“Send him to see us, the naughty boy!” cries Maria. “We don’t change; we remember old times, to us he will ever be welcome!” And with this confirmation of Madame de Florac’s news, Thomas Newcome walked sadly homewards.
And now Thomas Newcome had to break the news to his son; who received the shot in such a way as caused his friends and confidants to admire his high spirit. He said he had long been expecting some such announcement: it was many months since Ethel had prepared him for it. Under her peculiar circumstances he did not see how she could act otherwise than she had done. And he narrated to the Colonel the substance of the conversation which the two young people had had together several months before, in Madame de Florac’s garden.
Clive’s father did not tell his son of his own bootless negotiation with Barnes Newcome. There was no need to recall that now; but the Colonel’s wrath against his nephew exploded in conversation with me, who was the confidant of father and son in this business. Ever since that luckless day when Barnes thought proper to—to give a wrong address for Lady Kew, Thomas Newcome’s anger had been growing. He smothered it yet for a while, sent a letter to Lady Anne Newcome, briefly congratulating her on the choice which he had heard Miss Newcome had made; and in acknowledgment of Madame de Florac’s more sentimental epistle he wrote a reply which has not been preserved, but in which he bade her rebuke Miss Newcome for not having answered him when he wrote to her, and not having acquainted her old uncle with her projected union.
To this message, Ethel wrote back a brief, hurried reply; it said:—
“I saw Madame de Florac last night at her daughter’s reception, and she gave me my dear uncle’s messages. Yes, the news is true which you have heard from Madame de Florac, and in Bryanstone Square. I did not like to write it to you, because I know one whom I regard as a brother (and a great, great deal better), and to whom I know it will give pain. He knows that I have done my duty, and why I have acted as I have done. God bless him and his dear father!
“What is this about a letter which I never answered? Grandmamma knows nothing about a letter. Mamma has enclosed to me that which you wrote to her, but there has been no letter from T. N. to his sincere and affectionate E. N.
“Rue de Rivoli. Friday.”
This was too much, and the cup of Thomas Newcome’s wrath overflowed. Barnes had lied about Ethel’s visit to London: Barnes had lied in saying that he delivered the message with which his uncle charged him: Barnes had lied about the letter which he had received, and never sent. With these accusations firmly proven in his mind against his nephew, the Colonel went down to confront that sinner.
Wherever he should find Barnes, Thomas Newcome was determined to tell him his mind. Should they meet on the steps of a church, on the flags of ’Change, or in the newspaper-room at Bays’s, at evening-paper time, when men most do congregate, Thomas the Colonel was determined upon exposing and chastising his father’s grandson. With Ethel’s letter in his pocket, he took his way into the City, penetrated into the unsuspecting back-parlour of Hobson’s bank, and was disappointed at first at only finding his half-brother Hobson there engaged over his newspaper. The Colonel signified his wish to see Sir Barnes Newcome. “Sir Barnes was not come in yet. You’ve heard about the marriage,” says Hobson. “Great news for the Barnes’s, ain’t it? The head of the house is as proud as a peacock about it. Said he was going out to Samuels, the diamond merchants; going to make his sister some uncommon fine present. Jolly to be uncle to a marquis, ain’t it, Colonel? I’ll have nothing under a duke for my girls. I say, I know whose nose is out of joint. But young fellows get over these things, and Clive won’t die this time, I dare say.”
While Hobson Newcome made these satiric and facetious remarks, his half-brother paced up and down the glass parlour, scowling over the panes into the bank where the busy young clerks sate before their ledgers. At last he gave an “Ah!” as of satisfaction. Indeed, he had seen Sir Barnes Newcome enter into the bank.