The Magician, W. Somerset Maugham [english novels for beginners .TXT] 📗

dignified gesture. Arthur looked away quickly, for, catching his eye, she gave him an amorous glance. Rouge had more the appearance of a prosperous tradesman than of an artist; but he carried on with O’Brien, whose French was perfect, an argument on the merits of Cézanne. To one he was a great master and to the other an impudent charlatan. Each hotly repeated his opinion, as though the mere fact of saying the same thing several times made it more convincing.

“Next to me is Madame Meyer,” proceeded Susie. “She was a governess in Poland, but she was much too pretty to remain one, and now she lives with the landscape painter who is by her side.”

Arthur’s eyes followed her words and rested on a clean-shaven man with a large quantity of grey, curling hair. He had a handsome face of a deliberately aesthetic type and was very elegantly dressed. His manner and his conversation had the flamboyance of the romantic thirties. He talked in flowing periods with an air of finality, and what he said was no less just than obvious. The gay little lady who shared his fortunes listened to his wisdom with an admiration that plainly flattered him.

Miss Boyd had described everyone to Arthur except young Raggles, who painted still life with a certain amount of skill, and Clayson, the American sculptor. Raggles stood for rank and fashion at the Chien Noir. He was very smartly dressed in a horsey way, and he walked with bowlegs, as though he spent most of his time in the saddle. He alone used scented pomade upon his neat smooth hair. His chief distinction was a greatcoat he wore, with a scarlet lining; and Warren, whose memory for names was defective, could only recall him by that peculiarity. But it was understood that he knew duchesses in fashionable streets, and occasionally dined with them in solemn splendour.

Clayson had a vinous nose and a tedious habit of saying brilliant things. With his twinkling eyes, red cheeks, and fair, pointed beard, he looked exactly like a Franz Hals; but he was dressed like the caricature of a Frenchman in a comic paper. He spoke English with a Parisian accent.

Miss Boyd was beginning to tear him gaily limb from limb, when the door was flung open, and a large person entered. He threw off his cloak with a dramatic gesture.

“Marie, disembarrass me of this coat of frieze. Hang my sombrero upon a convenient peg.”

He spoke execrable French, but there was a grandiloquence about his vocabulary which set everyone laughing.

“Here is somebody I don’t know,” said Susie.

“But I do, at least, by sight,” answered Burdon. He leaned over to Dr. Porhoët who was sitting opposite, quietly eating his dinner and enjoying the nonsense which everyone talked. “Is not that your magician?”

“Oliver Haddo,” said Dr. Porhoët, with a little nod of amusement.

The new arrival stood at the end of the room with all eyes upon him. He threw himself into an attitude of command and remained for a moment perfectly still.

“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 attitude 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. Porhoët.

“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. Porhoët 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 passed 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 analysis 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