dine with you: only if you play the same joke upon other parties--
on some of the chaps in our office, for example--I recommend you to
have a care, or they will TAKE YOU AT YOUR WORD."
"Is that all, sir?" says Mr. Preston, still in a rage. "If you
have done, will you leave this house, or shall my servants turn you
out? Turn out this fellow! do you hear me?" and he broke away from
me, and flung into his study in a rage.
"He's an ojous horrid monsther of a man, that husband of yours!"
said Lady Drum, seizing hold of her elder grand-daughter's arm,
"and I hate him; and so come away, for the dinner'll be getting
cold:" and she was for hurrying away Lady Jane without more ado.
But that kind lady, coming forward, looking very pale and
trembling, said, "Mr. Titmarsh, I do hope you'll not be angry--that
is, that you'll forget what has happened, for, believe me, it has
given me very great--"
Very great what, I never could say, for here the poor thing's eyes
filled with tears; and Lady Drum crying out "Tut, tut! none of this
nonsense," pulled her away by the sleeve, and went upstairs. But
little Lady Fanny walked boldly up to me, and held me out her
little hand, and gave mine such a squeeze and said, "Good-bye, my
dear Mr. Titmarsh," so very kindly, that I'm blest if I did not
blush up to the ears, and all the blood in my body began to tingle.
So, when she was gone, I clapped my hat on my head, and walked out
of the hall-door, feeling as proud as a peacock and as brave as a
lion; and all I wished for was that one of those saucy grinning
footmen should say or do something to me that was the least
uncivil, so that I might have the pleasure of knocking him down,
with my best compliments to his master. But neither of them did me
any such favour! and I went away and dined at home off boiled
mutton and turnips with Gus Hoskins quite peacefully.
I did not think it was proper to tell Gus (who, between ourselves,
is rather curious, and inclined to tittle-tattle) all the
particulars of the family quarrel of which I had been the cause and
witness, and so just said that the old lady--("They were the Drum
arms," says Gus; "for I went and looked them out that minute in the
'Peerage'")--that the old lady turned out to be a cousin of mine,
and that she had taken me to drive in the Park. Next day we went
to the office as usual, when you may be sure that Hoskins told
everything of what had happened, and a great deal more; and
somehow, though I did not pretend to care sixpence about the
matter, I must confess that I WAS rather pleased that the gents in
our office should hear of a part of my adventure.
But fancy my surprise, on coming home in the evening, to find Mrs.
Stokes the landlady, Miss Selina Stokes her daughter, and Master
Bob Stokes her son (an idle young vagabond that was always playing
marbles on St. Bride's steps and in Salisbury Square),--when I
found them all bustling and tumbling up the steps before me to our
rooms on the second floor, and there, on the table, between our two
flutes on one side, my album, Gus's "Don Juan" and "Peerage" on the
other, I saw as follows:-
1. A basket of great red peaches, looking like the cheeks of my
dear Mary Smith.
2. A ditto of large, fat, luscious, heavy-looking grapes.
3. An enormous piece of raw mutton, as I thought it was; but Mrs.
Stokes said it was the primest haunch of venison that ever she saw.
And three cards--viz.
DOWAGER COUNTESS OF DRUM.
LADY FANNY RAKES.
MR. PRESTON.
LADY JANE PRESTON.
EARL OF TIPTOFF.
"Sich a carriage!" says Mrs. Stokes (for that was the way the poor
thing spoke). "Sich a carriage--all over coronites! sich liveries-
-two great footmen, with red whiskers and yellow-plush small-
clothes; and inside, a very old lady in a white poke bonnet, and a
young one with a great Leghorn hat and blue ribands, and a great
tall pale gentleman with a tuft on his chin.
"'Pray, madam, does Mr. Titmarsh live here?' says the young lady,
with her clear voice.
"'Yes, my Lady,' says I; 'but he's at the office--the West
Diddlesex Fire and Life Office, Cornhill.'
"'Charles, get out the things,' says the gentleman, quite solemn.
"'Yes, my Lord,' says Charles; and brings me out the haunch in a
newspaper, and on the chany dish as you see it, and the two baskets
of fruit besides.
