“I shall come and see you again to-morrow, uncle, may I not? I saw your room to-day, sir, and your housekeeper; such a nice old lady, and your black gown. And you shall put it on to-morrow, and walk with me, and show me the beautiful old buildings of that old hospital. And I shall come and make tea for you, the housekeeper says I may. Will you come down with me to my carriage? No, Mr. Pendennis must come;” and she quitted the room, beckoning me after her. “You will speak to Clive now, won’t you?” she said, “and come to me this evening, and tell me all before you go to bed?” I went back, anxious in truth to the messenger of good tidings to my dear old friends.
Brief as my absence had been, Mrs. Mackenzie had taken advantage of that moment again to outrage Clive and his father, and to announce that Rosa might go to see this Miss Newcome, whom people respected because she was rich, but whom she would never visit; no, never! “An insolent, proud, impertinent thing! Does she take me for a housemaid?” Mrs. Mackenzie had inquired.
“Am I dust to be trampled beneath her feet? Am I a dog that she can’t throw me a word?” Her arms were stretched out, and she was making this inquiry as to her own canine qualities as I re-entered the room, and remembered that Ethel had never once addressed a single word to Mrs. Mackenzie in the course of her visit.
I affected not to perceive the incident, and presently said that I wanted to speak to Clive in his studio. Knowing that I had brought my friend one or two commissions for drawings, Mrs. Mackenzie was civil to me, and did not object to our colloquies.
“Will you come too, and smoke a pipe, father?” says Clive.
“Of course your father intends to stay to dinner?” says the Campaigner, with a scornful toss of her head. Clive groaned out as we were on the stair, “that he could not bear this much longer, by heavens he could not.”
“Give the Colonel his pipe, Clive,” said I. “Now, sir, down with you in the sitter’s chair, and smoke the sweetest cheroot you ever smoked in your life! My dear, dear old Clive! you need not bear with the Campaigner any longer; you may go to bed without this nightmare to-night if you like; you may have your father back under your roof again.”
“My dear Arthur! I must be back at ten, sir, back at ten, military time; drum beats; no—bell tolls at ten, and gates close;” and he laughed and shook his old head. “Besides, I am to see a young lady, sir; and she is coming to make tea for me, and I must speak to Mrs. Jones to have all things ready—all things ready;” and again the old man laughed as he spoke.
His son looked at him and then at me with eyes full of sad meaning. “How do you mean, Arthur,” Clive said, “that he can come and stay with me, and that that woman can go?”
Then feeling in my pocket for Mr. Luce’s letter, I grasped my dear Clive by the hand and bade him prepare for good news. I told him how providentially, two days since, Ethel, in the library at Newcome, looking into Orme’s History of India, a book which old Mrs. Newcome had been reading on the night of her death, had discovered a paper, of which the accompanying letter enclosed a copy, and I gave my friend the letter.