"You say, 'Ah, Doctor!' and shake hands, you know," said this
hypercritical observer, "and, ten to one, he says something about St.
Antipas directly, you know, or--'Tell him to call on Dr. Linford at the
rectory adjoining St. Antipas--I'm always there at eleven,' or 'Yes,
quite true, the bishop said to me, "My dear Linford, we depend on you in
this matter,"' or telling how Mrs. General Somebody-Something, you
know--I never could remember names--took him down dreadfully by calling
him the most dangerously fascinating man in New York. And there you are,
you know! It never fails, on my word! And all the time people are
passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, so that it's quite
rowdy--saying 'Yes--that's Linford--there he is,' quite as if they were
on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give
you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the
fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some kind gentleman
from the audience.'"
It may be told that this other person was of a cynicism hopelessly
indurated. Not so with Rigby Reeves, even after Reeves alleged the other
discoveries that the rector of St. Antipas had "a walk that would be a
strut, by gad! if he was as short as I am"; also that he "walked like a
parade," which, as expounded by Mr. Reeves, meant that his air in
walking was that of one conscious always of leading a triumphal
procession in his own honour; and again, that one might read in his eyes
a keenly sensuous enjoyment in the tones of his own voice; that he
coloured these with a certain unction corresponding to the flourishes
with which people of a certain obliquity of mind love to ornament their
chirography; still again that he, Reeves, was "ready to lay a bet that
the fellow would continue to pose even at the foot of the Great White
Throne."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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