Tommy and Co.

“I know – I know all that,” interrupted the mere boy. “Nature arranges it on purpose. Tall and solemn prigs marry little women with turned-up noses. Cheerful little fellows like myself – we marry serious, stately women. If it were otherwise, the human race would be split up into species.”

“Of course, if you were actuated by a sense of public duty – ”

“Don’t be a fool, Peter Hope,” returned the little man. “I’m in love with my wife just as she is, and always shall be. I know the woman with a sense of humour, and of the two I prefer the one without. The Juno type is my ideal. I must take the rough with the smooth. One can’t have a jolly, chirpy Juno, and wouldn’t care for her if one could.”

“Then are you going to give up all your old friends?”

“Don’t suggest it,” pleaded the little man. “You don’t know how miserable it makes me – the mere idea. Tell them to be patient. The secret of dealing with women, I have found, is to do nothing rashly.” The clock struck five. “I must go now,” said Joey. “Don’t misjudge her, Peter, and don’t let the others. She’s a dear girl. You’ll like her, all of you, when you know her. A dear girl! She only has that one fault.”

Joey went out.

Peter did his best that evening to explain the true position of affairs without imputing snobbery to Mrs. Loveredge. It was a difficult task, and Peter cannot be said to have accomplished it successfully. Anger and indignation against Joey gave place to pity. The members of the Autolycus Club also experienced a little irritation on their own account.

“What does the woman take us for?” demanded Somerville the Briefless. “Doesn’t she know that we lunch with real actors and actresses, that once a year we are invited to dine at the Mansion House?”

“Has she never heard of the aristocracy of genius?” demanded Alexander the Poet.

“The explanation may be that possibly she has seen it,” feared the Wee Laddie.

“One of us ought to waylay the woman,” argued the Babe – “insist upon her talking to him for ten minutes. I’ve half a mind to do it myself.”

Jack Herring said nothing – seemed thoughtful.

The next morning Jack Herring, still thoughtful, called at the editorial offices of Good Humour, in Crane Court, and borrowed Miss Ramsbotham’s Debrett. Three days later Jack Herring informed the Club casually that he had dined the night before with Mr. and Mrs. Loveredge. The Club gave Jack Herring politely to understand that they regarded him as a liar, and proceeded to demand particulars.

“If I wasn’t there,” explained Jack Herring, with unanswerable logic, “how can I tell you anything about it?”

This annoyed the Club, whose curiosity had been whetted. Three members, acting in the interests of the whole, solemnly undertook to believe whatever he might tell them. But Jack Herring’s feelings had been wounded.

“When gentlemen cast a doubt upon another gentleman’s veracity – ”

“We didn’t cast a doubt,” explained Somerville the Briefless. “We merely said that we personally did not believe you. We didn’t say we couldn’t believe you; it is a case for individual effort. If you give us particulars bearing the impress of reality, supported by details that do not unduly contradict each other, we are prepared to put aside our natural suspicions and face the possibility of your statement being correct.”

“It was foolish of me,” said Jack Herring. “I thought perhaps it would amuse you to hear what sort of a woman Mrs. Loveredge was like – some description of Mrs. Loveredge’s uncle. Miss Montgomery, friend of Mrs. Loveredge, is certainly one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. Of course, that isn’t her real name. But, as I have said, it was foolish of me. These people – you will never meet them, you will never see them; of what interest can they be to you?”

“They had forgotten to draw down the blinds, and he climbed up a lamp-post and looked through the window,” was the solution of the problem put forward by the Wee Laddie.

“I’m dining there again on Saturday,” volunteered Jack Herring. “If any of you will promise not to make a disturbance, you can hang about on the Park side, underneath the shadow of the fence, and watch me go in. My hansom will draw up at the door within a few minutes of eight.”

The Babe and the Poet agreed to undertake the test.

“You won’t mind our hanging round a little while, in case you’re thrown out again?” asked the Babe.