"'Have the kindness, madam,' says my Lord, 'to take these things to
Mr. Titmarsh's rooms, with our, with Lady Jane Preston's
compliments, and request his acceptance of them;' and then he
pulled out the cards on your table, and this letter, sealed with
his Lordship's own crown."
And herewith Mrs. Stokes gave me a letter, which my wife keeps to
this day, by the way, and which runs thus:-
"The Earl of Tiptoff has been commissioned by Lady Jane Preston to
express her sincere regret and disappointment that she was not able
yesterday to enjoy the pleasure of Mr. Titmarsh's company. Lady
Jane is about to leave town immediately: she will therefore be
unable to receive her friends in Whitehall Place this season. But
Lord Tiptoff trusts that Mr. Titmarsh will have the kindness to
accept some of the produce of her Ladyship's garden and park; with
which, perhaps, he will entertain some of those friends in whose
favour he knows so well how to speak."
Along with this was a little note, containing the words "Lady Drum
at home. Friday evening, June 17." And all this came to me
because my aunt Hoggarty had given me a diamond-pin!
I did not send back the venison: as why should I? Gus was for
sending it at once to Brough, our director; and the grapes and
peaches to my aunt in Somersetshire.
"But no," says I; "we'll ask Bob Swinney and half-a-dozen more of
our gents; and we'll have a merry night of it on Saturday." And a
merry night we had too; and as we had no wine in the cupboard, we
had plenty of ale, and gin-punch afterwards. And Gus sat at the
foot of the table, and I at the head; and we sang songs, both comic
and sentimental, and drank toasts; and I made a speech that there
is no possibility of mentioning here, because, entre nous, I had
quite forgotten in the morning everything that had taken place
after a certain period on the night before.
CHAPTER IV
HOW THE HAPPY DIAMOND-WEARER DINES AT PENTONVILLE
I did not go to the office till half-an-hour after opening time on
Monday. If the truth must be told, I was not sorry to let Hoskins
have the start of me, and tell the chaps what had taken place,--for
we all have our little vanities, and I liked to be thought well of
by my companions.
When I came in, I saw my business had been done, by the way in
which the chaps looked at me; especially Abednego, who offered me a
pinch out of his gold snuff-box the very first thing. Roundhand
shook me, too, warmly by the hand, when he came round to look over
my day-
book, said I wrote a capital hand (and indeed I believe I
do, without any sort of flattery), and invited me for dinner next
Sunday, in Myddelton Square. "You won't have," said he, "quite
such a grand turn-out as with YOUR FRIENDS AT THE WEST END"--he
said this with a particular accent--"but Amelia and I are always
happy to see a friend in our plain way,--pale sherry, old port, and
cut and come again. Hey?"
I said I would come and bring Hoskins too.
He answered that I was very polite, and that he should be very
happy to see Hoskins; and we went accordingly at the appointed day
and hour; but though Gus was eleventh clerk and I twelfth, I
remarked that at dinner I was helped first and best. I had twice
as many force-meat balls as Hoskins in my mock-turtle, and pretty
nearly all the oysters out of the sauce-boat. Once, Roundhand was
going to help Gus before me; when his wife, who was seated at the
head of the table, looking very big and fierce in red crape and a
turban, shouted out, "ANTONY!" and poor R. dropped the plate, and
blushed as red as anything. How Mrs. R. did talk to me about the
West End to be sure! She had a "Peerage," as you may be certain,
and knew everything about the Drum family in a manner that quite
astonished me. She asked me how much Lord Drum had a year; whether
I thought he had twenty, thirty, forty, or a hundred and fifty
thousand a year; whether I was invited to Drum Castle; what the
young ladies wore, and if they had those odious gigot sleeves which
were just coming in then; and here Mrs. R. looked at a pair of
large mottled arms that she was very proud of.
"I say, Sam my boy!" cried, in the midst of our talk, Mr.
Roundhand, who had been passing the port-wine round pretty freely,
"I hope you looked to the main chance, and put in a few shares of
the West Diddlesex,--hey?"
