Part 4 (1/2)

'You look as if you were posing, Haddo,' said Warren huskily.

'He couldn't help doing that if he tried,' laughed Clayson.

Oliver Haddo slowly turned his glance to the painter.

'I grieve to see, O most excellent Warren, that the ripe juice of the _aperitif_ has glazed your sparkling eye.'

'Do you mean to say I'm drunk, sir?'

'In one gross, but expressive, word, drunk.'

The painter grotesquely flung himself back in his chair as though he had been struck a blow, and Haddo looked steadily at Clayson.

'How often have I explained to you, O Clayson, that your deplorable lack of education precludes you from the brilliancy to which you aspire?'

For an instant Oliver Haddo resumed his effective pose; and Susie, smiling, looked at him. He was a man of great size, two or three inches more than six feet high; but the most noticeable thing about him was a vast obesity. His paunch was of imposing dimensions. His face was large and fleshy. He had thrown himself into the arrogant att.i.tude of Velasquez's portrait of Del Borro in the Museum of Berlin; and his countenance bore of set purpose the same contemptuous smile. He advanced and shook hands with Dr Porhoet.

'Hail, brother wizard! I greet in you, if not a master, at least a student not unworthy my esteem.'

Susie was convulsed with laughter at his pompousness, and he turned to her with the utmost gravity.

'Madam, your laughter is more soft in mine ears than the singing of Bulbul in a Persian garden.'

Dr Porhoet interposed with introductions. The magician bowed solemnly as he was in turn made known to Susie Boyd, and Margaret, and Arthur Burdon.

He held out his hand to the grim Irish painter.

'Well, my O'Brien, have you been mixing as usual the waters of bitterness with the thin claret of Bordeaux?'

'Why don't you sit down and eat your dinner?' returned the other, gruffly.

'Ah, my dear fellow, I wish I could drive the fact into this head of yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the bludgeon of insolence.'

O'Brien reddened with anger, but could not at once find a retort, and Haddo pa.s.sed on to that faded, harmless youth who sat next to Margaret.

'Do my eyes deceive me, or is this the Jagson whose name in its inanity is so appropriate to the bearer? I am eager to know if you still devote upon the ungrateful arts talents which were more profitably employed upon haberdashery.'

The unlucky creature, thus brutally attacked, blushed feebly without answering, and Haddo went on to the Frenchman, Meyer as more worthy of his mocking.

'I'm afraid my entrance interrupted you in a discourse. Was it the celebrated harangue on the greatness of Michelangelo, or was it the searching a.n.a.lysis of the art of Wagner?'

'We were just going,' said Meyer, getting up with a frown.

'I am desolated to lose the pearls of wisdom that habitually fall from your cultivated lips,' returned Haddo, as he politely withdrew Madame Meyer's chair.

He sat down with a smile.

'I saw the place was crowded, and with Napoleonic instinct decided that I could only make room by insulting somebody. It is cause for congratulation that my gibes, which Raggles, a foolish youth, mistakes for wit, have caused the disappearance of a person who lives in open sin; thereby vacating two seats, and allowing me to eat a humble meal with ample room for my elbows.'

Marie brought him the bill of fare, and he looked at it gravely.

'I will have a vanilla ice, O well-beloved, and a wing of a tender chicken, a fried sole, and some excellent pea-soup.'