The Great Hoggarty Diamond

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by William Makepeace Thackeray

much fright as fury.

  "You d-d ungrateful villain!" says he, "what do you stand there

  laughing for?"

  "I'm waiting your orders for Timbuctoo, sir," says I, and laughed

  fit to die; and so did my Lord Tiptoff and his party, who joined us

  on the lawn: and Jeames the footman came forward and helped Mr.

  Preston out of the water.

  "Oh, you old sinner!" says my Lord, as his brother-in-law came up

  the slope. "Will that heart of yours be always so susceptible, you

  romantic, apoplectic, immoral man?"

  Mr. Preston went away, looking blue with rage, and ill-treated his

  wife for a whole month afterwards.

  "At any rate," says my Lord, "Titmarsh here has got a place through

  our friend's unhappy attachment; and Mrs. Titmarsh has only laughed

  at him, so there is no harm there. It's an ill wind that blows

  nobody good, you know."

  "Such a wind as that, my Lord, with due respect to you, shall never

  do good to me. I have learned in the past few years what it is to

  make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness; and that out of

  such friendship no good comes in the end to honest men. It shall

  never be said that Sam Titmarsh got a place because a great man was

  in love with his wife; and were the situation ten times as

  valuable, I should blush every day I entered the office-doors in

  thinking of the base means by which my fortune was made. You have

  made me free, my Lord; and, thank God! I am willing to work. I can

  easily get a clerkship with the assistance of my friends; and with

  that and my wife's income, we can manage honestly to face the

  world."

  This rather long speech I made with some animation; for, look you,

  I was not over well pleased that his Lordship should think me

  capable of speculating in any way on my wife's beauty.

  My Lord at first turned red, and looked rather angry; but at last

  he held out his hand and said, "You are right, Titmarsh, and I am

  wrong; and let me tell you in confidence, that I think you are a

  very honest fellow. You shan't lose by your honesty, I promise

  you."

  Nor did I: for I am at this present moment Lord Tiptoff's steward

  and right-hand man: and am I not a happy father? and is not my

  wife loved and respected by all the country? and is not Gus Hoskins

  my brother-in-law, partner with his excellent father in the leather

  way, and the delight of all his nephews and nieces for his tricks

  and fun?

  As for Mr. Brough, that gentleman's history would fill a volume of

  itself. Since he vanished from the London world, he has become

  celebrated on the Continent, where he has acted a thousand parts,

  and met all sorts of changes of high and low fortune. One thing we

  may at least admire in the man, and that is, his undaunted courage;

  and I can't help thinking, as I have said before, that there must

  be some good in him, seeing the way in which his family are

  faithful to him. With respect to Roundhand, I had best also speak

  tenderly. The case of Roundhand v. Tidd is still in the memory of

  the public; nor can I ever understand how Bill Tidd, so poetic as

  he was, could ever take on with such a fat, odious, vulgar woman as

  Mrs. R., who was old enough to be his mother.

  As soon as we were in prosperity, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes Wapshot made

  overtures to be reconciled to us; and Mr. Wapshot laid bare to me

  all the baseness of Mr. Smithers's conduct in the Brough

  transaction. Smithers had also endeavoured to pay his court to me,

  once when I went down to Somersetshire; but I cut his pretensions

  short, as I have shown. "He it was," said Mr. Wapshot, "who

  induced Mrs. Grimes (Mrs. Hoggarty she was then) to purchase the

  West Diddlesex shares: receiving, of course, a large bonus for

  himself. But directly he found that Mrs. Hoggarty had fallen into

  the hands of Mr. Brough, and that he should lose the income he made

  from the lawsuits with her tenants and from the management of her

  landed property, he determined to rescue her from that villain

  Brough, and came to town for the purpose. He also," added Mr.

  Wapshot, "vented his malignant slander against me; but Heaven was

  pleased to frustrate his base schemes. In the proceedings

  consequent on Brough's bankruptcy, Mr. Smithers could not appear;

  for his own share in the transactions of the Company would have

  been most certainly shown up. During his absence from London, I

  became the husband--the happy husband--of your aunt. But though,

  my dear sir, I have been the means of bringing her to grace, I

  cannot disguise from you that Mrs. W. has faults which all my

  pastoral care has not enabled me to eradicate. She is close of her

  money, sir--very close; nor can I make that charitable use of her

  property which, as a clergyman, I ought to do; for she has tied up

  every shilling of it, and only allows me half-a-crown a week for

  pocket-money. In temper, too, she is very violent. During the

  first years of our union, I strove with her; yea, I chastised her;

  but her perseverance, I must confess, got the better of me. I make

  no more remonstrances, but am as a lamb in her hands, and she leads

  me whithersoever she pleases."

  Mr. Wapshot concluded his tale by borrowing half-a-crown from me

  (it was at the Somerset Coffee-house in the Strand, where he came,

  in the year 1832, to wait upon me), and I saw him go from thence

  into the gin-shop opposite, and come out of the gin-shop half-an-

  hour afterwards, reeling across the streets, and perfectly

  intoxicated.

  He died next year: when his widow, who called herself Mrs.

  Hoggarty-Grimes-Wapshot, of Castle Hoggarty, said that over the

  grave of her saint all earthly resentments were forgotten, and

  proposed to come and live with us; paying us, of course, a handsome

  remuneration. But this offer my wife and I respectfully declined;

  and once more she altered her will, which once more she had made in

  our favour; called us ungrateful wretches and pampered menials, and

  left all her property to the Irish Hoggarties. But seeing my wife

  one day in a carriage with Lady Tiptoff, and hearing that we had

  been at the great ball at Tiptoff Castle, and that I had grown to

  be a rich man, she changed her mind again, sent for me on her

  death-bed, and left me the farms of Slopperton and Squashtail, with

  all her savings for fifteen years. Peace be to her soul! for

  certainly she left me a very pretty property.

  Though I am no literary man myself, my cousin Michael (who

  generally, when he is short of coin, comes down and passes a few

  months with us) says that my Memoirs may be of some use to the

  public (meaning, I suspect, to himself); and if so, I am glad to

  serve him and them, and hereby take farewell: bidding all gents

  who peruse this, to be cautious of their money, if they have it; to

  be still more cautious of their friends' money; to remember that

  great profits imply great risks; and that the great shrewd

  capitalists of this country would not be content with four per

  cent. for their mon
ey, if they could securely get more: above all,

  I entreat them never to embark in any speculation, of which the

  conduct is not perfectly clear to them, and of which the agents are

  not perfectly open and loyal.

 

 

 


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