Tommy and Co

TOMMY AND CO

“Do you know,” said Somerville, “I’m thinking that will be the shortest way.”

Miss Bulstrode was seated in the hall. Jack Herring and Somerville both thought her present quieter style of dress suited her much better.

“Here he is,” announced the Babe, in triumph. “Here’s Jack Herring and here’s Somerville. Do you know, I could hardly persuade them to come out and see you. Dear old Jack, he always was so shy.”

Miss Bulstrode rose. She said she could never thank them sufficiently for all their goodness to her. Miss Bulstrode seemed quite overcome. Her voice trembled with emotion.

“Before we go further, Miss Bulstrode,” said Jack Herring, “it will be best to tell you that all along we thought you were your brother, dressed up as a girl.”

“Oh!” said the Babe, “so that’s the explanation, is it? If I had only known – ” Then the Babe stopped, and wished he hadn’t spoken.

Somerville seized him by the shoulders and, with a sudden jerk, stood him beside his sister under the gas-jet.

“You little brute!” said Somerville. “It was you all along.” And the Babe, seeing the game was up, and glad that the joke had not been entirely on one side, confessed.

Jack Herring and Somerville the Briefless went that night with Johnny and his sister to the theatre – and on other nights. Miss Bulstrode thought Jack Herring very nice, and told her brother so. But she thought Somerville the Briefless even nicer, and later, under cross-examination, when Somerville was no longer briefless, told Somerville so himself.

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STORY THE SEVENTH

DICK DANVERS PRESENTS

HIS PETITION

William Clodd, mopping his brow, laid down the screwdriver, and stepping back, regarded the result of his labours with evident satisfaction.

“It looks like a bookcase,” said William Clodd. “You might sit in the room for half an hour and never know it wasn’t a bookcase.”

What William Clodd had accomplished was this: he had had prepared, after his own design, what appeared to be four shelves laden with works suggestive of thought and erudition. As a matter of fact, it was not a bookcase, but merely a flat board, the books merely the backs of volumes that had long since found their way into the paper-mill. This artful deception William Clodd had screwed upon a cottage piano standing in the corner of the editorial office of Good Humour. Half a dozen real volumes piled upon the top of the piano completed the illusion. As William Clodd had proudly remarked, a casual visitor might easily have been deceived.

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“If you had to sit in the room while she was practising mixed scales, you’d be quickly undeceived,” said the editor of Good Humour, one Peter Hope. He spoke bitterly.

“You are not always in,” explained Clodd. “There must be hours when she is here alone, with nothing else to do. Besides, you will get used to it after a while.”

“You, I notice, don’t try to get used to it,” snarled Peter Hope. “You always go out the moment she commences.”

“A friend of mine,” continued William Clodd, “worked in an office over a piano-shop for seven years, and when the shop closed, it nearly ruined his business; couldn’t settle down to work for want of it.”

“Why doesn’t he come here?” asked Peter Hope. “The floor above is vacant.”

“Can’t,” explained William Clodd. “He’s dead.” “I can quite believe it,” commented Peter Hope.

“It was a shop where people came and practised, paying sixpence an hour, and he had got to like it – said it made a cheerful background to his thoughts. Wonderful what you can get accustomed to.”

“What’s the good of it?” demanded Peter Hope.

“What’s the good of it!” retorted William Clodd indignantly. “Every girl ought to know how to play the piano. A nice thing if when her lover asks her to play something to him – ” “I wonder you don’t start a matrimonial agency,” sneered Peter Hope. “Love and marriage – you think of nothing else.” “When you are bringing up a young girl – ” argued Clodd.

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“But you’re not,” interrupted Peter; “that’s just what I’m trying to get out of your head. It is I who am bringing her up. And between ourselves, I wish you wouldn’t interfere so much.”

“You are not fit to bring up a girl.”

“I’ve brought her up for seven years without your help. She’s my adopted daughter, not yours. I do wish people would learn to mind their own business.”