"Mr. Roundhand, have you put up the decanters downstairs?" cries
the lady, quite angry, and wishing to stop the conversation.
"No, Milly, I've emptied 'em," says R.
"Don't Milly me, sir! and have the goodness to go down and tell
Lancy my maid" (a look at me) "to make the tea in the study. We
have a gentleman here who is not USED to Pentonville ways" (another
look); "but he won't mind the ways of FRIENDS." And here Mrs.
Roundhand heaved her very large chest, and gave me a third look
that was so severe, that I declare to goodness it made me look
quite foolish. As to Gus, she never so much as spoke to him all
the evening; but he consoled himself with a great lot of muffins,
and sat most of the evening (it was a cruel hot summer) whistling
and talking with Roundhand on the verandah. I think I should like
to have been with them,--for it was very close in the room with
that great big Mrs. Roundhand squeezing close up to one on the
sofa.
"Do you recollect what a jolly night we had here last summer?" I
heard Hoskins say, who was leaning over the balcony, and ogling the
girls coming home from church. "You and me with our coats off,
plenty of cold rum-and-water, Mrs. Roundhand at Margate, and a
whole box of Manillas?"
"Hush!" said Roundhand, quite eagerly; "Milly will hear."
But Milly didn't hear: for she was occupied in telling me an
immense long story about her waltzing with the Count de
Schloppenzollern at the City ball to the Allied Sovereigns; and how
the Count had great large white moustaches; and how odd she thought
it to go whirling round the room with a great man's arm round your
waist. "Mr. Roundhand has never allowed it since our marriage--
never; but in the year 'fourteen it was considered a proper
compliment, you know, to pay the sovereigns. So twenty-nine young
ladies, of the best families in the City of London, I assure you,
Mr. Titmarsh--there was the Lord Mayor's own daughters; Alderman
Dobbins's gals; Sir Charles Hopper's three, who have the great
house in Baker Street; and your humble servant, who was rather
slimmer in those days--twenty-nine of us had a dancing-master on
purpose, and practised waltzing in a room over the Egyptian Hall at
the Mansion House. He was a splendid man, that Count
Schloppenzollern!"
"I am sure, ma'am," says I, "he had a splendid partner!" and
blushed up to my eyes when I said it.
"Get away, you naughty creature!" says Mrs. Roundhand, giving me a
great slap: "you're all the same, you men in the West End--all
deceivers. The Count was just like you. Heigho! Before you
marry, it's all honey and compliments; when you win us, it's all
coldness and indifference. Look at Roundhand, the great baby,
trying to beat down a butterfly with his yellow bandanna! Can a
man like THAT comprehend me? can he fill the void in my heart?"
(She pronounced it without the h; but that there should be no
mistake, laid her hand upon the place meant.) "Ah, no! Will YOU
be so neglectful when YOU marry, Mr. Titmarsh?"
As she spoke, the bells were just tolling the people out of church,
and I fell a-thinking of my dear dear Mary Smith in the country,
walking home to her grandmother's, in her modest grey cloak, as the
bells were chiming and the air full of the sweet smell of the hay,
and the river shining in the sun, all crimson, purple, gold, and
silver. There was my dear Mary a hundred and twenty miles off, in
Somersetshire, walking home from church along with Mr. Snorter's
family, with which she came and went; and I was listening to the
talk of this great leering vulgar woman.
I could not help feeling for a certain half of a sixpence that you
have heard me speak of; and putting my hand mechanically upon my
chest, I tore my fingers with the point of my new DIAMOND-PIN. Mr.
Polonius had sent it home the night before, and I sported it for
the first time at Roundhand's to dinner.
"It's a beautiful diamond," said Mrs. Roundhand. "I have been
looking at it all dinner-time. How rich you must be to wear such
splendid things! and how can you remain in a vulgar office in the
City--you who have such great acquaintances at the West End?"
The woman had somehow put me in such a passion that I bounced off
the sofa, and made for the balcony without answering a word,--ay,
and half broke my head against the sash, too, as I went out to the
gents in the open air. "Gus," says I, "I feel very unwell: I wish
you'd come home with me." And Gus did not desire anything better;
for he had ogled the last girl out of the last church, and the
night was beginning to fall.
