A Gentleman of Leisure quotes

and though every man there would have perished rather than admit it, they were grateful to Jimmy for being exactly the same to them now that he could sign a cheque for half a million as he had been on the old thirty-a-week basis.

Inherited wealth, of course, does not make a young man nobler or more admirable; but the young man does not always know this.

“Jimmy’s had a queer life,” said Mifflin. “He’s been pretty nearly everything in his time. Did you know he was on the stage before he took up newspaper work? Only in touring companies, I believe. He got tired of it, and dropped it.

and this, combined with a certain athletic jauntiness of carriage and a pair of piercing brown eyes very much like those of a bull terrier, gave him an air of aggressiveness which belied his character. He was not aggressive.

He had the good nature as well as the eyes of a bull terrier.

He also possessed, when stirred, all the bull terrier’s dogged determination.

Jimmy leaned back in his chair and spoke calmly, but with decision.

“Any man of ordinary intelligence,” he said, “could break into a house.”

Mifflin jumped up and began to gesticulate. This was heresy.

“You!” said Arthur Mifflin, with scorn.

“You! Why, you couldn’t break into an egg unless it was a poached one.”

“What’ll you bet?” said Jimmy.

“You mustn’t think Jimmy’s one of your common cracksmen,” said Sutton. “He’s at the top of his profession. That’s how he made his money. I never did believe that legacy story.”

“Jimmy,” said Mr. Mifflin, “couldn’t crack a child’s money box. Jimmy couldn’t open a sardine tin.”

Jimmy shrugged his shoulders.

He had entered the Force with the single idea of becoming rich, and had set about achieving his object with a strenuous vigour that was as irresistible as his mighty locust-stick.

Some policemen are born grafters, some achieve graft, and some have graft thrust upon them.

Mr.

Jimmy extended his hand towards him and unclasped it. Six cartridges lay in the palm.

“Why worry?” he said. “Sit down and let us talk of life.”

“It’s a fair cop, boss,” said the man resignedly.

The householder looked at Jimmy. Jimmy looked at the householder. Spike and the bulldog looked at each other. The bull terrier distributed his gaze impartially around the company.

“A typical scene of quiet American home life,” murmured Jimmy.

The man with the pistol glowered.

“Nonsense!” snapped Lady Julia. “Absurd! Ridiculous!”

Lady Julia Blunt, when conversing, resembled a Maxim gun more than anything else.

“But your diamonds, my dear?”

“She’s a ripper,” said Lord Dreever devoutly.

On the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of a summer morning, there is no such thing as a stranger.

The man you talk with is a friend, and if he will listen—as, by the etiquette of the place, he must—you may pour out your heart to him without restraint. It is expected of you.

“Why do you wish you was in Russher?” asked the interlocutor, introducing a Massa Bones and Massa Johnsing touch into the dialogue.

“Because you can wade over yer knees in bla-a-ad there,” said the mummy.

“In bla-a-ad—ruddy bla-a-ad. That’s why I wish I wos in Russher.”

Life, so grey yesterday, now appeared full of colour and possibilities. Most men who, either from choice or necessity, have knocked about the world for any length of time are more or less fatalists.

Jimmy was an optimistic fatalist.

He had always looked on fate not as a blind dispenser at random of gifts good and bad, but rather as a benevolent being with a pleasing bias in his favour. He had almost a Napoleonic faith in his star.

“Gee!” cried Spike. “It’s de cop.”

“Come in, Mr. McEachern,” he said, “come in. Journeys end in lovers meeting. You know my friend Mr. Mullins, I think? Shut the door and sit down, and let’s talk of many things.”

“Oh, I—er—I was out at the time,” said Lord Dreever. “But something frightened the feller,” he went on hurriedly, “and he made a bolt for it without taking anything.”

“Burglary,” said a young man whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, “is the hobby of the sportsman and the lifework of the avaricious.”

He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket and made a rapid note on his cuff.

Lord Dreever had known a man at college whose brother wrote lyrics for musical comedy, and had done one about a burglar’s best friend being his mother.

“Life,” said Charteris, who had had time for reflection, “is a house which we all burgle. We enter it uninvited, take all that we can lay hands on, and go out again.”

He scribbled “Life—house—burgle” on his cuff and replaced the pencil.

“Personally,” said Jimmy, with a glance at McEachern, “I have rather a sympathy for burglars. After all, they are one of the hardest-working classes in existence. They toil while everybody else is asleep.

Besides, a burglar is only a practical Socialist. People talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth. The burglar goes out and does it.

I have found burglars some of the decentest criminals I have ever met.”

He was weak. He had no character. Altogether, the examination made Jimmy more cheerful. He could not see the light-haired one, even with Sir Thomas Blunt shoving behind, as it were, accomplishing the knight’s ends.

Shove he never so wisely, Sir Thomas could never make a Romeo out of Spennie Dreever.

It was while sitting in the billiard room one night after dinner, watching his rival play a hundred up with the silent Hargate, that Jimmy came definitely to this conclusion.

She was still pale, and a certain listlessness in her manner might have been noticed by a more observant man than Mr. McEachern. Beyond that there was nothing to show that her heart had been born and killed but a few minutes before.

Women have the Red Indian instinct; and Molly had grown to womanhood in those few minutes.

Presently Lord Dreever’s name came up.

McEachern has yet to be born. For some considerable time Molly had been alive to the well-meant plottings of that worthy pair, and had derived little pleasure from the fact.

It may be that woman loves to be pursued, but she does not love to be pursued by a crowd.

Mr. McEachern cleared his throat and began again.

