“Why do you come and spoil my tête-à-tête with my uncle, Mr. Pendennis?” cries the young lady to the master of the house, who happens to enter “Of all the men in the world the one I like best to talk to! Does he not look younger than when he went to India? When Clive marries that pretty little Miss Mackenzie, you will marry again, uncle, and I will be jealous of your wife.”
“Did Barnes tell you that we had met last night, my dear?” asks the Colonel.
“Not one word. Your shawl and your dear kind note told me you were come. Why did not Barnes tell us? Why do you look so grave?”
“He has not told her that I was here, and would have me believe her absent,” thought Newcome, as his countenance fell. “Shall I give her my own message, and plead my poor boy’s cause with her?” I know not whether he was about to lay his suit before her; he said himself subsequently that his mind was not made up; but at this juncture, a procession of nurses and babies made their appearance, followed by the two mothers, who had been comparing their mutual prodigies (each lady having her own private opinion)—Lady Clara and my wife—the latter for once gracious to Lady Clara Newcome, in consideration of the infantine company with which she came to visit Mrs. Pendennis.
Luncheon was served presently. The carriage of the Newcomes drove away, my wife smilingly pardoning Ethel for the assignation which the young person had made at our house. And when those ladies were gone, our good Colonel held a council of war with us his two friends, and told us what had happened between him and Barnes on that morning and the previous night. His offer to sacrifice every shilling of his fortune to young Clive seemed to him to be perfectly simple (though the recital of the circumstance brought tears into my wife’s eyes)—he mentioned it by the way, and as a matter that was scarcely to call for comment, much less praise.
Barnes’s extraordinary statements respecting Lady Kew’s absence puzzled the elder Newcome; and he spoke of his nephew’s conduct with much indignation. In vain I urged that her ladyship desiring to be considered absent from London, her grandson was bound to keep her secret. “Keep her secret, yes! Tell me lies, no!” cries out the Colonel. Sir Barnes’s conduct was in fact indefensible, though not altogether unusual—the worst deduction to be drawn from it, in my opinion, was, that Clive’s chance with the young lady was but a poor one, and that Sir Barnes Newcome, inclined to keep his uncle in good-humour, would therefore give him no disagreeable refusal.
Now this gentleman could no more pardon a lie than he could utter one. He would believe all and everything a man told him until deceived once, after which he never forgave. And wrath being once roused in his simple mind and distrust firmly fixed there, his anger and prejudices gathered daily. He could see no single good quality in his opponent; and hated him with a daily increasing bitterness.
As ill luck would have it, that very same evening, at his return to town, Thomas Newcome entered Bays’s club, of which, at our request, he had become a member during his last visit to England, and there was Sir Barnes, as usual, on his way homewards from the City. Barnes was writing at a table, and sealing and closing a letter, as he saw the Colonel enter; he thought he had been a little inattentive and curt with his uncle in the morning; had remarked, perhaps, the expression of disapproval on the Colonel’s countenance. He simpered up to his uncle as the latter entered the clubroom, and apologised for his haste when they met in the City in the morning—all City men were so busy! “And I have been writing about that little affair, just as you came in,” he said; “quite a moving letter to Lady Kew, I assure you, and I do hope and trust we shall have a favourable answer in a day or two.”
“You said her ladyship was in the North, I think?” said the Colonel, drily.
“Oh, yes—in the North, at—at Lord Wallsend’s—great coal-proprietor, you know.”