William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

In the course of the following week an announcement was made which marked an epoch in the history of the great publishing house of Crumpett and Hawker.

However, before this event had burgeoned forth upon the counting-house staff, Mr. M. Arnold Dodson, with whose individual destiny it was concerned, continued to live in that condition of soul-distraction, to which it would seem even the most philosophic minds are susceptible, which is known as hope deferred.

All the week Mr. Dodson had waited in vain to be summoned into the presence of authority, to receive the seal of official recognition to which he felt his mature talents were unquestionably entitled. He had set his heart upon the dethronement of young Davis. To that other accomplished worldling, who in mere point of age was a year older than himself, he never referred without the prefix “young.” But the misdemeanour of which that successful adventurer had been convicted, of smoking in the room of the head of the firm, had not as yet borne the fruit that Mr. Dodson had confidently predicted. Mr. Davis was still enthroned in high places, triumphant still in his original deceit; every morning he appended his signature in the time-book, G. Eliot Davis, 9.15, not the least among the Olympians whose seat was on the second storey; while Mr. M. Arnold Dodson, in every way his superior in moral and mental attainment, still languished in the comparative obscurity of the counting-house below.

On two occasions during that week had Mr. Dodson walked into the Strand during the luncheon hour, and had purchased an extremely pungent cigar, for which he had disbursed the sum of one penny. Armed with this implement he had stolen up-stairs in the absence of the staff during the hour of luncheon, and had smoked it grimly and relentlessly in the middle of the sanctuary of Mr. Octavius Crumpett. Melancholy to relate, however, in spite of the physical pangs endured by the heroic Mr. Dodson, who in the very act of informing William Jordan, Junior, that “that young Davis had been smoking again in Octavius’s room,” had to make a sudden and somewhat undignified exit to the back of the building—in spite of such tribulations as these the wicked, in the person of G. Eliot Davis, continued to flourish in that time-honoured fashion which has been celebrated by Holy Writ.

“Luney,” said Mr. Dodson, with an unaffected pathos in his voice, when the second of these heroic efforts to dethrone the unrighteous had been fraught with no other compensation than that of suffering of a purely physical kind, which is too often the reward of human nature’s disinterestedness, “Luney, it fairly turns me sick to see that young Davis walk up those stairs. I shouldn’t mind, you know, I shouldn’t mind at all if he had played the game. But he got where he is by a trick, and it is doing him no kindness to try to gloss it over.”

Upon the delivery of this altogether admirable piece of morality touched by emotion, Mr. M. Arnold Dodson, for the second time that afternoon, retired to the back of the building with a haste which scarcely harmonized with his natural dignity.

As he returned with an unwonted pallor upon a countenance which as a rule bore evidence of being soundly nourished, whom should he meet, as if by the irony of circumstance, but Mr. G. Eliot Davis descending the stairs. For once the eminent philosopher and man of the world seemed to lack the moral strength to encounter one whom he could only regard in the light of a successful adventurer. Therefore he strove to escape without attempting to outface a demeanour, which in his view was flown to an exaggerated degree with the insolence of office. This afternoon, however, he was not able to control the fates.

“Dodson,” said Mr. G. Eliot Davis, in the tone which Mr. Dodson made a point of describing as “insufferable”; “Dodson,” said Mr. Davis, “perhaps it may interest you to know that Mr. Octavius’s personal translation of Homer’s Odyssey will be issued to the Trade on Monday next.”

“Thank you, Davis,” said Mr. Dodson, with the self-command that the great display on great occasions. “I am glad to know that, very glad indeed.”

Mr. Dodson’s official duties should have led him there and then into the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker; but as he stood to watch the small but stout, erect, and prosperous form of Mr. G. Eliot Davis saunter out of the front entrance of No. 24 Trafalgar Square, an idea flashed across that Napoleonic brain.