In the process of taking Mr. William Jordan, Junior, back to his
governess, Mr. James Dodson, in his capacity of an accomplished man
of the world of many years’ standing, delivered himself at large upon
certain first principles, which he considered to be indispensable to
all who sought to graduate in the severe school of worldly experience.
“I’ll tell you what it is, my son,” he said, taking the bewildered boy
by the arm, for an additional tankard of “half-and-half with plenty of
top” had provoked in Mr. Dodson an unwonted expansion, “I’ll tell you
what it is, my son, there is something wrong with you.”
The boy did not reply to this indictment. He felt that there was.
“There’s something missing,” said Mr. Dodson impressively.
The silence of William Jordan, Junior, continued to corroborate Mr.
Dodson.
“As I have already said, my son,” said Mr. Dodson, “you are just
about fivepence halfpenny to the shilling, not more, not a farthing
more. I cast no aspersions, mind, upon the maiden aunt who undertook
your up-bringing. I don’t doubt that she is a good and worthy, and
nice-minded old woman, but I blame her for one thing, my son, for one
thing I am forced to blame her.”
Who the old woman was that Mr. Dodson was forced to blame and what he
blamed her for, William Jordan, Junior, had not the courage to inquire.
“She might at least,” Mr. Dodson’s tone was one of judicial sadness,
“have seen that you had all your buttons on when she turned you out
into the world.”
“M-my b-buttons, s-sir!” stammered William Jordan, Junior, fingering
his jacket nervously.
“Yes, my son, your buttons.” Mr. Dodson’s amiability verged upon the
formidable. “When a cove starts out in life now-a-days, he’s got to
have all his buttons on, and _he’s got to have ’em stitched on with
wire_. Understand?”
William Jordan, Junior, did not understand at all, but the courage was
not his to say so.
“Stitched on with wire,” said Mr. Dodson, “but every sucking Cabinet
Minister as-sim-i-lates that at his Board School now-a-days. And there
are a lot of other little things you have got to have in these days, my
son, if you want to see your name in _The Times_ when they are handing
around the Birthday Honours. And there is one little thing you have
not got, which to my mind is fun-da-ment-ally necessary.” Mr. Dodson’s
voice sank into mystery. “Fun-da-mentally necessary. Octavius will tell
you the same. You want a manner.”
“A--a m-manner, sir?” said the boy.
“Yes, my son, a manner,” said Mr. Dodson. “And for heaven’s sake drop
the sir. I’m not a King or a Commissioner of Police or a Colonel in the
volunteers, not yet at any rate. As I say, you want a manner.”
“A m-manner!” said the boy anxiously.
“Never heard of a manner, I suppose,” said Mr. Dodson in as withering
a tone as two tankards of “half-and-half with plenty of top” would
permit. “Bright boy! As Pa says, you are about as fit to sit on a stool
in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker as Pontius Pilate was to
sit on the Board of Governors of Eternal Bliss. I suppose you’ll be
saying next you have never heard of Eton and Oxford.”
“E-Eton and O-Oxford,” said the boy. His desperate ignorance caused
him to take a leap in the dark. “Oh, y-y-yes,” he said anxiously,
“I--I--s-suppose, sir, they would be eminent p-publishers the same as
Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker.”
“Stars above!” Mr. Dodson so far forgot the exigencies of polite life
as to dance several steps in public. “If you go on at this rate, my
son, we shall have to have you bled for the simples. I must get Pa to
tell that to Octavius. Why, can’t you see, lunatic, that Octavius has
got Eton and Oxford written all over him, and therefore that every cove
in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker, from Pa himself who sits
at a table and snubs his betters to underpaid menials like you and me,
have got to have Eton and Oxford written all over them too?”
“I--I d-don’t understand,” the boy stammered feebly.
“What is there to understand, fathead?” said Mr. Dodson. “It simply
means that, like everybody else, you have got to take Octavius for your
model. Of course you needn’t keep it up out of office hours unless you
like. Only chaps with a strong constitution can keep it up all the
time.”
“I--I d-don’t understand,” said the boy.
“You Juggins!” said Mr. Dodson, whose scorn sought in vain to express
itself adequately. “The whole thing is so simple. If you are going to
keep your stool in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker, you have
got to show yourself up to the traditions of the house. I can’t talk
plainer. You have got to copy Octavius. Of course he means nothing, but
he is very impressive. Some of the staff say it’s Eton and some say
it’s Oxford, but Pa says it’s a blend. And you can lay to it Pa knows.