“Old man, I say!” protested his lordship, wounded.

“I’d call you a wretched knock-kneed skunk, only I don’t want to be fulsome. I hate flattering a man to his face.”

Lord Dreever, deeply pained, half rose from his seat.

Lord Dreever, deeply pained, half rose from his seat.

“Don’t get up,” urged Jimmy smoothly; “I couldn’t trust myself.”

His lordship subsided hastily. He was feeling alarmed. He had never seen this side of Jimmy’s character. At first he had been merely aggrieved and disappointed. He had expected sympathy. Now the matter had become more serious.

People who had schemed to get the best and longest parts were wishing now that they had been content with First Footman or Giles, a villager.

“I’ll never run an amateur show again as long as I live,” confided Charteris to Jimmy, almost tearfully.

“It’s not good enough. Most of them aren’t word-perfect yet.”

If Lochinvar snatches the maiden up onto his saddlebow he must continue in that vein. He must not fancy that, having accomplished the feat, he can resume the episode on lines of devotional humility.

Prehistoric man, who conducted his courtship with a club, never fell into the error of apologising when his bride complained of headache.

Jimmy did not apologise. The idea did not enter his mind. He was feeling prehistoric.

He looked back over his shoulder at the world they had left. The last of the Dreevers had rounded the clump of laurels, and was standing at the edge of the water, gazing perplexedly after the retreating canoe.

“These poets put a thing very neatly sometimes,” said Jimmy, reflectively, as he dug the paddle into the water. “The man who said ‘Distance lends enchantment to the view,’ for instance. Dreever looks quite nice when you see him as far away as this, with a good strip of water in between.”

Molly, gazing over the side of the boat into the lake, abstained from feasting her eyes on the picturesque spectacle.

He walked on, drawing thoughtfully at his cigarette. The more he reviewed the situation, the less he liked it. There was only one bright spot in it, and that was the feeling that now money must surely get a shade less tight.

Extracting the precious ore from Sir Thomas hitherto had been like pulling back-teeth out of a bulldog.

But now, on the strength of this infernal engagement, surely he might reasonably be expected to scatter largesse to some extent.

The nightmare horror of the situation had affected him much as a sudden blow in the parts about the waistcoat might have done. But now, as Spike would have said, he caught up with his breath.

The smirk faded slowly from the other’s face as he listened. Not even in the Bowery, full as it was of candid friends, had he listened to such a trenchant summing-up of his mental and moral deficiencies.

“That’s just a sketchy outline,” said Jimmy, pausing for breath. “I can’t do you justice impromptu like this. You’re too vast and overwhelming.”

He had a sort of feeling that she ought to have known by instinct. Nature, as has been pointed out, had equipped Hildebrand Spencer Poyns de Burgh with one of those cheap-substitute minds.

What passed for brain in him was to genuine grey matter what just-as-good imitation coffee is to real mocha.

In moments of emotion and mental distress, consequently, his reasoning, like Spike’s, was apt to be in a class of its own.

Twenty pounds, for instance, would, in the lexicon of Sir Thomas Blunt, be perfectly reasonable for the current expenses of a man engaged to Molly McEachern, but preposterous for one to whom she had declined to remain engaged.

It is these subtle shades of meaning which make the English language so full of pitfalls for the foreigner.

So engrossed was his lordship in his meditations that it was not till a voice spoke at his elbow that he was aware that Sir Thomas himself was standing by his side.

But what was five pounds? The garment of gloom and the intellectual pallor were once more prominent when his lordship repaired to his room to don the loud tweeds which, as Lord Herbert, he was to wear in the first act.

There was a good deal to be said against stealing, as a habit; but it cannot be denied that, in certain circumstances, it offers an admirable solution of a financial difficulty, and, if the penalties were not so exceedingly unpleasant, it is probable that it would become far more fashionable than it is.

His lordship’s mind did not turn immediately to this outlet from his embarrassment. He had never stolen before, and it did not occur to him directly to do so now. There is a conservative strain in all of us.

The average tyro lacks generalship altogether. Spennie Dreever may be cited as a typical novice. It did not strike him that inquiries might be instituted by Sir Thomas when he found the money gone, and that suspicion might conceivably fall upon himself.

Courage may be born of champagne, but rarely prudence.

The theatricals began at half past eight with a duologue. The audience had been hustled into their seats, happier than is usual in such circumstances, owing to the rumour which had been circulated that the proceedings were to terminate with an informal dance.

“How can you say such savage things?” protested Jimmy.

“Not buffoonery! Wit! Esprit! Flow of soul such as circulates daily in the best society.”

Sir Thomas almost leaped towards the bell. With his finger on it, he turned to deliver a final speech.

You don’t want a full description, I suppose? Anyway, what happens is that the blowpipe sets it up like a tonic, gives it increased specific gravity, and a healthy complexion, and all sorts of great things of that kind.

Two minutes in the flame of a blowpipe is like a week at the seaside to a bit of white jargoon.

Are you satisfied? If it comes to that, I suppose you can hardly be expected to be; convinced is a better word. Are you convinced, or do you hanker after tests like polarised light and refracting liquids?”

But the audience bore no malice.

No collection of individuals is less vindictive than an audience at amateur theatricals.

It was all over now.

there was a snap and a click, and looking up, dazed, he saw that the detective had sprung back, and was contemplating him with a grim smile over the barrel of an ugly-looking little revolver.

Guilty or innocent, the first thing a man does, when he finds handcuffs on his wrists, is to try to get them off.

The action is automatic. Mr. McEachern strained at the steel chain till the veins stood out on his forehead. His great body shook with rage.