“I declare upon my honour as a gentleman, that I gave her the message which I promised to deliver from you, and also that I transmitted a letter with which you entrusted me; and repel with scorn and indignation the charges which you were pleased to bring against me, as I treat with contempt the language and the threats which you thought fit to employ.
“Our books show the amount of x£. xs. xd. to your credit, which you will be good enough to withdraw at your earliest convenience; as of course all intercourse must cease henceforth between you and—Yours, etc.
“B. Newcome Newcome.”
“I think, sir, he doesn’t make out a bad case,” Mr. Pendennis remarked to the Colonel, who showed him this majestic letter.
“It would be a good case if I believed a single word of it, Arthur,” replied my friend, placidly twirling the old grey moustache. “If you were to say so-and-so, and say that I had brought false charges against you, I should cry mea culpa and apologise with all my heart. But as I have a perfect conviction that every word this fellow says is a lie, what is the use of arguing any more about the matter? I would not believe him if he brought twenty as witnesses, and if he lied till he was black in the other liars’ face. Give me the walnuts. I wonder who Sir Barnes’s military friend was.”
Barnes’s military friend was our gallant acquaintance General Sir George Tufto, K.C.B., who a short while afterwards talked over the quarrel with the Colonel, and manfully told him that (in Sir George’s opinion) he was wrong. “The little beggar behaved very well, I thought, in the first business. You bullied him so, and in the front of his regiment, too, that it was almost past bearing; and when he deplored, with tears in his eyes, almost, the little humbug! that his relationship prevented him calling you out, ecod, I believed him! It was in the second affair that poor little Barnes showed he was a cocktail.”
“What second affair?” asked Thomas Newcome.
“Don’t you know? He! he! this is famous!” cries Sir George. “Why, sir, two days after your business, he comes to me with another letter and a face as long as my mare’s, by Jove. And that letter, Newcome, was from your young ’un. Stop, here it is!” and from his padded bosom General Sir George Tufto drew a pocket-book, and from the pocket-book a copy of a letter, inscribed, “Clive Newcome, Esq., to Sir B. N. Newcome.” “There’s no mistake about your fellow, Colonel. No,——him!” and the man of war fired a volley of oaths as a salute to Clive.
And the Colonel, on horseback, riding by the other cavalry officer’s side read as follows:—
“George Street, Hanover Square, February 16.