“Not in the least, so far as I am concerned,” replied Jack Herring. “Don’t leave it too late and make your mother anxious.”

“It’s true enough,” the Babe recounted afterwards. “The door was opened by a manservant and he went straight in. We walked up and down for half an hour, and unless they put him out the back way, he’s telling the truth.”

“Did you hear him give his name?” asked Somerville, who was stroking his moustache.

“No, we were too far off,” explained the Babe. “But – I’ll swear it was Jack – there couldn’t be any mistake about that.”

“Perhaps not,” agreed Somerville the Briefless.

Somerville the Briefless called at the offices of Good Humour, in Crane Court, the following morning, and he also borrowed Miss Ramsbotham’s Debrett.

“What’s the meaning of it?” demanded the sub-editor.

“Meaning of what?”

“This sudden interest of all you fellows in the British Peerage.”

“All of us?”

“Well, Herring was here last week, poring over that book for half an hour, with the Morning Post spread out before him. Now you’re doing the same thing.”

“Ah! Jack Herring, was he? I thought as much. Don’t talk about it, Tommy. I’ll tell you later on.”

On the following Monday, the Briefless one announced to the Club that he had received an invitation to dine at the Loveredges’ on the following Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Briefless one entered the Club with a slow and stately step. Halting opposite old Goslin the porter, who had emerged from his box with the idea of discussing the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, Somerville, removing his hat with a sweep of the arm, held it out in silence. Old Goslin, much astonished, took it mechanically, whereupon the Briefless one, shaking himself free from his Inverness cape, flung it lightly after the hat, and strolled on, not noticing that old Goslin, unaccustomed to coats lightly and elegantly thrown at him, dropping the hat, had caught it on his head, and had been, in the language of the prompt-book, “left struggling.” The Briefless one, entering the smoking-room, lifted a chair and let it fall again with a crash, and sitting down upon it, crossed his legs and rang the bell.

“Ye’re doing it verra weel,” remarked approvingly the Wee Laddie. “Ye’re just fitted for it by nature.”

“Fitted for what?” demanded the Briefless one, waking up apparently from a dream.

“For an Adelphi guest at eighteenpence the night,” assured him the Wee Laddie. “Ye’re just splendid at it.”

The Briefless one, muttering that the worst of mixing with journalists was that if you did not watch yourself, you fell into their ways, drank his whisky in silence. Later, the Babe swore on a copy of Sell’s Advertising Guide that, crossing the Park, he had seen the Briefless one leaning over the railings of Rotten Row, clad in a pair of new kid gloves, swinging a silver-headed cane.

One morning towards the end of the week, Joseph Loveredge, looking twenty years younger than when Peter had last seen him, dropped in at the editorial office of Good Humour and demanded of Peter Hope how he felt and what he thought of the present price of Emma Mines.

Peter Hope’s fear was that the gambling fever was spreading to all classes of society.

“I want you to dine with us on Sunday,” said Joseph Loveredge. “Jack Herring will be there. You might bring Tommy with you.”

Peter Hope gulped down his astonishment and said he should be delighted; he thought that Tommy also was disengaged. “Mrs. Loveredge out of town, I presume?” questioned Peter Hope.

“On the contrary,” replied Joseph Loveredge, “I want you to meet her.”

Joseph Loveredge removed a pile of books from one chair and placed them carefully upon another, after which he went and stood before the fire.

“Don’t if you don’t like,” said Joseph Loveredge; “but if you don’t mind, you might call yourself, just for the evening – say, the Duke of Warrington.”

“Say the what?” demanded Peter Hope.

“The Duke of Warrington,” repeated Joey. “We are rather short of dukes. Tommy can be the Lady Adelaide, your daughter.”

“Don’t be an ass!” said Peter Hope.

“I’m not an ass,” assured him Joseph Loveredge. “He is wintering in Egypt. You have run back for a week to attend to business. There is no Lady Adelaide, so that’s quite simple.”