Part 15

“You’ve got to turn up, you know,” said that gentleman. “We are having a party of sorts to introduce Chrissie to a few old pals. You’ve got to turn up, my son; we can’t do without you. It won’t be large, but it will be select. There will be you and me and Joe Cox, who plays for Surrey Second Eleven; and we are expecting John Dobbs, who plays the third fiddle in the orchestra at the Alcazar Theatre--that is if he can get a night off; if not, he will come on after the show--and then there will be Chrissie, and her cousin Hermione Leigh, who is a stunner and no mistake. She is engaged for the new ballet at the Alcazar. Then there will be one or two quiet unassuming people who don’t much matter. It doesn’t do, my son, to have a party that is all celebrities, any more than it does to have a pudding that is all plums. I have half a mind to ask young Davis, just to show that I bear him no ill-will for being so tricky--his manner is a good deal above the average, and he’s a bit of a vocalist--but he knows it, like the cocky young swine that he is, and there’s no saying that he mightn’t get uppish and put on side with the pater and mater. No, Luney, I don’t think it would be safe to risk it. Oh, and then there will be my old Aunt Tabitha, my guv’nor’s sister. The old girl is a corker, and no mistake. She was lady’s-maid for years to the Dowager Lady Brigintop. She’s seen a bit of life, I can tell you. It will make your hair curl to hear what she has got to say about the British Aristocracy. I tell you, Luney, this is going to be no mean affair. Evening clothes, of course.”

The enumeration of the ingredients which were to make up the evening party to which William Jordan, Junior, had been bidden, and from whom no refusal would be taken, filled him with consternation, surprise, and dismay. Such an undertaking was so far outside his _milieu_, that for the time being, a journey to the moon or a distant planet seemed a light thing by comparison.

Yet at first, he had not the courage to damp the ardour of his friend, Mr. Dodson, by explicitly stating that he had no wish to be present. That innate courtesy, which the rebuffs to which he was subjected hourly in the stern school of experience, did nothing to lessen, nor a steadily ripening judgment to minimize, forbade the unhappy young man from exposing his craven’s fears to his mentor. All the same, the problem of how to escape from so dread an ordeal without wounding the feelings of his friend, was never absent from his thoughts.

“I--I am afraid, Jimmy,” he plucked up the courage to confess on the evening of the following day, “I--I cannot come to your p-p-party.”

“You have got to come to my p-p-party, my son,” said Jimmy Dodson, with an amused absence of compromise. “I can take no refusal.”

“Oh, n-n-n-no!” said the young man in blank despair.

“Oh, y-y-y-yes! you old lunatic,” said his mentor indulgently. “They all know you are coming, and you don’t know how keen they are to meet you. When I told Joe Cox you could speak Greek like a native, you should have seen his face.”

“Oh, b-b-but,” said the young man desperately, “I--I--I am not what you call--I--I am not what you call ‘up’ in these things!”

“Up, be blowed!” said Mr. Dodson. “You have got to develop your social instinct a bit. You old lunatic, what have you got to be so serious about? Haven’t you ever been to a party before?”

“Oh, n-n-no,” said William Jordan, Junior, with a scared face.

“Then it is time you broke the ice,” said his mentor sternly. “Every chap has got to go out into society. You can’t get on in the world without you do.”

“Oh, n-n-n-no,” protested the young man feebly.

“It will be good for you, my son,” said his inexorable mentor; “do you a power of good. You want bringing out badly. You are a regular D’Orsay to what you were; when I knew you first, I never met your equal for greenness. Of course you are not very bright now; but if you only form the habit of going out into society a bit, you are quite likely to walk away from one or two of the more fancied performers who are making the running at present. The other day when I told young Davis that you could speak Greek like a native, he as good as called me a liar. I’ll tell you what it is, my son; if only you could be got to think a bit more of yourself; if only you would cultivate the habit of putting on a reasonable amount of side; if only you would pull up your socks a bit, you might easily, in your small way, make a bit of a mark. Of course you will never be Number One in anything; you will never see your name in large type; you’ll never be a James Dodson, my son, if you live to be as old as Methuselah, for the very good reason that you haven’t got it in you. But my advice to you is, form the habit of going out into society and see what it will do for you. I’ll guarantee that in one year your old aunt at Hither Green won’t know her own nephew.”

William Jordan, Junior, however, was not to be shorn of his terrors by words so suave as these. Yet Mr. James Dodson had quite made up his mind that the party to be given in honour of his _fiancée_ should not be baulked of its chief lion, whose surprising attainment in a dead language Mr. Dodson had published abroad to an equally surprising extent.

However, as the young man continued to persist in his unreasonable attempts to evade his responsibilities, a ray of meaning suddenly suffused the already sufficiently bright intelligence of Mr. James Dodson.

