Masters of the Novella

by Delphi Classics

  Roundhand himself, and Gutch, nineteenth clerk, son of the brother of an East Indian director, were the only two of our gents invited, as we knew very well: for they had received their invitations many weeks before, and bragged about them not a little. But two days before the ball, and after my diamond-pin had had its due effect upon the gents at the office, Abednego, who had been in the directors’ room, came to my desk with a great smirk, and said, “Tit, Mr. B. says that he expects you will come down with Roundhand to the ball on Thursday.” I thought Moses was joking, — at any rate, that Mr. B.’s message was a queer one; for people don’t usually send invitations in that abrupt peremptory sort of way; but, sure enough, he presently came down himself and confirmed it, saying, as he was going out of the office, “Mr. Titmarsh, you will come down on Thursday to Mrs. Brough’s party, where you will see some relations of yours.”

  “West End again!” says that Gus Hoskins; and accordingly down I went, taking a place in a cab which Roundhand hired for himself, Gutch, and me, and for which he very generously paid eight shillings.

  There is no use to describe the grand gala, nor the number of lamps in the lodge and in the garden, nor the crowd of carriages that came in at the gates, nor the troops of curious people outside; nor the ices, fiddlers, wreaths of flowers, and cold supper within. The whole description was beautifully given in a fashionable paper, by a reporter who observed the same from the “Yellow Lion” over the way, and told it in his journal in the most accurate manner; getting an account of the dresses of the great people from their footmen and coachmen, when they came to the alehouse for their porter. As for the names of the guests, they, you may be sure, found their way to the same newspaper: and a great laugh was had at my expense, because among the titles of the great people mentioned my name appeared in the list of the “Honourables.” Next day, Brough advertised “a hundred and fifty guineas reward for an emerald necklace lost at the party of John Brough, Esq., at Fulham;” though some of our people said that no such thing was lost at all, and that Brough only wanted to advertise the magnificence of his society; but this doubt was raised by persons not invited, and envious no doubt.

  Well, I wore my diamond, as you may imagine, and rigged myself in my best clothes, viz. my blue coat and brass buttons before mentioned, nankeen trousers and silk stockings, a white waistcoat, and a pair of white gloves bought for the occasion. But my coat was of country make, very high in the waist and short in the sleeves, and I suppose must have looked rather odd to some of the great people assembled, for they stared at me a great deal, and a whole crowd formed to see me dance — which I did to the best of my power, performing all the steps accurately and with great agility, as I had been taught by our dancing-master in the country.

  And with whom do you think I had the honour to dance? With no less a person than Lady Jane Preston; who, it appears, had not gone out of town, and who shook me most kindly by the hand when she saw me, and asked me to dance with her. We had my Lord Tiptoff and Lady Fanny Rakes for our vis-à-vis.

  You should have seen how the people crowded to look at us, and admired my dancing too, for I cut the very best of capers, quite different to the rest of the gents (my Lord among the number), who walked through the quadrille as if they thought it a trouble, and stared at my activity with all their might. But when I have a dance I like to enjoy myself: and Mary Smith often said I was the very best partner at our assemblies. While we were dancing, I told Lady Jane how Roundhand, Gutch, and I, had come down three in a cab, besides the driver; and my account of our adventures made her Ladyship laugh, I warrant you. Lucky it was for me that I didn’t go back in the same vehicle; for the driver went and intoxicated himself at the “Yellow Lion,” threw out Gutch and our head clerk as he was driving them back, and actually fought Gutch afterwards and blacked his eye, because he said that Gutch’s red waistcoat frightened the horse.

  Lady Jane, however, spared me such an uncomfortable ride home: for she said she had a fourth place in her carriage, and asked me if I would accept it; and positively, at two o’clock in the morning, there was I, after setting the ladies and my Lord down, driven to Salisbury Square in a great thundering carriage, with flaming lamps and two tall footmen, who nearly knocked the door and the whole little street down with the noise they made at the rapper. You should have seen Gus’s head peeping out of window in his white nightcap! He kept me up the whole night telling him about the ball, and the great people I had seen there; and next day he told at the office my stories, with his own usual embroideries upon them.

