“What was that you said about our having an appointment at half-past seven?” asked Mr. Cupples as the two came out of the great gateway of the pile of flats. “Have we such an appointment?”
“Certainly we have,” replied Trent. “You are dining with me. Only one thing can properly celebrate this occasion, and that is a dinner for which I pay. No, no! I asked you first. I have got right down to the bottom of a case that must be unique—a case that has troubled even my mind for over a year—and if that isn’t a good reason for standing a dinner, I don’t know what is. Cupples, we will not go to my club. This is to be a festival, and to be seen in a London club in a state of pleasurable emotion is more than enough to shatter any man’s career. Besides that, the dinner there is always the same, or, at least, they always make it taste the same, I know not how. The eternal dinner at my club hath bored millions of members like me, and shall bore; but tonight let the feast be spread in vain, so far as we are concerned. We will not go where the satraps throng the hall. We will go to Sheppard’s.”
“Who is Sheppard?” asked Mr. Cupples mildly, as they proceeded up Victoria Street. His companion went with an unnatural lightness, and a policeman, observing his face, smiled indulgently at a look of happiness which he could only attribute to alcohol.
“Who is Sheppard?” echoed Trent with bitter emphasis. “That question, if you will pardon me for saying so, Cupples, is thoroughly characteristic of the spirit of aimless enquiry prevailing in this restless day. I suggest our dining at Sheppard’s, and instantly you fold your arms and demand, in a frenzy of intellectual pride, to know who Sheppard is before you will cross the threshold of Sheppard’s. I am not going to pander to the vices of the modern mind. Sheppard’s is a place where one can dine. I do not know Sheppard. It never occurred to me that Sheppard existed. Probably he is a myth of totemistic origin. All I know is that you can get a bit of saddle of mutton at Sheppard’s that has made many an American visitor curse the day that Christopher Columbus was born.... Taxi!”
A cab rolled smoothly to the kerb, and the driver received his instructions with a majestic nod.
“Another reason I have for suggesting Sheppard’s,” continued Trent, feverishly lighting a cigarette, “is that I am going to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world. I trust the connection of ideas is clear.”
“You are going to marry Mabel!” cried Mr. Cupples. “My dear friend, what good news this is! Shake hands, Trent; this is glorious! I congratulate you both from the bottom of my heart. And may I say—I don’t want to interrupt your flow of high spirits, which is very natural indeed, and I remember being just the same in similar circumstances long ago—but may I say how earnestly I have hoped for this? Mabel has seen so much unhappiness, yet she is surely a woman formed in the great purpose of humanity to be the best influence in the life of a good man. But I did not know her mind as regarded yourself. Your mind I have known for some time,” Mr. Cupples went on, with a twinkle in his eye that would have done credit to the worldliest of creatures. “I saw it at once when you were both dining at my house, and you sat listening to Professor Peppmuller and looking at her. Some of us older fellows have our wits about us still, my dear boy.”
“Mabel says she knew it before that,” replied Trent, with a slightly crestfallen air. “And I thought I was acting the part of a person who was not mad about her to the life. Well, I never was any good at dissembling. I shouldn’t wonder if even old Peppmuller noticed something through his double convex lenses. But however crazy I may have been as an undeclared suitor,” he went on with a return to vivacity, “I am going to be much worse now. As for your congratulations, thank you a thousand times, because I know you mean them. You are the sort of uncomfortable brute who would pull a face three feet long if you thought we were making a mistake. By the way, I can’t help being an ass tonight; I’m obliged to go on blithering. You must try to bear it. Perhaps it would be easier if I sang you a song—one of your old favourites. What was that song you used always to be singing? Like this, wasn’t it?” He accompanied the following stave with a dexterous clog-step on the floor of the cab:
“There was an old nigger, and he had a wooden leg.
He had no tobacco, no tobacco could he beg.
Another old nigger was as cunning as a fox,
And he always had tobacco in his old tobacco-box.
Now for the chorus!