“Of course, my son, I see, I see!” he exclaimed; “if you have never been to a party before, you are wondering about your kit. I think I know you well enough by now, old boy, to ask whether you have got an evening suit?”

Mr. Jordan was fain to confess that although he was not thinking about an evening suit--whatever such an article of attire might be--he did not think he had got an evening suit.

“Own up, if you haven’t,” said Mr. Dodson. “It is nothing to be ashamed of. Some chaps might think so, but I am not the least bit snobbish myself. Own up and I shall not think the worse of you.”

Upon this encouraging assurance the young man inquired if there was any substantial difference between an evening suit and an ordinary night-gown in which one went to bed.

When in all good faith the young man sought this information, he and his mentor chanced to be passing the brightly-illumined window of a Fleet Street tailor. Mr. James Dodson stopped abruptly. With great earnestness he peered into his companion’s wan and troubled countenance. For the first time in their intercourse the _bona fides_ of William Jordan, Junior, were seriously called in question.

“If I thought you were trying it on with me, Luney, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, with that truculence which he always seemed to hold in reserve for instant use; “if I thought you were pulling my leg, I should hit you as hard as I used to before I knew you spoke Greek. But no, Luney,” Mr. Dodson added, with a sigh of relief, as he continued to peer into that strange and pale countenance, “you haven’t got it about you to try it on with _me_.”

In an admirably practical fashion Mr. James Dodson proceeded there and then to demonstrate what an evening suit really was by pointing out that article of attire as displayed on a dummy in the tailor’s window.

“There you are, my son, there it is, all complete with a white tie and patent leather shoes,” he said, indicating this mirror of fashion and mould of form.

William Jordan, Junior, confessed without shame or confusion that he had neither an evening suit, nor a white tie, nor a pair of patent leather shoes in his possession.

“If such is really the case,” said Mr. Dodson, “your up-bringing has been disgracefully neglected. I don’t know what your people can have been about; but it can be remedied. My young cousin Harry is about your size, although he is a good deal fatter; I shall get him to lend you his. Fortunately he has not been asked to the party; he is only a junior clerk in the insurance, and I thought he could be kept until the eleventh hour in case any of the swells dropped out. I expect he will be only too proud to lend you his suit, although you will have to get a couple of tucks put in the waistcoat and trousers.”

The next day, however, Mr. Dodson had to confess that as far as his cousin Harry was concerned his expectations were disappointed.

“The confounded youth has arranged to go to a subscription ball on the same night,” said Mr. Dodson, with an aggrieved air. “Like his cheek when he knew that I was having a party. I don’t know what we shall do now, my son. We might have tried young Davis, only unfortunately in a weak moment I have asked him to come to the party.”

After a brief period of contemplation, in which Mr. Dodson thoughtfully reviewed the situation from every point of view, he said, “I am afraid, my son, there is only one thing to be done. You will have to get an evening suit of your own. It will be money well invested if you take to going out into society a great deal.”

That evening Mr. William Jordan received an introduction to the gentleman who had the felicity of providing Mr. Dodson with his own immaculate outfit.

“Something neat, you know, Mr. Mosenthal, but not gaudy,” said Mr. Dodson, as this artist approached his subject in his shirt sleeves, with a piece of chalk in his mouth and a tape measure in his long slender fingers. “You have got a difficult subject, Mr. Mosenthal, but with a bit of tact I expect you will be able to turn him out a gentleman.”

Mr. Mosenthal assured Mr. Dodson very earnestly that he had not the least doubt on that score. Armed with this assurance Mr. Dodson accompanied William Jordan into the shop of the haberdasher next door for the purpose of buying him a white evening tie.

“If you were left to yourself, my son, I would bet a penny,” said Mr. Dodson, “that you would buy one of those ties that are tied already; and if you did, my son, I don’t mind telling you that socially you would do for yourself at once.”

Having by the exercise of this highly commendable foresight delivered William Jordan, Junior, from the toils of this imminent and deadly peril, Mr. Dodson fortified this social neophyte with further sound advice in regard to his deportment on the devious and narrow path he was about to tread, and finally committed him to the care of his green ’bus in Ludgate Circus.

“It is a dangerous experiment,” mused Mr. Dodson, as the ’bus was lost amid the traffic; “but that young fellow wants bringing out badly. It will do him no end of good. But how it comes about that he can read Greek like a native beats me entirely.”