“You’ve done very well – ”

“Thank you,” said Peter Hope sarcastically. “It’s very kind of you. Perhaps when you’ve time, you’ll write me out a testimonial.”

“ – up till now,” concluded the imperturbable Clodd. “A girl of eighteen wants to know something else besides mathematics and the classics. You don’t understand them.”

“I do understand them,” asserted Peter Hope. “What do you know about them? You’re not a father.”

“You’ve done your best,” admitted William Clodd in a tone of patronage that irritated Peter greatly; “but you’re a dreamer; you don’t know the world. The time is coming when the girl will have to think of a husband.”

“There’s no need for her to think of a husband, not for years,” retorted Peter Hope. “And even when she does, is strumming on the piano going to help her?”

“I tink – I tink,” said Dr. Smith, who had hitherto remained a silent listener, “our young frent Clodd is right. You haf never quite got over your idea dat she was going to be a boy. You haf taught her de tings a boy should know.”

“You cut her hair,” added Clodd. “I don’t,” snapped Peter.

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“You let her have it cut – it’s the same thing. At eighteen she knows more about the ancient Greeks and Romans than she does about her own frocks.”

“De young girl,” argued the doctor, “what is she? De flower dat makes bright for us de garden of life, de gurgling brook dat murmurs by de dusty highway, de cheerful fire – ”

“She can’t be all of them,” snapped Peter, who was a stickler for style. “Do keep to one simile at a time.”

“Now you listen to plain sense,” said William Clodd. “You want – we all want – the girl to be a success all round.”

“I want her – ” Peter Hope was rummaging among the litter on the desk. It certainly was not there. Peter pulled out a drawer-two drawers. “I wish,” said Peter Hope, “I wish sometimes she wasn’t quite so clever.”

The old doctor rummaged among dusty files of papers in a corner. Clodd found it on the mantelpiece concealed beneath the hollow foot of a big brass candlestick, and handed it to Peter.

Peter had one vice – the taking in increasing quantities of snuff, which was harmful for him, as he himself admitted. Tommy, sympathetic to most masculine frailties, was severe, however, upon this one.

“You spill it upon your shirt and on your coat,” had argued Tommy. “I like to see you always neat. Besides, it isn’t a nice habit. I do wish, dad, you’d give it up.”

“I must,” Peter had agreed. “I’ll break myself of it. But not all at once – it would be a wrench; by degrees, Tommy, by degrees.”

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So a compromise had been compounded. Tommy was to hide the snuff-box. It was to be somewhere in the room and to be accessible, but that was all. Peter, when self-control had reached the breaking-point, might try and find it. Occasionally, luck helping Peter, he would find it early in the day, when he would earn his own bitter self-reproaches by indulging in quite an orgie. But more often Tommy’s artfulness was such that he would be compelled, by want of time, to abandon the search. Tommy always knew when he had failed by the air of indignant resignation with which he would greet her on her return. Then perhaps towards evening, Peter, looking up, would see the box open before his nose, above it, a pair of reproving black eyes, their severity counterbalanced by a pair of full red lips trying not to smile. And Peter, knowing that only one pinch would be permitted, would dip deeply.

“I want her,” said Peter Hope, feeling with his snuff-box in his hand more confidence in his own judgment, “to be a sensible, clever woman, capable of earning her own living and of being independent; not a mere helpless doll, crying for some man to come and take care of her.”

“A woman’s business,” asserted Clodd, “is to be taken care of.”

“Some women, perhaps,” admitted Peter; “but Tommy, you know very well, is not going to be the ordinary type of woman. She has brains; she will make her way in the world.”

“It doesn’t depend upon brains,” said Clodd. “She hasn’t got the elbows.”

“The elbows?”

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“They are not sharp enough. The last ’bus home on a wet night tells you whether a woman is capable of pushing her own way in the world. Tommy’s the sort to get left on the kerb.” “She’s the sort,” retorted Peter, “to make a name for herself and to be able to afford a cab. Don’t you bully me!” Peter sniffed self-assertiveness from between his thumb and finger. “Yes, I shall,” Clodd told him, “on this particular point. The

poor girl’s got no mother.”

