“C’est le Directeur. Venez fumer dans ma chambre, Pen,” growled Florac as Honeyman came sliding over the carpet, his elegant smile changing to a blush when he beheld Clive, his nephew, seated by the Princess’s side. This, then, was the uncle who had spoken about Clive and his father to Madame de Florac. Charles seemed in the best condition. He held out two bran-new lavender-coloured kid gloves to shake hands with his dear Clive; Florac and Mr. Pendennis vanished out of the room as he appeared, so that no precise account can be given of this affecting interview.
When I quitted the hotel, a brown brougham, with a pair of beautiful horses, the harness and panels emblazoned with the neatest little ducal coronets you ever saw, and a cypher under each crown as easy to read as the arrow-headed inscriptions on one of Mr. Layard’s Assyrian chariots, was in waiting, and I presumed that Madame la Princesse was about to take an airing.
Clive had passed the avuncular banking-house in the City, without caring to face his relatives there. Mr. Newcome was now in sole command, Mr. Barnes being absent at Newcome, the Baronet little likely ever to enter bank-parlour again. But his bounden duty was to wait on the ladies; and of course, only from duty’s sake, he went the very first day and called in Park Lane.
“The family was habsent ever since the marriage simminery last week,” the footman, who had accompanied the party to Baden, informed Clive when he opened the door, and recognised that gentleman. “Sir Brian pretty well, thank you, sir. The family was at Brighting. That is Miss Newcome is in London staying with her grandmamma in Queen Street, Mayfear, sir.” The varnished doors closed upon Jeames within; the brazen knockers grinned their familiar grin at Clive, and he went down the blank steps discomfited. Must it be owned that he went to a Club, and looked in the Directory for the number of Lady Kew’s house in Queen Street? Her ladyship had a furnished house for the season. No such noble name to be found among the inhabitants of Queen Street.
Mr. Hobson was from home; that is, Thomas had orders not to admit strangers on certain days, or before certain hours; so that Aunt Hobson saw Clive without being seen by the young man. I cannot say how much he regretted that mischance. His visits of propriety were thus all paid; and he went off to dine dutifully with James Binnie, after which meal he came to a certain rendezvous given to him by some bachelors friends for the evening.
James Binnie’s eyes lightened up with pleasure on beholding his young Clive; the youth, obedient to his father’s injunction, had hastened to Fitzroy Square immediately after taking possession of his old lodgings—his, during the time of his absence. The old properties and carved cabinets, the picture of his father looking melancholy out of the canvas, greeted Clive strangely on the afternoon of his arrival. No wonder he was glad to get away from a solitude peopled with a number of dismal recollections, to the near hospitality of Fitzroy Square and his guardian and friend there.
James had not improved in health during Clive’s ten months’ absence. He had never been able to walk well, or take his accustomed exercise, after his fall. He was no more used to riding than the late Mr. Gibbon, whose person James’s somewhat resembled, and of whose philosophy our Scottish friend was an admiring scholar. The Colonel gone, James would have arguments with Mr. Honeyman over their claret, bring down the famous XVth and XVIth chapters of the Decline and Fall upon him, and quite get the better of the clergyman. James, like many other sceptics, was very obstinate, and for his part believed that almost all parsons had as much belief as the Roman augurs in their ceremonies. Certainly, poor Honeyman, in their controversies, gave up one article after another, flying from James’s assault; but the battle over, Charles Honeyman would pick up these accoutrements which he had flung away in his retreat, wipe them dry, and put them on again.
Lamed by his fall, and obliged to remain much within doors, where certain society did not always amuse him, James Binnie sought excitement in the pleasures of the table, partaking of them the more freely now that his health could afford them the less. Clive, the sly rogue, observed a great improvement in the commissariat since his good father’s time, ate his dinner with thankfulness, and made no remarks. Nor did he confide to us for a while his opinion that Mrs. Mack bored the good gentleman most severely; that he pined away under her kindnesses; sneaked off to his study-chair and his nap; was only too glad when some of the widow’s friends came, or she went out; seeming to breathe more freely when she was gone, and drink his wine more cheerily when rid of the intolerable weight of her presence.
I protest the great ills of life are nothing—the loss of your fortune is a mere flea-bite; the loss of your wife—how many men have supported it and married comfortably afterwards? It is not what you lose, but what you have daily to bear that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel, after a long easy life of bachelorhood, than to have to sit day after day with a dull, handsome woman opposite; to have to answer her speeches about the weather, housekeeping and what not; to smile appropriately when she is disposed to be lively (that laughing at the jokes is the hardest part), and to model your conversation so as to suit her intelligence, knowing that a word used out of its downright signification will not be understood by your fair breakfast-maker. Women go through this simpering and smiling life, and bear it quite easily. Theirs is a life of hypocrisy. What good woman does not laugh at her husband’s or father’s jokes and stories time after time, and would not laugh at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if he told them? Flattery is their nature—to coax, flatter and sweetly befool some one is every woman’s business. She is none if she declines this office. But men are not provided with such powers of humbug or endurance—they perish and pine away miserably when bored—or they shrink off to the club or public-house for comfort. I want to say as delicately as I can, and never liking to use rough terms regarding a handsome woman, that Mrs. Mackenzie, herself being in the highest spirits and the best humour, extinguished her half-brother, James Binnie, Esq.; that she was as a malaria to him, poisoning his atmosphere, numbing his limbs, destroying his sleep—that day after day as he sate down at breakfast, and she levelled commonplaces at her dearest James, her dearest James became more wretched under her. And no one could see what his complaint was. He called in the old physicians at the Club. He dosed himself with poppy, and mandragora and blue pill—lower and lower went poor James’s mercury. If he wanted to move to Brighton or Cheltenham, well and good. Whatever were her engagements, or whatever pleasures darling Rosey might have in store, dear thing!—at her age, my dear Mrs. Newcome, would not one do all to make a young creature happy?—under no circumstances could I think of leaving my poor brother.
Mrs. Mackenzie thought herself a most highly principled woman, Mrs. Newcome had also a great opinion of her. These two ladies had formed a considerable friendship in the past months, the captain’s widow having an unaffected reverence for the banker’s lady and thinking her one of the best informed and most superior women in the world. When she had a high opinion of a person Mrs. Mack always wisely told it. Mrs. Newcome in her turn thought Mrs. Mackenzie a very clever, agreeable, ladylike woman,—not accomplished, but one could not have everything. “No, no, my dear,” says simple Hobson, “never would do to have every woman as clever as you are, Maria. Women would have it all their own way then.”