As the fateful twenty-first of February drew near, William Jordan’s agitation became so great that he would lie sleepless at night, imaging the ordeal that lay before him in the multiform shapes of a nightmare. During the last few months he had gained so much knowledge and hard-won experience that he was no longer so susceptible to the terrors which had seemed to render his childhood one long and intricate tissue of horrors. He had begun to understand that the hordes of “street-persons” were his fellow creatures. He had gained an insight into their ways, their speech, and even to some extent into their modes of thought. Such knowledge had rendered an incomparable service to his sense of security. He was even gaining a measure of self-confidence. He could even frame whole sentences of their language on the spur of the moment, and utter them in such a fashion that they were intelligible to those with whom he had to consort.

Yet his anticipation that he would be cast among a number of strange people in a strange place, all of whom would be engaged upon a business in which he also would have to engage without in the least comprehending its nature, re-summoned a good deal of his former state of mind. It was clear from his friend’s attitude towards it, that “a party” was an affair of some peculiar and special significance. He divined from his friend’s manner that this was something far removed from the routine of tying brown-paper parcels with double knots of string, pasting labels upon them, and dabbing them with splotches of coloured wax. No, the duties that would be exacted of him were evidently far other than these, in which he felt he had already attained to some measure of proficiency.

It was not until the eve of the dread ordeal, when the tailor delivered his mysterious parcel to 43, Milton Street, E.C., that he took the white-haired man, his father, into his confidence. Then it was that, worn out with a distress that he knew to be contemptible, he asked that guide and comforter to whom he was wont to repair in all emergencies, whose wisdom was never at fault, whether he could escape from his ordeal with his own honour inviolate and without giving pain to one among the street-persons to whom he owed a debt of gratitude, and towards whom he already felt himself to be linked in a curious bond of affection.

The white-haired man, his father, did not repress a faint smile, which, however, was melancholy.

“Thou wilt cease to be Achilles, beloved one,” said his father, “unless trial is constantly made of thy quality. Thou canst retain thy nobility only at the point of the sword. Wert thou not Achilles I would say to thee, shun all such ordeals as these. Being Achilles I would say to thee, follow in the steps of thy guide wheresoever they may lead thee through the many and devious purlieus of the out-of-doors world.”

“Thy wisdom sustains me, my father,” said the young man. “It searches my veins and exorcises the coldness of my faint spirit almost like the living breath of the great book itself. I would beseech thee, my father, to reveal to me a passage that is proper to my pass.”

The young man took down the mighty tome from the shelf, and the aged man his father opened it at a page worn thin by the intercourse of many generations. After the young man had perused it in deep silence for a little while, he knelt for many hours with his scarred forehead bent upon the faded vellum.

XXV

During the next day, which was so big with fate, Mr. William Jordan, Junior, was the recipient of further instruction from his mentor for his guidance at the forthcoming ceremonial.

“Mind you don’t tuck your napkin into your collar,” said this authority in the ways of the polite world; “and don’t eat your cheese with your knife; and don’t drink out of the finger bowls. And mind you turn up without a speck of dirt on your shoes. I should recommend you to take a ’bus to St. Paul’s Station; and you had better arrange with young Davis, who will be on the train, to split a hansom from Peckham Station to Midlothian Avenue.”

By the intervention of this practical mind, which, of course, by this time wielded a considerable influence in high places, both G. Eliot Davis and William Jordan, Junior, were allowed to relinquish their official duties at six p.m. in order to prepare for the festivities of the night.

As William Jordan, Junior, tied up the last parcel and stepped down from his high stool immediately prior to stealing home to array himself in fear and trembling and a brand new evening suit for the dread ordeal that awaited him, he heard, for the twentieth time that day, the voice of his mentor in his ear.

“By the way, Luney, my son,” it said, “I forgot to tell you to wear a white muffler in the train to keep the smuts off your shirt front.”

With this final injunction in his ears, Mr. William Jordan, Junior, took his fearful way to 43, Milton Street, E.C., while Mr. James Dodson “looked round” into the annexe of the Brontë Hotel to inquire of his _fiancée_ for the third time that day, “what sort of fettle she was in?”

It is not the business of this biography to estimate the precise quantity of blood and tears that it cost William Jordan, Junior, to clothe himself in his evening suit and to embellish the same with a necktie which had to be arranged by his own very inefficient fingers, and also with a pair of new and excruciatingly tight shoes. It must suffice to say that when at last, in a state bordering on mental derangement, he had by some means contrived to array himself in these articles of civilized attire, to reap as the immediate reward of a somewhat frantic perseverance a measure of sheer physical discomfort that he had never before experienced, he utilized the few minutes that remained to him before he obeyed the decree that sent him forth to Midlothian Avenue, Peckham, S.E., upon his knees in the little room by the side of the white-haired man his father.

XXVI

Upon the wind-swept platform of St. Paul’s Station in the City, while awaiting the arrival of the 7.7 to Peckham, he was accosted by the erect and immaculate form of Mr. G. Eliot Davis. The nonchalance of bearing and air of supreme self-possession of this gentleman were hardly inferior to those of Mr. Dodson himself.

