A Gentleman's Gentleman 1909 — A Reader’s Guide

ing after their arrival; had remained away two weeks, reappearing again with a grin on his face that had frozen stiff and had never relaxed its grip. “You can still see it; turn your head, Mac, and let the gentleman see your smile.” Since that time he had spent his nights writing letters, and his days poring aver the morning’s mail. “Got his pocket full of them now, and is so happy he’s no sort of use to anybody.” Mac now got his innings:

Lonnegan’s airs had been insufferable and his ignorance colossal. What time he could spare from his English tailor--“and you just ought to see his clothes, and especially his checkerboard waistcoats”--had been spent in abusing everything in English art that wasn’t three hundred years old, and going into raptures over Lincoln Cathedral. The more he saw of Lonnegan the more he was convinced that he had missed his calling. He might succeed as a floorwalker in a department store, where his airs and his tailor-made upholstery would impress the hayseeds from the country, but, as for trying to be--The rest was lost in a gurgle of smothered laughter, Lonnegan’s thin, white fingers having by this time closed over the painter’s windpipe.

I had been at work a month; had my present quarters at the White Hart Inn, within a stone’s throw of where we lay sprawled with our faces to the sun--the loveliest inn, by the way, on the Thames, and that was saying a lot--with hand-polished tables, sleeve and trouser-polished arm-chairs, Chippendale furniture, barmaids, pewter mugs, old and new ale, tough bread, tender mutton, tarts--gooseberry and otherwise; strawberries--two would fill a teacup--and _roses!_ Millions of roses! “Well, you fellows just step up and look at ‘em.”

“And not a place to put your head,” said Mac.

“Been there,” replied Lonnegan. “The only decent rooms are reserved for a bloated American millionaire who arrives to-day--everything else chock-a-block except two bunks under the roof, full of spiders.”

Mac drew up one of his fat legs, stretched his arms, pushed his slouch hat from his forehead--he was still on his back drinking in the sunshine--and with a yawn cried:

“They ought to be exterminated.”

“The spiders?” grumbled Lonnegan.

“No, millionaires. They throw their money away like water; they crowd the hotels. Nothing good enough for them. Prices all doubled, everything slimed up by the trail of their dirty dollars. And the saddest thing in it all to me is that you generally find one or two able-bodied American citizens kotowing to them like wooden Chinese mandarins when the great men take the air.”

“Who, for instance?” I asked. No millionaires with any such outfit had thus far come my way.

“Lonnegan, for one,” answered Mac.

The architect raised his head and shot a long, horizontal glance at the prostrate form of the painter.

“Yes, Lonnegan, I am sorry to say,” continued Mac, his eyes fixed on the yellow greens in the swaying tree-tops.

“I was only polite,” protested the architect. “Lambert is a client of mine; building a stable for him. Very level-headed man is Mr. Samuel Lambert; no frills and no swelled head. It was Tommy Wing who was doing the mandarin act 32 the other day at the Carlton--not me. Got dead intimate with him on the voyage over and has stuck to him like a plaster ever since. Calls him ‘Sam’ already--did to me.”

“Behind his back or to his face?” spluttered Mac, tugging at his pipe.

“Give it up,” said Lonnegan, pulling his hat over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.

Mac raised himself to a sitting posture, as if to reply, fumbled in his watch-pocket for a match, instead; shook the ashes from his brier-wood, filled the bowl with some tobacco from his rubber pouch, drew the lucifer across his shoe, waited until the blue smoke mounted skyward and resumed his former position. He was too happy mentally--the girl in the steamer chair was responsible--and too lazy physically to argue with anybody. Lonnegan rolled over on his elbows, and feasted his eyes on the sweep of the sleepy river, dotted with punts and wherries, its background of foliage in silhouette against the morning sky. The Thames was very lovely that June, and the trained eye of the distinguished architect missed none of its beauty and charm. I picked up my brushes and continued work. The spirit of perfect camaraderie makes such silences not only possible but enjoyable. It is the restless chatterer that tires.