The Magician - W. Somerset Maugham (good romance books to read .txt) 📗

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.”

“Bien, un potage, une sole, one chicken, and an ice.”

“But why should you serve them in that order rather than in the order I gave you?”

Marie and the two Frenchwomen who were still in the room broke into exclamations at this extravagance, but Oliver Haddo waved his fat hand.

“I shall start with the ice, O Marie, to cool the passion with which your eyes inflame me, and then without hesitation I will devour the wing of a chicken in order to sustain myself against your smile. I shall then proceed to a fresh sole, and with the pea-soup I will finish a not unsustaining meal.”

Having succeeded in capturing the attention of everyone in the room, Oliver Haddo proceeded to eat these dishes in the order he had named. Margaret and Burdon watched him with scornful eyes, but Susie, who was not revolted by the vanity which sought to attract notice, looked at him curiously. He was clearly not old, though his corpulence added to his apparent age. His features were good, his ears small, and his nose delicately shaped. He had big teeth, but they were white and even. His mouth was large, with heavy moist lips. He had the neck of a bullock. His dark, curling hair had retreated from the forehead and temples in such a way as to give his clean-shaven face a disconcerting nudity. The baldness of his crown was vaguely like a tonsure. He had the look of a very wicked, sensual priest. Margaret, stealing a glance at him as he ate, on a sudden violently shuddered; he affected her with an uncontrollable dislike. He lifted his eyes slowly, and she looked away, blushing as though she had been taken in some indiscretion. These eyes were the most curious thing about him. They were not large, but an exceedingly pale blue, and they looked at you in a way that was singularly embarrassing. At first Susie could not discover in what precisely their peculiarity lay, but in a moment she found out: the eyes of most persons converge when they look at you, but Oliver Haddo’s, naturally or by a habit he had acquired for effect, remained parallel. It gave the impression that he looked straight through you and saw the wall beyond. It was uncanny. But another strange thing about him was the impossibility of telling whether he was serious. There was a mockery in that queer glance, a sardonic smile upon the mouth, which made you hesitate how to take his outrageous utterances. It was irritating to be uncertain whether, while you were laughing at him, he was not really enjoying an elaborate joke at your expense.

His presence cast an unusual chill upon the party. The French members got up and left. Warren reeled out with O’Brien, whose uncouth sarcasms were no match for Haddo’s bitter gibes. Raggles put on his coat with the scarlet lining and went out with the tall Jagson, who smarted still under Haddo’s insolence. The American sculptor paid his bill silently. When he was at the door, Haddo stopped him.

“You have modelled lions at the Jardin des Plantes, my dear Clayson. Have you ever hunted them on their native plains?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Clayson did not know why Haddo asked the question, but he bristled with incipient wrath.

“Then you have not seen the jackal, gnawing at a dead antelope, scamper away in terror when the King of Beasts stalked down to make his meal.”

Clayson slammed the door behind him. Haddo was left with Margaret, and Arthur Burdon, Dr. Porhoët, and Susie. He smiled quietly.

“By the way, are you a lion-hunter?” asked Susie flippantly.

He turned on her his straight uncanny glance.

“I have no equal with big game. I have shot more lions than any man alive. I think Jules Gérard, whom the French of the nineteenth century called Le Tueur de Lions, may have been fit to compare with me, but I can call to mind no other.”

This statement, made with the greatest calm, caused a moment of silence. Margaret stared at him with amazement.

“You suffer from no false modesty,” said Arthur Burdon.

“False modesty is a sign of ill-breeding, from which my birth amply protects me.”

Dr. Porhoët looked up with a smile of irony.

“I wish Mr. Haddo would take this opportunity to disclose to us the mystery of his birth and family. I have a suspicion that, like the immortal Cagliostro, he was born of unknown but noble parents, and educated secretly in Eastern palaces.”

“In my origin I am more to be compared with Denis Zachaire or with Raymond Lully. My ancestor, George Haddo, came to Scotland in the suite of Anne of Denmark, and when James I, her consort, ascended the English throne, he was granted the estates in Staffordshire which I still possess. My family has formed alliances with the most noble blood of England, and the Merestons, the Parnabys, the Hollingtons, have been proud to give their daughters to my house.”

“Those are facts which can be verified in works of reference,” said Arthur dryly.

“They can,” said Oliver.

“And the Eastern palaces in which your youth was spent, and the black slaves who waited on you, and the bearded sheikhs who imparted to you secret knowledge?” cried Dr. Porhoët.

“I was educated at Eton, and I left Oxford in 1896.”

“Would you mind