  “Mr. Titmarsh,” said Lady Fanny, laughing to me, “who is that great fat curious man, the master of the house? Do you know he asked me if you were not related to us? and I said, ‘Oh, yes, you were.’”

  “Fanny!” says Lady Jane.

  “Well,” answered the other, “did not Grandmamma say Mr. Titmarsh was her cousin?”

  “But you know that Grandmamma’s memory is not very good.”

  “Indeed, you’re wrong, Lady Jane,” says my Lord; “I think it’s prodigious.”

  “Yes, but not very — not very accurate.”

  “No, my Lady,” says I; “for her Ladyship, the Countess of Drum, said, if you remember, that my friend Gus Hoskins—”

  “Whose cause you supported so bravely,” cries Lady Fanny.

  “ — That my friend Gus is her Ladyship’s cousin too, which cannot be, for I know all his family: they live in Skinner Street and St. Mary Axe, and are not — not quite so respectable as my relatives.”

  At this they all began to laugh; and my Lord said, rather haughtily —

  “Depend upon it, Mr. Titmarsh, that Lady Drum is no more your cousin than she is the cousin of your friend Mr. Hoskinson.”

  “Hoskins, my Lord — and so I told Gus; but you see he is very fond of me, and will have it that I am related to Lady D.: and say what I will to the contrary, tells the story everywhere. Though to be sure,” added I with a laugh, “it has gained me no small good in my time.” So I described to the party our dinner at Mrs. Roundhand’s, which all came from my diamond-pin, and my reputation as a connection of the aristocracy. Then I thanked Lady Jane handsomely for her magnificent present of fruit and venison, and told her that it had entertained a great number of kind friends of mine, who had drunk her Ladyship’s health with the greatest gratitude.

  “A haunch of venison!” cried Lady Jane, quite astonished; “indeed, Mr. Titmarsh, I am quite at a loss to understand you.”

  As we passed a gas-lamp, I saw Lady Fanny laughing as usual, and turning her great arch sparkling black eyes at Lord Tiptoff.

  “Why, Lady Jane,” said he, “if the truth must out, the great haunch of venison trick was one of this young lady’s performing. You must know that I had received the above-named haunch from Lord Guttlebury’s park: and knowing that Preston is not averse to Guttlebury venison, was telling Lady Drum (in whose carriage I had a seat that day, as Mr. Titmarsh was not in the way), that I intended the haunch for your husband’s table. Whereupon my Lady Fanny, clapping together her little hands, declared and vowed that the venison should not go to Preston, but should be sent to a gentleman about whose adventures on the day previous we had just been talking — to Mr. Titmarsh, in fact; whom Preston, as Fanny vowed, had used most cruelly, and to whom, she said, a reparation was due. So my Lady Fanny insists upon our driving straight to my rooms in the Albany (you know I am only to stay in my bachelor’s quarters a month longer)—”

  “Nonsense!” says Lady Fanny.

  “ — Insists upon driving straight to my chambers in the Albany, extracting thence the above-named haunch—”

  “Grandmamma was very sorry to part with it,” cries Lady Fanny.

  “ — And then she orders us to proceed to Mr. Titmarsh’s house in the City, where the venison was left, in company with a couple of baskets of fruit bought at Grange’s by Lady Fanny herself.”

  “And what was more,” said Lady Fanny, “I made Grandmamma go into Fr — into Lord Tiptoff’s rooms, a
nd dictated out of my own mouth the letter which he wrote, and pinned up the haunch of venison that his hideous old housekeeper brought us — I am quite jealous of her — I pinned up the haunch of venison in a copy of the John Bull newspaper.”

  It had one of the Ramsbottom letters in it, I remember, which Gus and I read on Sunday at breakfast, and we nearly killed ourselves with laughing. The ladies laughed too when I told them this; and good-natured Lady Jane said she would forgive her sister, and hoped I would too: which I promised to do as often as her Ladyship chose to repeat the offence.

  I never had any more venison from the family; but I’ll tell you what I had. About a month after came a card of “Lord and Lady Tiptoff,” and a great piece of plum-cake; of which, I am sorry to say, Gus ate a great deal too much.

