Richard Dunkerman and I had been old school-fellows, if a gentleman
belonging to the Upper Sixth, and arriving each morning in a "topper" and
a pair of gloves, and "a discredit to the Lower Fourth," in a Scotch cap,
can by any manner of means be classed together. And though in those
early days a certain amount of coldness existed between us, originating
in a poem, composed and sung on occasions by myself in commemoration of
an alleged painful incident connected with a certain breaking-up day, and
which, if I remember rightly ran:--
Dicky, Dicky, Dunk,
Always in a funk,
Drank a glass of sherry wine,
And went home roaring drunk,
and kept alive by his brutal criticism of the same, expressed with the
bony part of the knee, yet in after life we came to know and like each
other better. I drifted into journalism, while he for years had been an
unsuccessful barrister and dramatist; but one spring, to the astonishment
of us all, he brought out the play of the season, a somewhat impossible
little comedy, but full of homely sentiment and belief in human nature.
It was about a couple of months after its production that he first
introduced me to "Pyramids, Esquire."
I was in love at the time. Her name was, I think, Naomi, and I wanted to
talk to somebody about her. Dick had a reputation for taking an
intelligent interest in other men's love affairs. He would let a lover
rave by the hour to him, taking brief notes the while in a bulky
red-covered volume labelled "Commonplace Book." Of course everybody knew
that he was using them merely as raw material for his dramas, but we did
not mind that so long as he would only listen. I put on my hat and went
round to his chambers.
We talked about indifferent matters for a quarter of an hour or so, and
then I launched forth upon my theme. I had exhausted her beauty and
goodness, and was well into my own feelings--the madness of my ever
imagining I had loved before, the utter impossibility of my ever caring
for any other woman, and my desire to die breathing her name--before he
made a move. I thought he had risen to reach down, as usual, the
"Commonplace Book," and so waited, but instead he went to the door and
opened it, and in glided one of the largest and most beautiful black tom-
cats I have ever seen. It sprang on Dick's knee with a soft "cur-roo,"
and sat there upright, watching me, and I went on with my tale.