Towards Gray's Inn, to see my lawyer; have an appointment there; be with you at
eight!" And Mr. Ringwood skipped into his little brougham and was gone.
Tom Eaves told Philip. Tom Eaves belongs to Black's Club, to Bays's, to the
Megatherium, I don't know to how many clubs in St. James's Street. Tom Eaves
knows everybody's business, and all the scandal of all the clubs for the last
forty years. He knows who has lost money and to whom; what is the talk of the
opera box and what the scandal of the coulisses; who is making love to whose
daughter. Whatever men and women are doing in May Fair, is the farrago of Tom's
libel. He knows so many stories, that of course he makes mistakes in names
sometimes, and says that Jones is on the verge of ruin, when he is thriving and
prosperous, and it is poor Brown who is in difficulties; or informs us that Mrs.
Fanny is flirting with Captain Ogle when both are as innocent of a flirtation as
you and I are. Tom certainly is mischievous, and often is wrong; but when he
speaks of our neighbours he is amusing.
"It is as good as a play to see Ringwood and Othello together," says Tom to
Philip. "How proud the black man is to be seen with him! Heard him abuse you to
Ringwood. Ringwood stuck up for you and for your poor governor??spoke up like a
man??like a man who sticks up for a fellow who is down. How the black man brags
about having Ringwood to dinner! Always having him to dinner. You should have
seen Ringwood shake him off! Said he was going to Gray's Inn. Heard him say
Gray's Inn Lane to his man. Don't believe a word of it."
Now I dare say you are much too fashionable to know that Milman Street is a
little cul de sac of a street, which leads into Guildford Street, which leads
into Gray's Inn Lane. Philip went his way homewards, shaking off Tom Eaves, who,
for his part, trolled off to his other clubs, telling people how he had just
been talking with that bankrupt doctor's son, and wondering how Philip should
get money enough to pay his club subscription. Philip then went on his way,
striding homewards at his usual manly pace.
Whose black brougham was that???the black brougham with the chestnut horse
walking up and down Guildford Street. Mr. Ringwood's crest was on the brougham.
When Philip entered his drawing-room, having opened the door with his own key,
there sat Mr. Ringwood, talking to Mrs. Charlotte, who was taking a cup of tea
at five o'clock. She and the children liked that cup of tea. Sometimes it served
Mrs. Char for dinner when Philip dined from home.
"If I had known you were coming here, you might have brought me home and saved
me a long walk," said Philip, wiping a burning forehead.
"So I might??so I might!" said the other. "I never thought of it. I had to see