  CHAPTER VI

  OF THE WEST DIDDLESEX ASSOCIATION, AND OF THE EFFECT THE DIAMOND HAD THERE

  Well, the magic of the pin was not over yet. Very soon after Mrs. Brough’s grand party, our director called me up to his room at the West Diddlesex, and after examining my accounts, and speaking awhile about business, said, “That’s a very fine diamond-pin, Master Titmarsh” (he spoke in a grave patronising way), “and I called you on purpose to speak to you upon the subject. I do not object to seeing the young men of this establishment well and handsomely dressed; but I know that their salaries cannot afford ornaments like those, and I grieve to see you with a thing of such value. You have paid for it, sir, — I trust you have paid for it; for, of all things, my dear — dear young friend, beware of debt.”

  I could not conceive why Brough was reading me this lecture about debt and my having bought the diamond-pin, as I knew that he had been asking about it already, and how I came by it — Abednego told me so. “Why, sir,” says I, “Mr. Abednego told me that he had told you that I had told him—”

  “Oh, ay-by-the-bye, now I recollect, Mr. Titmarsh — I do recollect — yes; though I suppose, sir, you will imagine that I have other more important things to remember.”

  “Oh, sir, in course,” says I.

  “That one of the clerks did say something about a pin — that one of the other gentlemen had it. And so your pin was given you, was it?”

  “It was given me, sir, by my aunt, Mrs. Hoggarty of Castle Hoggarty,” said I, raising my voice; for I was a little proud of Castle Hoggarty.

  “She must be very rich to make such presents, Titmarsh?”

  “Why, thank you, sir,” says I, “she is pretty well off. Four hundred a year jointure; a farm at Slopperton, sir; three houses at Squashtail; and three thousand two hundred loose cash at the banker’s, as I happen to know, sir, — that’s all.”

  I did happen to know this, you see; because, while I was down in Somersetshire, Mr. MacManus, my aunt’s agent in Ireland, wrote to say that a mortgage she had on Lord Brallaghan’s property had just been paid off, and that the money was lodged at Coutts’s. Ireland was in a very disturbed state in those days; and my aunt wisely determined not to invest her money in that country any more, but to look out for some good security in England. However, as she had always received six per cent. in Ireland, she would not hear of a smaller interest; and had warned me, as I was a commercial man, on coming to town, to look out for some means by which she could invest her money at that rate at least.

  “And how do you come to know Mrs. Hoggarty’s property so accurately?” said Mr. Brough; upon which I told him.

  “Good heavens, sir! and do you mean that you, a clerk in the West Diddlesex Insurance Office, applied to by a respectable lady as to the manner in which she should invest property, never spoke to her about the Company which you have the honour to serve? Do you mean, sir, that you, knowing there was a bonus of five per cent. for yourself upon shares taken, did not press Mrs. Hoggarty to join us?”

  “Sir,” says I, “I’m an honest man, and would not take a bonus from my own relation.”

  “Honest I know you are, my boy — give me your hand! So am I honest — so is every man in this Company honest; but we must be prudent as well. We have five millions of capital on our books, as you see — five bonâ fide millions of bonâ fide sovereigns paid up, sir, — there is no dishonesty there. But why should we not have twenty millions — a hundred millions? Why should not this be the greatest commercial Association in the world? — as it shall be, sir, — it shall, as sure as my name is John Brough, if Heaven bless my honest endeavours to establish it! But do you suppose that it can be so, unless every man among us use his utmost exertions to forward the success of the enterprise? Never, sir, — never; and, for me, I say so everywhere. I glory in what I do. There is not a house in which I enter, but I leave a prospectus of the West Diddlesex. There is not a single tradesman I employ, but has shares in it to some amount. My servants, sir, — my very servants and grooms, are bound up with it. And the first question I ask of anyone who applies to me for a place is, Are you insured or a shareholder in the West Diddlesex? the second, Have you a good character? And if the first question is answered in the negative, I say to the party coming to me, Then be a shareholder before you ask for a place in my household. Did you not see me — me, John Brough, whose name is good for millions — step out of my coach-and-four into this office, with four pounds nineteen, which I paid in to Mr. Roundhand as the price of half a share for the porter at my lodge-gate? Did you remark that I deducted a shilling from the five pound?”

