Somerset Maugham - The Magician

Arthur protested that on the contrary the passion of hunger occupied at that moment his heart to the exclusion of all others.

'Marie, you no longer love me,' cried Warren. 'There was a time when you did not look so coldly upon me when I ordered a bottle of white wine.'

The rest of the party took up his complaint, and all besought her not to show too hard a heart to the bald and rubicund painter.

'_Mais si, je vous aime, Monsieur Warren,_' she cried, laughing, '_Je vous aime tous, tous._'

She ran downstairs, amid the shouts of men and women, to give her orders.

'The other day the Chien Noir was the scene of a tragedy,' said Susie. 'Marie broke off relations with her lover, who is a waiter at Lavenue's, and would have no reconciliation. He waited till he had a free evening, and then came to the room downstairs and ordered dinner. Of course, she was obliged to wait on him, and as she brought him each dish he expostulated with her, and they mingled their tears.'

'She wept in floods,' interrupted a youth with neatly brushed hair and fat nose. 'She wept all over our food, and we ate it salt with tears. We besought her not to yield; except for our encouragement she would have gone back to him; and he beats her.'

Marie appeared again, with no signs now that so short a while ago romance had played a game with her, and brought the dishes that had been ordered. Susie seized once more upon Arthur Burdon's attention.

'Now please look at the man who is sitting next to Mr Warren.'

Arthur saw a tall, dark fellow with strongly-marked features, untidy hair, and a ragged black moustache.

'That is Mr O'Brien, who is an example of the fact that strength of will and an earnest purpose cannot make a painter. He's a failure, and he knows it, and the bitterness has warped his soul. If you listen to him, you'll hear every painter of eminence come under his lash. He can forgive nobody who's successful, and he never acknowledges merit in anyone till he's safely dead and buried.'

'He must be a cheerful companion,' answered Arthur. 'And who is the stout old lady by his side, with the flaunting hat?'

'That is the mother of Madame Rouge, the little palefaced woman sitting next to her. She is the mistress of Rouge, who does all the illustrations for _La Semaine_. At first it rather tickled me that the old lady should call him _mon gendre_, my son-in-law, and take the irregular union of her daughter with such a noble unconcern for propriety; but now it seems quite natural.'

The mother of Madame Rouge had the remains of beauty, and she sat bolt upright, picking the leg of a chicken with a 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 Cйzanne. 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 cleanshaven 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 Porhoлt who was sitting opposite, quietly eating his dinner and enjoying the nonsense which everyone talked. 'Is not that your magician?'

'Oliver Haddo,' said Dr Porhoлt, 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 Porhoлt.

'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 Porhoлt 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.