XXV
Duringthe next day, which was so big with fate, Mr. William Jordan, Junior, was the recipient of further instruction from his mentor for his guidance at the forthcoming ceremonial.
“Mind you don’t tuck your napkin into your collar,” said this authority in the ways of the politeworld; “and don’t eat your cheese with your knife; and don’t drink out of the finger bowls. And mind you turn up without a speck of dirt on your shoes. I should recommend you to take a ’bus to St. Paul’s Station; and you had better arrange with young Davis, who will be on the train, to split a hansom from Peckham Station to Midlothian Avenue.”
By the intervention of this practical mind, which, of course, by this time wielded a considerable influence in high places, both G. Eliot Davis and William Jordan, Junior, were allowed to relinquish their official duties at six p.m. in order to prepare for the festivities of the night.
As William Jordan, Junior, tied up the last parcel and stepped down from his high stool immediately prior to stealing home to array himself in fear and trembling and a brand new evening suit for the dread ordeal that awaited him, he heard, for the twentieth time that day, the voice of his mentor in his ear.
“By the way, Luney, my son,” it said, “I forgot to tell you to wear a white muffler in the train to keep the smuts off your shirt front.”
With this final injunction in his ears, Mr. William Jordan, Junior, took his fearful way to 43, Milton Street, E.C., while Mr. James Dodson “looked round” into the annexe of the Brontë Hotel to inquire of hisfiancéefor the third time that day, “what sort of fettle she was in?”
It is not the business of this biography to estimate the precise quantity of blood and tears that it cost William Jordan, Junior, to clothe himself in his evening suit and to embellish the same with a necktie which had to be arranged by his own very inefficient fingers, and also with a pair of new and excruciatingly tight shoes. It must suffice to say that when at last, in a state bordering on mental derangement, he had by some means contrived to array himself in these articles of civilized attire, to reap as the immediate reward of a somewhat franticperseverance a measure of sheer physical discomfort that he had never before experienced, he utilized the few minutes that remained to him before he obeyed the decree that sent him forth to Midlothian Avenue, Peckham, S.E., upon his knees in the little room by the side of the white-haired man his father.