  “Yes, sir; it was the day you drew out eight hundred and seventy-three ten and six — Thursday week,” says I.

  “And why did I deduct that shilling, sir? Because it was my commission — John Brough’s commission; honestly earned by him, and openly taken. Was there any disguise about it? No. Did I do it for the love of a shilling? No,” says Brough, laying his hand on his heart, “I did it from principle, — from that motive which guides every one of my actions, as I can look up to Heaven and say. I wish all my young men to see my example, and follow it: I wish — I pray that they may. Think of that example, sir. That porter of mine has a sick wife and nine young children: he is himself a sick man, and his tenure of life is feeble; he has earned money, sir, in my service — sixty pounds and more — it is all his children have to look to — all: but for that, in the event of his death, they would be houseless beggars in the street. And what have I done for that family, sir? I have put that money out of the reach of Robert Gates, and placed it so that it shall be a blessing to his family at his death. Every farthing is invested in shares in this office; and Robert Gates, my lodge-porter, is a holder of three shares in the West Diddlesex Association, and, in that capacity, your master and mine. Do you think I want to cheat Gates?”

  “Oh, sir!” says I.

  “To cheat that poor helpless man, and those tender innocent children! — you can’t think so, sir; I should be a disgrace to human nature if I did. But what boots all my energy and perseverance? What though I place my friends’ money, my family’s money, my own money — my hopes, wishes, desires, ambitions — all upon this enterprise? You young men will not do so. You, whom I treat with love and confidence as my children, make no return to me. When I toil, you remain still; when I struggle, you look on. Say the word at once, — you doubt me! O heavens, that this should be the reward of all my care and love for you!”

  Here Mr. Brough was so affected that he actually burst into tears, and I confess I saw in its true light the negligence of which I had been guilty.

  “Sir,” says I, “I am very — very sorry: it was a matter of delicacy, rather than otherwise, which induced me not to speak to my aunt about the West Diddlesex.”

  “Delicacy, my dear dear boy — as if there can be any delicacy about making your aunt’s fortune! Say indifference to me, say ingratitude, say folly, — but don’t say delicacy — no, no, not delicacy. Be honest, my boy, and call things by their right names — always do.”

  “It was folly and ingratitude, Mr. Brough,” says I: “I see it all now; and I’ll write to my aunt this very post.”

  “You had better do
no such thing,” says Brough, bitterly: “the stocks are at ninety, and Mrs. Hoggarty can get three per cent. for her money.”

  “I will write, sir, — upon my word and honour, I will write.”

  “Well, as your honour is passed, you must, I suppose; for never break your word — no, not in a trifle, Titmarsh. Send me up the letter when you have done, and I’ll frank it — upon my word and honour I will,” says Mr. Brough, laughing, and holding out his hand to me.

  I took it, and he pressed mine very kindly— “You may as well sit down here,” says he, as he kept hold of it; “there is plenty of paper.”

  And so I sat down and mended a beautiful pen, and began and wrote, “Independent West Diddlesex Association, June 1822,” and “My dear Aunt,” in the best manner possible. Then I paused a little, thinking what I should next say; for I have always found that difficulty about letters. The date and My dear So-and-so one writes off immediately — it is the next part which is hard; and I put my pen in my mouth, flung myself back in my chair, and began to think about it.

  “Bah!” said Brough, “are you going to be about this letter all day, my good fellow? Listen to me, and I’ll dictate to you in a moment.” So he began: —

  “My Dear Aunt, — Since my return from Somersetshire, I am very happy indeed to tell you that I have so pleased the managing director of our Association and the Board, that they have been good enough to appoint me third clerk—”

  “Sir!” says I.

  “Write what I say. Mr. Roundhand, as has been agreed by the board yesterday, quits the clerk’s desk and takes the title of secretary and actuary. Mr. Highmore takes his place; Mr. Abednego follows him; and I place you as third clerk — as

  “third clerk (write), with a salary of a hundred and fifty pounds per annum. This news will, I know, gratify my dear mother and you, who have been a second mother to me all my life.