“You must not call—a—him, in that way. Don’t say Mr. H., ma,” says Julia.
“Call me what you please!” says Charles, with the most heart-rending simplicity; and Mrs. Sherrick straightway kisses her daughter. Sherrick meanwhile has been pointing out the improvement of the chapel to Clive (which now has indeed a look of the Gothic Hall at Rosherville), and has confided to him the sum for which he screwed the painted window out of old Moss. “When he come to see it up in this place, sir, the old man was mad, I give you my word! His son ain’t no good: says he knows you. He’s such a screw, that chap, that he’ll overreach himself, mark my words. At least, he’ll never die rich. Did you ever hear of me screwing? No, I spend my money like a man. How those girls are a-goin’ on about their music with Honeyman! I don’t let ’em sing in the evening, or him do duty more than once a day; and you can calc’late how the music draws, because in the evenin’ there ain’t half the number of people here. Rev. Mr. Journyman does the duty now—quiet Hogford man—ill, I suppose, this morning. H. sits in his pew, where we was; and coughs; that’s to say, I told him to cough. The women like a consumptive parson, sir. Come, gals!”
Clive went to his uncle’s lodgings, and was received by Mr. and Mrs. Ridley with great glee and kindness. Both of those good people had made it a point to pay their duty to Mr. Clive immediately on his return to England, and thank him over and over again for his kindness to John James. Never, never would they forget his goodness, and the Colonel’s, they were sure. A cake, a heap of biscuits, a pyramid of jams, six frizzling mutton-chops, and four kinds of hot wine, came bustling up to Mr. Honeyman’s room twenty minutes after Clive had entered it,—as a token of the Ridleys’ affection for him.
Clive remarked, with a smile, the Pall Mall Gazette upon a side-table, and in the chimney-glass almost as many cards as in the time of Honeyman’s early prosperity. That he and his uncle should be very intimate together, was impossible, from the nature of the two men; Clive being frank, clear-sighted, and imperious; Charles, timid, vain, and double-faced, conscious that he was a humbug, and that most people found him out, so that he would quiver and turn away, and be more afraid of young Clive and his direct straightforward way, than of many older men. Then there was the sense of the money transactions between him and the Colonel, which made Charles Honeyman doubly uneasy. In fine, they did not like each other; but, as he is a connection of the most respectable Newcome family, surely he is entitled to a page or two in these their memoirs.
Thursday came, and with it Mr. Sherrick’s entertainment, to which also Mr. Binnie and his party had been invited to meet Colonel Newcome’s son. Uncle James and Rosey brought Clive in their carriage; Mrs. Mackenzie sent a headache as an apology. She chose to treat Uncle James’s landlord with a great deal of hauteur, and to be angry with her brother for visiting such a person. “In fact, you see how fond I must be of dear little Rosey, Clive, that I put up with all mamma’s tantrums for her sake,” remarks Mr. Binnie.
“Oh, uncle!” says little Rosey, and the old gentleman stopped her remonstrances with a kiss.
“Yes,” says he, “your mother does have tantrums, miss; and though you never complain, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t. You will not tell on me” (it was “Oh, uncle!” again); “and Clive won’t, I am sure.—This little thing, sir,” James went on, holding Rosey’s pretty little hand and looking fondly in her pretty little face, “is her old uncle’s only comfort in life. I wish I had had her out to India to me, and never come back to this great dreary town of yours. But I was tempted home by Tom Newcome; and I’m too old to go back, sir. Where the stick falls let it lie. Rosey would have been whisked out of my house, in India, in a month after I had her there. Some young fellow would have taken her away from me; and now she has promised never to leave her old Uncle James, hasn’t she?”
“No, never, uncle,” said Rosey.
“We don’t want to fall in love, do we, child? We don’t want to be breaking our hearts like some young folks, and dancing attendance at balls night after night, and capering about in the Park to see if we can get a glimpse of the beloved object, eh, Rosey?”
Rosey blushed. It was evident that she and Uncle James both knew of Clive’s love affair. In fact, the front seat and back seat of the carriage both blushed. And as for the secret, why Mrs. Mackenzie and Mrs. Hobson had talked it a hundred times over.