I’ll tell you what I’ll do, my son; if you are a good boy, and can only
learn to use the right-coloured wax and to paste those labels the right
side up, one of these days I will take you round into Pall Mall, and
you shall watch Octavius go up the steps of his club.”
By the time this munificent offer had been made by Mr. Dodson, with
an air of quiet patronage which became him extremely well, he and the
bewildered neophyte, whose education he had undertaken, had come to the
brass plate of No. 24 Trafalgar Square. As soon as they had entered
these halcyon portals they encountered one of the fortunate ones of
a world in which the favours are by no means impartially dispensed,
in the person of a young gentleman, who thus early in life had been
called to the high office of administering to the personal good-will
and pleasure of the head of the firm, and of whom in consequence all
the other junior members of the staff were inordinately jealous. Mr.
Dodson’s manner of addressing this luminary was in such memorable
contrast to the one he had lately been using, that even such a one as
William Jordan, Junior, who in the phrase of Mr. Dodson “was no more
than fivepence ha’penny to the shilling,” was fain to observe it.
“Davis,” said Mr. Dodson, “has Mr. Octavius gone out yet to luncheon?”
“Yes, Dodson,” said Mr. Davis. “Mr. Octavius _has_ gone out to
luncheon. He went out at twenty minutes to two, to lunch with Sir
Topman Murtle at the Marlborough.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Dodson, with aristocratic self-possession bordering on
indifference. “Is Murtle selling?”
“Yes, Dodson,” said Mr. Davis blandly, “Sir Topman _is_ selling. The
tenth enormous impression completing two hundred thousand copies, has
been called for by the Trade within twenty-four days of publication.”
“H’m,” said Mr. Dodson, concealing a yawn in a very well-bred manner.
“If he goes on he will beat Lavinia.”
“No, Dodson,” said Mr. Davis, dissenting delicately, “Miss Lavinia
Longborn Gentle once had two hundred thousand copies called for by the
Trade in twenty-four hours.”
“Going out now to luncheon, Davis?”
“Yes, Dodson, I am.”
As Mr. Davis sauntered out in a manner entirely worthy of Mr. Dodson
himself, William Jordan, Junior, with his odd and unaccountable natural
courtesy, which had already baffled many who had come in contact with
it, opened the door that he might pass through.
“Why did you open the door for that young swine?” said Mr. Dodson,
with an extremely rapid reversion to his out-of-doors manner. “If you
do it again you and I will quarrel. He is as full of side as he can
stick. He would even like _me_ to dip my ensign; he would like me to
call him ‘Mr.’--_me_, if you please, call _him_. I ought to have had
his berth; everybody in the office said I was better qualified. He got
it by a trick. I will tell you what he did. He signed his name in the
time-book, _George Eliot Davis_, and he had no more right to do so
than I have. Next day I signed myself _Matthew Arnold Dodson_, but it
was too late. Octavius had already seen his name in the book and had
promoted him up-stairs.”
With this tragical fragment of autobiography, Mr. Dodson and William
Jordan, Junior, ascended their stools in the left-hand corner of the
counting-house.
The second week of the boy’s sojourn in the high latitudes to which an
inscrutable providence had called him was as chequered as his first.
His fate was postponed; the sword, ever ready to descend, hung in
mid-air, suspended by a thread. The theory of the previous week that
the boy was deficient mentally, had received such ample confirmation
that it had come to rank as established fact. Many anecdotes were
already in circulation concerning an intellectual weakness that was now
common knowledge. Mr. Dodson was the author of the majority of these;
and owing to the fact that his superintendence of the boy’s education
permitted him to obtain first-hand evidence, he had acquired among the
staff a kind of vogue as a _raconteur_, which formerly it had not been
his good fortune to enjoy.
To the well-furnished mind of that philosopher every cloud was lined
with silver. Luney’s education cost him infinite pains and expenditure
of temper in the course of a day, but the halo cast by the mere recital
of his latest vagaries was ample compensation. Their fame had even
evoked the august notice of the occupant of the low table, Mr. Walter
Pater Walkinshaw. In his capacity of a vigilant student of the human
heart, and part author with Robert Brigstock, M.A. (Cantab.), who sat
up-stairs, of _The Fluctuations of a Discerning Spirit_, published
anonymously and now in its fourth edition, this august but benign
personage inclined a tolerant and sympathetic ear to the anecdotes so
racily narrated by Mr. Dodson.
“I don’t think you know the latest, sir, about young Jordan,” said that
eminent worldling about half-past three, as he sauntered up to the low
table with the simper of a dean at a dinner party. “I took him out to
luncheon this morning, sir, and I ask you, sir, what do you think he
ate?”
