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 t.i.ttle-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 alb.u.m, 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 f.a.n.n.y 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. t.i.tmarsh live here?" says the young lady, with her clear voice.
""Yes, my Lady," says I; "but he"s at the office--the West Diddles.e.x 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.
t.i.tmarsh"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. t.i.tmarsh"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. t.i.tmarsh 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 Sat.u.r.day." 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 c.r.a.pe 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 pa.s.sing the port-wine round pretty freely, "I hope you looked to the main chance, and put in a few shares of the West Diddles.e.x,--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 m.u.f.fins, 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 a.s.sure you, Mr.
t.i.tmarsh--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 b.u.t.terfly with his yellow bandanna! Can a man like _that_ comprehend me? can he fill the void in my heart?" (She p.r.o.nounced 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. t.i.tmarsh?"
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 pa.s.sion 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 n.o.bs. 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?"