English fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, English
Will the public be good enough to look into this business? It has sent
Crewe to bed, and Mottleby is applying for home leave, and I've lost
my faith in man altogether, and the Club gives it up. Trivey is the
only man who is unaffected by the catastrophe, and he says "I told you
so." We were all proud of Trivey at the Club, and would have crowned
him with wreaths of Bougainvillea had he permitted the liberty. But
Trivey was an austere man. The utmost that he permitted himself to say
was: "I can stretch a little bit when I'm in the humour." We called
him the Monumental Liar. Nothing that the Club offered was too good
for Trivey. He had the soft chair opposite the thermantidote in the
hot weather, and he made up his own four at whist. When visitors came
in--globe-trotters for choice--Trivey used to unmuzzle himself and tell
tales that sent the globe-trotter out of the Club on tiptoe looking for
snakes in his hat and tigers in the compound. Whenever a man from a
strange Club came in Trivey used to call for a whisky and ginger-wine
and rout that man on all points--from horses upward. There was a man
whose nickname was "Ananias," who came from the Prince's Plungers to
look at Trivey; and, though Trivey was only a civilian, the Plunger
man resigned his title to the nickname before eleven o'clock. He made
it over to Trivey on a card, and Trivey hung up the concession in his
quarters. We loved Trivey--all of us; and now we don't love him any
more.
A man from the frontier came in and began to tell tales--some very
good ones, and some better than good. He was an outsider, but he had
a wonderful imagination--for the frontier. He told six stories before
Trivey brought up his first line, and three more before Trivey hurled
his reserves into the fray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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