“Tell me, Dodson,” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw indulgently, as he dipped
thoughtfully, as he invariably did, and began a letter, “Very Reverend
and Dear Sir.”
“He ate, sir,” said Mr. Dodson impressively, “one slice of thin
bread-and-butter, and he sipped a small glass of milk.”
“Ha, ha, very good, very good!” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw, as he
began writing, “Messrs. Crumpett and Hawker have had the extreme
gratification of reading the MS. of your very able and deeply
thoughtful work, _The Genuflexions of a Natural Christian_.” Having
committed this sentence to paper he paused ere he shaped the next, and
said in that manner which expert criticism allowed to be almost as
“authentic” as that of Mr. Octavius himself, “Tell me, Dodson, do you
candidly consider that young Jordan is fit to occupy a stool in the
counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker?”
Mr. Dodson, whose technique was far too fine to reply off-hand to a
direct canvass of his judgment by one of the calibre of Mr. Walter
Pater Walkinshaw, notwithstanding that he was in a position to do so,
appeared to parry the question delicately.
“Well, sir,” he said, with such an approximation to the manner of Mr.
Octavius, that for a moment the luminary at the low table had the
illusion that he had presumed to catechize the head of the firm, “well,
sir,” said Mr. Dodson, “since you--ah, put the question point-blank,
as one might say, perhaps it is incumbent upon one to observe that
whatever opinion one may form, one may not always feel justified
in--ah, giving it expression.”
“One respects your scruples immensely, Mr. Dodson, they do you credit,”
said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw, who also respected that eminent worldling’s
diction and mode of utterance immensely, although he did not say so;
“but I invite you, Mr. Dodson, to be perfectly frank. I need not say
your frankness will go no farther.”
“Well, sir, if you really _press_ the question,” said Mr. Dodson, with
a simplicity he did not feel, “I have--ah, come to the con-clusion,
reluctantly to the con-clusion that William Jordan, Junior,
idiomatically speaking, is not more than fivepence ha’penny to the
shilling.”
“That is to say, Dodson,” said Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, “in your
opinion he is _non compos mentis_?”
“That is so, sir, putting it classically, which unfortunately I am not
in the habit of doing myself,” said Mr. Dodson. “In fact, sir, since
you appear to press the question, it is my opinion that, allowing for
the usual trade discount, fivepence ha’penny to the shilling is nothing
like good enough for the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker.”
“I agree with you, Dodson, I am entirely of that opinion myself,” said
Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw, sighing deeply. “And I assume it behoves one to
convey such an opinion to Mr. Octavius.”
This suggestion, however, plunged Mr. Dodson in deep thought. Such
a verdict had only to be presented to the head of the firm, for his
extreme solicitude for the traditions of Crumpett and Hawker, to ensure
the immediate dismissal of William Jordan, Junior. And in the light of
that day’s developments, during their first luncheon together, such a
consummation was not wholly to be desired.
“There is just one point, sir,” said Mr. Dodson, “that is if one is
free to mention it.”
“Pray do so by all means,” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw, with a bland
encouragement.
“It occurs to me, sir,” said Mr. Dodson, “that William Jordan,
Junior’s--ah, shortness of measure may be due to _greenness_, as one
might say.”
“Your metaphor is a little mixed, Dodson,” said Mr. Walter Pater
Walkinshaw affably, “but I think your meaning is sufficiently clear.
You would say he lacks experience of life?”
“That is it, sir, exactly,” said Mr. Dodson, “that is just what I
wanted to say. My private impression is that his education has been
seriously neglected.”
“That is a serious indictment, Mr. Dodson,” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw
gravely. “A very serious indictment.”
“It would be, sir, in the case of another, I am free to confess,”
said Mr. Dodson, with a guile that would have embellished the
primeval serpent; “but then, you see, sir, in spite of ed-u-ca-tional
disadvantages, Nature has thought fit to reserve a point in favour of
William Jordan, Junior.”
“Ah,” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw, “what, pray, is the point that Nature
has reserved in his favour?”
“William Jordan, Junior, may not be a scholar,” said Mr. Dodson,
speaking with the calm humility of those who have served their
novitiate to the mysteries, “but, in the best sense of the word, sir,
he is a gentleman.”
“Ah,” said Mr. W. P. Walkinshaw, with a sudden accession of interest
to his eminently serious and somewhat melancholy eyes, “that is
interesting; one is glad to know that.”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Dodson with quiet confidence, for unmistakably he
was well on the target; “whatever young Jordan is, or whatever he is
not, he can’t _help_ being a gentleman.”