“Hullo, Luney,” said Mr. Davis, looking up from the precincts of an inordinately high collar to the face of a gaunt figure which, somewhat to the annoyance of Mr. Davis, was considerably taller than his own; “arrayed, I see, like Solomon in all his glory. Feeling pretty cheery, eh, and full of parlour tricks? I must say these functions don’t amuse me at all. Music and progressive games!--I like more knife and fork work myself. Come on and have a sherry and bitters before we start.”

Mr. William Jordan had already acquired that rudimentary wisdom of the “out-of-doors” world, that “when you are in Rome you must do like the Romans.” He had also on his way in the omnibus determined to follow out this fundamental truth, as far as in him lay, to the letter. Therefore, with great docility he accompanied Mr. Davis to the buffet to have a sherry and bitters. It is not necessary to state that even in the act of swallowing that mysterious compound he had ample cause to rue his superhuman resolve.

It was with a sensation of being poisoned that in the wake of his mentor for the time being he invaded a second-class smoking compartment, already overcrowded with emphatic street-persons, smoking equally emphatic tobacco.

Upon their arrival at Peckham, the young man recalled Mr. Dodson’s injunctions and very timorously advanced the suggestion that they should take a hansom to Midlothian Avenue. Mr. Davis received the suggestion with loud-voiced derision.

“Not likely,” said that gentleman. “I am not a bloated plutocrat. You should have sported a pair of goloshes the same as me.”

William Jordan, Junior, was confronted accordingly with the extreme course of having to take a hansom for himself, and of inviting Mr. Davis to accept a seat therein. Mr. Davis’s tone of unmistakable rebuff, however, had quelled him so effectually that he could not find the courage to do either of these things. Accordingly he was obliged to pick his way with great trepidation along divers unclean thoroughfares to the frank amusement of his companion, who, in bringing to his notice innumerable pools of water and stretches of mud upon the route, abjured him earnestly “to be careful of his ‘pumps.’”

Upon the stroke of half-past eight Mr. Davis executed an ostentatious tattoo upon the knocker of No. 8, Gladstone Villas, which was situate amid two narrow rows of ill-lighted, meagre, lower middle class respectability. They were received with great cordiality by Mr. Dodson himself, who in immaculate evening attire appeared to considerable advantage.

“Hullo, Luney, old boy,” said Mr. Dodson, “so here we are! Give me your hat and coat and then come in here, and I’ll introduce you to Coxey and John Dobbs.”

With a dull terror in his soul Mr. William Jordan, Junior, resigned himself implicitly into the care of his mentor, so that almost without being aware of how he came there, he found himself in an exceedingly small room in the presence of several other immaculately attired gentlemen; and these, although entire strangers to him, were of an extremely critical cast of countenance. He could understand nothing of what was taking place, although presently he awoke to the fact that these gentlemen were grasping him by the hand.

“You’ll have a finger before we go up-stairs to the ladies?” said Mr. Dodson, pouring a coloured liquid into a tumbler, to which he added an even more mysterious liquid that went off with a hiss. “Say when.”

“Oh n-n-n-no, please!” gasped Mr. William Jordan; for a bitter recollection still abided within him of his misadventure at the railway station buffet.

Hearing this note of somewhat exaggerated appeal the other gentlemen could hardly repress a guffaw, particularly when incited thereto by a knowing wink from Mr. Davis.

“Never mind them, Luney old boy,” said Mr. Dodson, who as he spoke smiled archly at his guests. “They don’t know any better. They are not accustomed to mix with men of intellect on equal terms.”

“That is the truest word you’ve spoken this week, Jim Dodson,” said Mr. John Dobbs of the Alcazar Theatre, a heavy and sombre young man with very long and thick black hair and a voice that seemed to proceed from his boots.

“Close it, Jimmy,” said Mr. Joseph Cox, a small and dapper young gentleman with a very easy and cordial manner.

“One of these days he will be the best slow left-arm bowler in Surrey,” said Mr. Dodson in an impressive aside to Mr. William Jordan, and in a voice sufficiently audible for Mr. Joseph Cox to hear.

Mr. Dodson, having to the frank amusement of those gentlemen assembled, exercised his blandishments in vain to induce Mr. William Jordan “to have a finger before going up-stairs to see the ladies,” at length proceeded to conduct the young man thither without this aid, which he and his friends deemed most essential to the accomplishment of so grave an ordeal.

“Don’t be nervous, old boy,” said his mentor kindly, as he took him firmly by the arm; “at the worst they can’t do more than eat you, and if they do they will wish they hadn’t.”

“Are--are my--my sh-shoes all right?” stammered Mr. William Jordan in a hoarse whisper.