A meaner man never lived. All similes in converse were based upon his exploits. "As mean as old Harningham" was a phrase you heard every day at the "Bachelors." In the countless old stories they put upon him, telling how, at a tenants' lunch in Bedfordshire, he had cried, "Here's another quart of cider, and hang the expense!" how he had been seen in Farringdon Market buying his own fish; how he haggled with cabmen innumerable; how he had been stricken with a malignant fever on the day he gave away a sovereign for a shilling—there was but the echo of the general sentiment. The society prints were hilarious at the mere mention of his name. I recollect well his anger when a wag said in one of them, "It is rumored that Lord Harningham is shortly about to give something away." He was in my office next day—a week rarely passed but what I saw him—and he laid the journal upon my table, beating it flat with a stick, and pointing at it with his ample finger as though his very touch would wither the writer.
"Please to read that," he said with forced calm but considerable emphasis, "and tell me if the scoundrel doesn't deserve to be hanged. He dares to mention my name, d'ye see! To mention me, and speak about my concerns. Ha! but I wish I had him under this stick!"
"Of course you don't know who wrote it," said I.
"How should I know?" he gabbled testily. "Do I go round to the taverns swilling gin-and-water with such gutter birds? Do I hobnob with all the half-starved limners in Fleet Street? Pshaw, you talk like a fool!"
I suffered his temper, for he was worth a couple of thousand a year to me. Presently he became calmer, and the humor of the thing dawned upon his dull mind.
"Ha!" he said, snuffing ferociously from the great diamond-studded box he always carried, "I shouldn't wonder if that's Master Bertie Watts—you know my nephew, eh? he owes you something, eh?—well, that's like him, and his scoundrelly impudence—the vagabond!"
"Did not I read somewhere that he was going to be married?" I remarked at hazard; but the notion tickled him immensely, and he rolled about in his chair, shaking the snuff from his box over his fur coat, and even upon my papers.
"Yes, you read it," he gasped at last, "a fine tale too. Why, what's he got?—four hundred a year in Whitehall, and what he can draw out of me—not much, Mr. Sutton—not much."
I had no doubt of that, but I kept my face while he went on to mutter and to chortle; and I showed him a bracelet of rubies, which he desired instantly to purchase. I had put a price of four hundred and twenty pounds upon it, meaning to accept three hundred, so that we haggled for two hours by the clock and had then done business. He took the rubies away with him, while I caused the further sum to be set against him in the ledger, where already there were so many unpaid items under the name. He owed me eight thousand pounds at the least, but I could not press the account, or should have lost him; and while I was often sore troubled for lack of the money, I knew that I should get it at his death, and so aided his jewel-hunger. This was prodigious. All the gems that I sold—watches, necklaces, tiaras, brooches, and breastpins, were conveyed at once to the great safe in his bedroom and there immured. No one ever saw them but himself. His wives, both of whom were dead, had scarce enjoyed the possession of a barmaid's jewelry. The passion of the collector, of the hungerer after stones, alone consumed him. Of all his meanness, this was the most contemptible—this hiding of fair treasure from the light it lived upon—this gross hoarding of beautiful things for one man's selfish enjoyment.
When he left Bond Street that day, crying at my door, "So I'm going to give something away, am I?—but I ain't, Sutton, I ain't"—and walking off as though he had found satisfaction in the negative thus conveyed to me, I picked up the paper, and read again that young Bertie Watts was at last engaged to the Hon. Eva Benley, and that the wedding was to be celebrated in a month's time. Every one in town said that old Harningham would do something for Watts when the time for the marriage actually came; and it was gossip in the clubs that her people had given their consent—for they were historically poor—only upon the sincere assurance from their daughter's fiancé that his uncle really was very fond of him, and would present him with a handsome check on the wedding day. But here was the announcement of the wedding, and the old curmudgeon had just said—being readier in speech with me, perhaps, than with any one of his few acquaintances—that he did not mean to give the young people a halfpenny. It did occur to me that possibly he might have bought the ruby bracelet for the exceedingly pretty girl to whom his nephew was engaged; but in this I was mistaken, as you shall presently see; and the interest of the whole problem deepened when I learnt later on in the smoking-room of my club that the marriage was likely to be postponed, and something of a scandal to ensue. Bertie Watts, they said, was going about like a ravenous beast, seeking what financier he could devour. His opinion of his uncle was expressed in phrases of which the chief ornament was appalling curses and maledictions. He declared he would have the whip-hand of him yet, would make him pay handsomely for all the trouble he had put people to—in short, behaved like a man who was absurdly in love, regardless of that financial prudence which is so dear to the sight of parents and of guardians. Even he, however, could not foresee the strange thing about to happen to him, or the very curious opportunity which was shortly to be his.