“I have, my son,” said Mr. Dodson. “I have discovered that it is necessary to myself to marry a little money. You see, my son, I have come to an understanding with Chrissie. And between you and me and the lamp-post, my son, I might go a deal farther and fare a good deal worse. She knows her way about the earth, does Chrissie; she knows what two and two make; she wasn’t born yesterday. She has an eye to the main chance, has Chrissie; and that’s the wife for me. She has nearly a hundred quid laid by, and her mother’s brother has a beer off-license in the Borough. Literature is all right, Luney, and so is Art, and so is Law, and so is the Army, and so is the Church, but give me Trade, my son, vulgar and sordid Trade. I am about tired of Culture, my son; I am about tired of the Office Manner. I was only thinking this afternoon what I would pay down in hard cash to be able to cut the throat of Octavius with a blunt razor a bit jagged at the edges.”
It was to be divined from the expression of this somewhat unchristian desire, that even the eminent philosopher and man of the world from whose lips it proceeded was approaching a crisis in his own mental history. Yet it was hard to believe that one whose attitude towards life was of a calm and all-seeing unconcern, could also be entering upon his phase of sturm und drang.
Within a few days of being honoured by these confidences, William Jordan, Junior, received a letter at 43 Milton Street, E.C. It contained a piece of cardboard upon which was written, Police-Sergeant and Mrs. Dodson At Home, 21 February. 8 Gladstone Villas, Midlothian Road, Peckham, S.E. Music and Progressive Games, 7.30. R.S.V.P.
This mysterious communication proved a source of great bewilderment to its recipient, who for the first time during the twenty years that comprised his terrestrial history, found himself approaching the magic portals of social life. During the luncheon hour of the morning after the arrival of this mandate, Mr. James Dodson, who had anticipated his perplexity, was fain to enlighten it.
“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.