All this while Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., remained absent in London, attending to his banking duties there, and pursuing the dismal inquiries which ended, in the ensuing Michaelmas term, in the famous suit of Newcome v. Lord Highgate. Ethel, pursuing the plan which she had laid down for herself from the first, took entire charge of his children and house: Lady Anne returned to her own family: never indeed having been of much use in her son’s dismal household. My wife talked to me of course about her pursuits and amusements at Newcome, in the ancestral hall which we have mentioned. The children played and ate their dinner (mine often partook of his infantine mutton, in company with little Clara and the poor young heir of Newcome) in the room which had been called my lady’s own, and in which her husband had locked her, forgetting that the conservatories were open, through which the hapless woman had fled. Next to this was the baronial library, a side of which was fitted with the gloomy books from Clapham, which old Mrs. Newcome had amassed; rows of tracts, and missionary magazines, and dingy quarto volumes of worldly travel and history which that lady had admitted into her collection.
Almost on the last day of our stay at Rosebury, the two young ladies bethought them of paying a visit to the neighbouring town of Newcome, to that old Mrs. Mason who has been mentioned in a foregoing page in some yet earlier chapter of our history. She was very old now, very faithful to the recollections of her own early time, and oblivious of yesterday. Thanks to Colonel Newcome’s bounty, she had lived in comfort for many a long year past; and he was as much her boy now as in those early days of which we have given but an outline. There were Clive’s pictures of himself and his father over her little mantelpiece, near which she sat in comfort and warmth by the winter fire which his bounty supplied.
Mrs. Mason remembered Miss Newcome, prompted thereto by the hints of her little maid, who was much younger, and had a more faithful memory than her mistress. Why, Sarah Mason would have forgotten the pheasants whose very tails decorated the chimney-glass, had not Keziah, the maid, reminded her that the young lady was the donor. Then she recollected her benefactor, and asked after her father, the Baronet; and wondered, for her part, why her boy, the Colonel, was not made baronet, and why his brother had the property? Her father was a very good man; though Mrs. Mason had heard he was not much liked in those parts. “Dead and gone, was he, poor man?” (This came in reply to a hint from Keziah, the attendant, bawled in the old lady’s ears, who was very deaf.) “Well, well, we must all go; and if we were all good, like the Colonel, what was the use of staying? I hope his wife will be good. I am sure such a good man deserves one,” added Mrs. Mason.
The ladies thought the old woman doting, led thereto by the remark of Keziah, the maid, that Mrs. Mason have a lost her memory. And she asked who the other bonny lady was, and Ethel told her that Mrs. Pendennis was a friend of the Colonel’s and Clive’s.
“Oh, Clive’s friend! Well, she was a pretty lady, and he was a dear pretty boy. He drew those pictures; and he took off me in my cap, with my old cat and all—my poor old cat that’s buried this ever so long ago.”
“She has had a letter from the Colonel, miss,” cries out Keziah. “Haven’t you had a letter from the Colonel, mum? It came only yesterday.” And Keziah takes out the letter and shows it to the ladies. They read as follows:—
“London, Feb. 12, 184-.
“My Dear Old Mason—I have just heard from a friend of mine who has been staying in your neighbourhood, that you are well and happy, and that you have been making inquiries after your young scapegrace, Tom Newcome, who is well and happy too, and who proposes to be happier still before any very long time is over.
“The letter which was written to me about you was sent to me in Belgium, at Brussels, where I have been living—a town near the place where the famous Battle of Waterloo was fought; and as I had run away from Waterloo it followed me to England.
“I cannot come to Newcome just now to shake my dear old friend and nurse by the hand. I have business in London; and there are those of my name living in Newcome who would not be very happy to see me and mine.