Fortunately for the general harmony the door opened at the moment to admit the subject of discussion.

“Got that Daisy Blossom advertisement out of old Blatchley,” announced Tommy, waving triumphantly a piece of paper over her head.

“No!” exclaimed Peter. “How did you manage it?” “Asked him for it,” was Tommy’s explanation.

“Very odd,” mused Peter; “asked the old idiot for it myself only last week. He refused it point-blank.”

Clodd snorted reproof. “You know I don’t like your doing that sort of thing. It isn’t proper for a young girl – ”

“It’s all right,” assured him Tommy; “he’s bald!” “That makes no difference,” was Clodd’s opinion. “Yes it does,” was Tommy’s. “I like them bald.”

Tommy took Peter’s head between her hands and kissed it, and in doing so noticed the tell-tale specks of snuff.

“Just a pinch, my dear,” explained Peter, “the merest pinch.” Tommy took up the snuff-box from the desk. “I’ll show you where I’m going to put it this time.” She put it in her pocket.

Peter’s face fell.

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“What do you think of it?” said Clodd. He led her to the corner. “Good idea, ain’t it?”

“Why, where’s the piano?” demanded Tommy. Clodd turned in delighted triumph to the others. “Humbug!” growled Peter.

“It isn’t humbug,” cried Clodd indignantly. “She thought it was a bookcase – anybody would. You’ll be able to sit there and practise by the hour,” explained Clodd to Tommy. “When you hear anybody coming up the stairs, you can leave off.”

“How can she hear anything when she – ” A bright idea occurred to Peter. “Don’t you think, Clodd, as a practical man,” suggested Peter insinuatingly, adopting the Socratic method, “that if we got her one of those dummy pianos – you know what I mean; it’s just like an ordinary piano, only you don’t hear it?”

Clodd shook his head. “No good at all. Can’t tell the effect she is producing.”

“Quite so. Then, on the other hand, Clodd, don’t you think that hearing the effect they are producing may sometimes discourage the beginner?”

Clodd’s opinion was that such discouragement was a thing to be battled with.

Tommy, who had seated herself, commenced a scale in contrary motion.

“Well, I’m going across to the printer’s now,” explained Clodd, taking up his hat. “Got an appointment with young Grindley at three. You stick to it. A spare half-hour now and then that you never miss does wonders. You’ve got it in you.” With these encouraging remarks to Tommy, Clodd disappeared.

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“Easy for him,” muttered Peter bitterly. “Always does have an appointment outside the moment she begins.”

Tommy appeared to be throwing her very soul into the performance. Passers-by in Crane Court paused, regarded the first-floor windows of the publishing and editorial offices of Good Humour with troubled looks, then hurried on.

“She has – remarkably firm douch!” shouted the doctor into Peter’s ear. “Will see you – evening. Someting – say to you.”

The fat little doctor took his hat and departed. Tommy, ceasing suddenly, came over and seated herself on the arm of Peter’s chair.

“Feeling grumpy?” asked Tommy.

“It isn’t,” explained Peter, “that I mind the noise. I’d put up with that if I could see the good of it.”

“It’s going to help me to get a husband, dad. Seems to me an odd way of doing it; but Billy says so, and Billy knows all about everything.”

“I can’t understand you, a sensible girl, listening to such nonsense,” said Peter. “It’s that that troubles me.”

“Dad, where are your wits?” demanded Tommy. “Isn’t Billy acting like a brick? Why, he could go into Fleet Street to half a dozen other papers and make five hundred a year as adver- tising-agent – you know he could. But he doesn’t. He sticks to us. If my making myself ridiculous with that tin pot they persuaded him was a piano is going to please him, isn’t it common sense and sound business, to say nothing of good nature and gratitude, for me to do it? Dad, I’ve got a surprise for him. Listen.” And Tommy, springing from the arm of Peter’s chair, returned to the piano.

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