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.