“One has noticed it oneself,” said Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw. “May
one ask, Dodson, has your knowledge been gained empirically, or are you
in the possession of data which have been privately communicated?”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Dodson, “he has not said a word about his
family; but if it is not a good deal above the common my name is not
Matthew Arnold Dodson. I believe, sir, his mental training is entirely
due to a maiden aunt who lives in the neighbourhood of Hither Green--I
believe, sir, he was left an orphan at a tender age--but his manners
and behaviour seem to have been handed down. Personally, I do not
doubt, sir, for a single moment that Mr. Octavius was right when he
allowed him to take his seat in our midst.”
“The judgment at which you have arrived does you infinite credit,
Dodson,” said Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw. “It is also a tribute to a
fun-da-men-tal goodness of heart. There can be no doubt whatever that
Mr. Octavius was quite right.”
Mr. Dodson totally ignored a compliment that one of less calibre would
have felt constrained to accept with embarrassment.
“I, for one, sir,” said Mr. Dodson confidentially, “place implicit
faith in the judgment of Mr. Octavius. Personally, sir, I have never
seen it betray a sign of being at fault.”
“You are right, Dodson, you are perfectly right,” said Mr. Walter
Pater Walkinshaw with great cordiality. “I feel more indebted to your
judgment than I am able to express.”
Mr. Dodson, girt by the knowledge that complete success had crowned
his devices yet again, and fortified also with the feeling that
once more he had laid an unerring finger on the pulse of that great
establishment, sauntered back to his stool in the left-hand corner with
that somewhat sinister nonchalance which must so often clothe natural
eminence when it has been brought into contact with an eminence that is
merely official. In his own phrase--out of office hours--“Pa had not
half as much about him as the back of a coster’s dog.”
On the other hand, Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, unlike so many
whose intellectual attainments are merely of the second class, was
uncommonly susceptible to the impact of those of the first.
“Luff,” said he, “do you know who I think will one day be the head of
this world-famous house?”
“Who?” observed Mr. Aristophanes Luff.
“Matthew Arnold Dodson.”
“Surely, surely that is a remote contingency,” observed Mr.
Aristophanes Luff with a purr of mild protest.
“Yes, Luff, that is my deliberate opinion. For breadth of view, aplomb
of manner, maturity of judgment, knowledge of the world and of the
human heart, there are few youths in all this great metropolis to
compare with Matthew Arnold Dodson.”
Inferiority of station and mildness of disposition prevented Mr.
Aristophanes Luff from controverting what he felt obliged to regard as
an extravagant judgment. He was content to wipe his spectacles, and to
blow his nose in as clear a key of dissonance as an innate weakness of
character could compass.
In the meantime, the subject of this remarkable eulogium, seated on his
high stool dispensing wisdom, instruction and stinging rebuke to the
bewildered and trembling recipient of these commodities, had no such
exalted sentiments for its author.
“I tell you, Luney,” said Mr. Dodson, with an expression on his wizened
countenance that would not have been unbecoming to that of Voltaire,
“I can’t make up my mind whether Pa is a bigger ass than Octavius,
or whether Octavius is a bigger ass than Pa. Octavius is a pompous
ass, and Pa is a sentimental ass. Octavius has a bit of sentiment in
his pomp, and Pa has a bit of pomp in his sentiment; so I suppose
one takes the cruet and the other takes the casters. Bah, it makes
me sick to think that you and I have to keep dipping the ensign to a
couple of amateurs who don’t know they are born! They have about as
much knowledge of the game they are trying to play as a sucking-pig
has of brown sherry. But you must promise me, Luney, to let this go no
further.”
“Oh, n-n-no, sir, I will not,” said the boy, not knowing in the least
what it was he must let go no further.
“Look here,” said his mentor truculently; “if you say ‘sir’ to me
again I shall smack your head, and I shall smack it hard. This is the
third time to-day I have warned you. Pull yourself together. You are
not now with your Aunt Priscilla at Beaconsfield Villa, Hither Green.
You are in the counting-house of Crumpett and Hawker, my son, and the
sooner you understand that the better it will be for everybody. I
shall not show you how to tie a double knot any more. The next time I
shall put my hand round your ear; and it will hurt. If I had not been
the best-hearted chap that ever swaggered round the second circle at
the Empire on a Saturday night, you would have got the boot this very
afternoon. Pa wanted to report you to Octavius. But I stood firm. ‘No,
Father,’ I said, ‘the youth is off his filbert, but so was Blair Athol
when he won the Derby.’ There, over goes the paste! Don’t stand gazing
at it, you lunatic, but get some back numbers of _The Athenæum_ and mop
it up.”