Somerset maughan

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 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