"What! already?" said Mrs. Roundhand; "there is a lobster coming
up,--a trifling refreshment; not what he's accustomed to, but--"
I am sorry to say I nearly said, "D- the lobster!" as Roundhand
went and whispered to her that I was ill.
"Ay," said Gus, looking very knowing. "Recollect, Mrs. R., that he
was AT THE WEST END on Thursday, asked to dine, ma'am, with the
tip-top nobs. Chaps don't dine at the West End for nothing, do
they, R.? If you play at BOWLS, you know--"
"You must look out for RUBBERS," said Roundhand, as quick as
thought.
"Not in my house of a Sunday," said Mrs. R., looking very fierce
and angry. "Not a card shall be touched here. Are we in a
Protestant land, sir? in a Christian country?"
"My dear, you don't understand. We were not talking of rubbers of
whist."
"There shall be NO game at all in the house of a Sabbath eve," said
Mrs. Roundhand; and out she flounced from the room, without ever so
much as wishing us good-night.
"Do stay," said the husband, looking very much frightened,--"do
stay. She won't come back while you're here; and I do wish you'd
stay so."
But we wouldn't: and when we reached Salisbury Square, I gave Gus
a lecture about spending his Sundays idly; and read out one of
Blair's sermons before we went to bed. As I turned over in bed, I
could not help thinking about the luck the pin had brought me; and
it was not over yet, as you will see in the next chapter.
CHAPTER V
HOW THE DIAMOND INTRODUCES HIM TO A STILL MORE FASHIONABLE PLACE
To tell the truth, though, about the pin, although I mentioned it
almost the last thing in the previous chapter, I assure you it was
by no means the last thing in my thoughts. It had come home from
Mr. Polonius's, as I said, on Saturday night; and Gus and I
happened to be out enjoying ourselves, half-price, at Sadler's
Wells; and perhaps we took a little refreshment on our way back:
but that has nothing to do with my story.
On the table, however, was the little box from the jeweller's; and
when I took it out,--MY, how the diamond did twinkle and glitter by
the light of our one candle!
"I'm sure it would light up the room of itself," says Gus. "I've
read they do in--in history."
It was in the history of Cogia Hassan Alhabbal, in the "Arabian
Nights," as I knew very well. But we put the candle out,
nevertheless, to try.
"Well, I declare to goodness it does illuminate the old place!"
says Gus; but the fact was, that there was a gas-lamp opposite our
window, and I believe that was the reason why we could see pretty
well. At least in my bedroom, to which I was obliged to go without
a candle, and of which the window looked out on a dead wall, I
could not see a wink, in spite of the Hoggarty diamond, and was
obliged to grope about in the dark for a pincushion which Somebody
gave me (I don't mind owning it was Mary Smith), and in which I
stuck it for the night. But, somehow, I did not sleep much for
thinking of it, and woke very early in the morning; and, if the
truth must be told, stuck it in my night-gown, like a fool, and
admired myself very much in the glass.
Gus admired it as much as I did; for since my return, and
especially since my venison dinner and drive with Lady Drum, he
thought I was the finest fellow in the world, and boasted about his
"West End friend" everywhere.
As we were going to dine at Roundhand's, and I had no black satin
stock to set it off, I was obliged to place it in the frill of my
best shirt, which tore the muslin sadly, by the way. However, the
diamond had its effect on my entertainers, as we have seen; rather
too much perhaps on one of them; and next day I wore it down at the
office, as Gus would make me do; though it did not look near so
well in the second day's shirt as on the first day, when the linen
was quite clear and bright with Somersetshire washing.
The chaps at the West Diddlesex all admired it hugely, except that
snarling Scotchman M'Whirter, fourth clerk,--out of envy because I
did not think much of a great yellow stone, named a carum-gorum, or
some such thing, which he had in a snuff-mull, as he called it,--
all except M'Whirter, I say, were delighted with it; and Abednego
The Great Hoggarty Diamond Page 4
