He opened it, and read it through. I cannot say that I saw any particular expression of wonder in his countenance, for somehow, all the while Clive perused this document, I was looking at the Colonel’s sweet kind face. “It—it is Ethel’s doing,” said Clive, in a hurried voice. “There was no such letter.”
“Upon my honour,” I answered, “there was. We came up to London with it last night, a few hours after she had found it. We showed it to Sir Barnes Newcome, who—who could not disown it. We took it to Mr. Luce, who recognised it at once, who was old Mrs. Newcome’s man of business, and continues to be the family lawyer, and the family recognises the legacy and has paid it, and you may draw for it to-morrow, as you see. What a piece of good luck it is that it did not come before the B. B. C. time! That confounded Bundelcund Bank would have swallowed up this like all the rest.”
“Father! father! do you remember Orme’s History of India?” cries Clive.
“Orme’s History! of course I do, I could repeat whole pages of it when I was a boy,” says the old man, and began forthwith. “‘The two battalions advanced against each other cannonading, until the French, coming to a hollow way, imagined that the English would not venture to pass it. But Major Lawrence ordered the sepoys and artillery—the sepoys and artillery to halt and defend the convoy against the Morattoes’—Morattoes Orme calls ’em. Ho! ho! I could repeat whole pages, sir.”
“It is the best book that ever was written,” calls out Clive. The Colonel said he had not read it, but he was informed Mr. Mill’s was a very learned history; he intended to read it. “Eh! there is plenty of time now,” said the good Colonel. “I have all day long at Grey Friars,—after chapel, you know. Do you know, sir, when I was a boy I used what they call to tib out and run down to a public-house in Cistercian Lane—the Red Cowl sir,—and buy rum there? I was a terrible wild boy, Clivy. You weren’t so, sir, thank Heaven! A terrible wild boy, and my poor father flogged me, though I think it was very hard on me. It wasn’t the pain, you know: it wasn’t the pain, but——” Here tears came into his eyes and he dropped his head on his hand, and the cigar from it fell on to the floor, burnt almost out, and scattering white ashes.
Clive looked sadly at me. “He was often so at Boulogne, Arthur,” he whispered; “after a scene with that—that woman yonder, his head would go: he never replied to her taunts; he bore her infernal cruelty without an unkind word—Oh! I pay her back, thank God I can pay her! But who shall pay her,” he said, trembling in every limb, “for what she has made that good man suffer?”
He turned to his father, who still sate lost in his meditations. “You need never go back to Grey Friars, father!” he cried out.
“Not go back, Clivy? Must go back, boy, to say Adsum, when my name is called. Newcome! Adsum! Hey! that is what we used to say—we used to say!”
“You need not go back, except to pack your things, and return and live with me and Boy,” Clive continued, and he told Colonel Newcome rapidly the story of the legacy. The old man seemed hardly to comprehend it. When he did, the news scarcely elated him; when Clive said “they could now pay Mrs. Mackenzie,” the Colonel replied, “Quite right, quite right,” and added up the sum, principal and interest, in which they were indebted to her—he knew it well enough, the good old man. “Of course we shall pay her, Clivy, when we can!” But in spite of what Clive had said he did not appear to understand the fact that the debt to Mrs. Mackenzie was now actually to be paid.
As we were talking, a knock came to the studio door, and that summons was followed by the entrance of the maid, who said to Clive, “If you please, sir, Mrs. Mackenzie says, how long are you a-going to keep the dinner waiting?”