The Chronicles of Clovis | Page 8

dinner waistcoats are becoming a habit with you."
"They say one always pays for the excesses of one's youth; mercifully
that isn't true about one's clothes. My mother is thinking of getting
married."
"Again!"
"It's the first time."
"Of course, you ought to know. I was under the impression that she'd
been married once or twice at least."

"Three times, to be mathematically exact. I meant that it was the first
time she'd thought about getting married; the other times she did it
without thinking. As a matter of fact, it's really I who am doing the
thinking for her in this case. You see, it's quite two years since her last
husband died."
"You evidently think that brevity is the soul of widowhood."
"Well, it struck me that she was getting moped, and beginning to settle
down, which wouldn't suit her a bit. The first symptom that I noticed
was when she began to complain that we were living beyond our
income. All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and
those who aren't respectable live beyond other peoples. A few gifted
individuals manage to do both."
"It's hardly so much a gift as an industry."
"The crisis came," returned Clovis, "when she suddenly started the
theory that late hours were bad for one, and wanted me to be in by one
o'clock every night. Imagine that sort of thing for me, who was
eighteen on my last birthday."
"On your last two birthdays, to be mathematically exact."
"Oh, well, that's not my fault. I'm not going to arrive at nineteen as long
as my mother remains at thirty-seven. One must have some regard for
appearances."
"Perhaps your mother would age a little in the process of settling
down."
"That's the last thing she'd think of. Feminine reformations always start
in on the failings of other people. That's why I was so keen on the
husband idea."
"Did you go as far as to select the gentleman, or did you merely throw
out a general idea, and trust to the force of suggestion?"

"If one wants a thing done in a hurry one must see to it oneself. I found
a military Johnny hanging round on a loose end at the club, and took
him home to lunch once or twice. He'd spent most of his life on the
Indian frontier, building roads, and relieving famines and minimizing
earthquakes, and all that sort of thing that one does do on frontiers. He
could talk sense to a peevish cobra in fifteen native languages, and
probably knew what to do if you found a rogue elephant on your
croquet-lawn; but he was shy and diffident with women. I told my
mother privately that he was an absolute woman-hater; so, of course,
she laid herself out to flirt all she knew, which isn't a little."
"And was the gentleman responsive?"
"I hear he told some one at the club that he was looking out for a
Colonial job, with plenty of hard work, for a young friend of his, so I
gather that he has some idea of marrying into the family."
"You seem destined to be the victim of the reformation, after all."
Claws wiped the trace of Turkish coffee and the beginnings of a smile
from his lips, and slowly lowered his dexter eyelid. Which, being
interpreted, probably meant, "I DON'T think!"

TOBERMORY

It was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that
indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage,
and there is nothing to hunt--unless one is bounded on the north by the
Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop after fat red
stags. Lady Blemley's house-party was not bounded on the north by the
Bristol Channel, hence there was a full gathering of her guests round
the tea-table on this particular afternoon. And, in spite of the blankness
of the season and the triteness of the occasion, there was no trace in the
company of that fatigued restlessness which means a dread of the
pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge. The undisguised

openmouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the homely
negative personality of Mr. Cornelius Appin. Of all her guests, he was
the one who had come to Lady Blemley with the vaguest reputation.
Some one had said he was "clever," and he had got his invitation in the
moderate expectation, on the part of his hostess, that some portion at
least of his cleverness would be contributed to the general
entertainment. Until tea-time that day she had been unable to discover
in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay. He was neither a wit nor a
croquet champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter of amateur
theatricals. Neither did his exterior suggest the sort