“George,” he now continued in a natural tone of voice, “I want you to meet two friends of mine. Mr. Bendien, of Amsterdam,” he said, presenting Webber to a heavy-set, red-faced, elderly Dutchman, who sat by the table within easy reaching distance of a tall brown crock of Holland gin, of which, to judge from his complexion, he had already consumed a considerable quantity.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” cried McHarg, striking another attitude, “allow me to introduce that stupendous, that death-defying, that thrill-packed wonder of the ages, that hair-raising and spine-tingling act which has thrilled most of the crowned heads of Europe and all of the deadheads of Amsterdam. Now appearing absolutely for the first time under the big tent. Ladies and gentlemen, I now take pleasure in introducing Mynheer Cornelius Bendien, the Dutch maestro, who will perform for you his celebrated act of balancing an eel on the end of his nose while he swallows in rapid succession, without pausing for breath, three—count ‘em—three brown jugs of the finest imported Holland gin. Mr. Bendien, Mr. Webber…How was that, boy, how was that?” said McHarg, laughing his shrill falsetto, and turning and prodding Webber again with an eager finger.
Then, somewhat more curtly, he said: “You may have met Mr. Donald Stoat before. He tells me that he knows you.”
The other man looked out from underneath his heavy eyebrows and inclined his head pompously. “I believe,” he said, “I have had the honour of Mr. Webber’s acquaintance.”
George remembered him, although he had seen him only once or twice, and that some years before. Mr. Stoat was not the kind of man one easily forgets.
It was plain to see that McHarg was on edge, terribly nervous, and also irritated by Stoat’s presence. He turned away abruptly, muttering: “Too—too—too—much—too much.” And then, wheeling about suddenly: “All right, George. Have a drink. What’s it going to be?”
“My own experience,” said Mr. Stoat with unctuous pomposity, “is that the best drink in the morning”—he leered significantly with his bushy eyebrows—“a gentleman’s drink, if I may say so—is a glawss of dry sherry.” He had a “glawss” of this beverage in his hand at the moment, and, lifting it with an air of delicate connoisseurship, at the same time working his eyebrows appraisingly, he sniffed it—an action which seemed to irritate McHarg no end. “Allow me,” continued Mr. Stoat, with rotund deliberation, “to recommend it to your consideration.”
McHarg began to pace rapidly up and down. “Too much—too much,” he muttered. “All right, George,” he said irritably, “what’ll you have to drink—Scotch?”
Mynheer Bendien put in his oar at this point. Holding up his glass and leaning forward with a hand on one fat knee, he said with guttural solemnity: “You should trink chin. Vy don’t you try a trink of Holland chin?”
This advice also seemed to annoy Mr. McHarg. He glared at Bendien with his flaming face, then, throwing up his bony hands with a quick, spasmodic movement, he cried: “Oh, for God’s sake!” He turned and began to pace up and down again, muttering: “Too much—too much—too—too—too much.” Then abruptly, in a voice shrill with irritation: “Let him drink what he wants, for Christ’s sake! Go ahead, Georgie,” he said roughly. “Drink what you like. Pour yourself some Scotch.” And suddenly turning to Webber, his whole face lighting up with an impish smile, his lips flickering nervously above his teeth: “Isn’t it wonderful, Georgie? Isn’t it marvellous? K-k-k-k-k”—prodding Webber in the ribs with bony forefinger, and laughing a high, dry, feverish laugh—“Can you beat it?”
“I confess,” said Mr. Donald Stoat at this point, with rotund unction, “that I have not read our young friend’s opus, which, I believe”—unction here deepening visibly into rotund sarcasm—“which, I believe, has been hailed by certain of our cognoscenti as a masterpiece. After all, there are so many masterpieces nowadays, aren’t there? Scarcely a week goes by but what I pick up my copy of The Times—I refer, of course, to The Times of London, as distinguished from its younger and somewhat more immature colleague, The New York Times—to find that another of our young men has enriched English literature with another masterpiece of im—perish—able prose.”
All this was uttered in ponderous periods with leerings and twitchings of those misplaced moustaches that served the gentleman for eyebrows. McHarg was obviously becoming more and more annoyed, and kept pacing up and down, muttering to himself. Mr. Stoat, however, was too obtuse by nature, and too entranced by the rolling cadences of his own rhetoric, to observe the warning signals. After leering significantly with his eyebrows again, he went on:
“I can only hope, however, that our young friend here is a not too enthusiastic devotee of the masters of what I shall call The School of Bad Taste.”