The Complete Short Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

political controversy without the least knowledge of the issues involved—but no woman ever cheerfully chose a claret.
    â€œHors d’œuvres have always a pathetic interest for me,” said Reginald: “they remind me of one’s childhood that one goes through, wondering what the next course is going to be like—and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d’œeuvres. Don’t you love watching the different ways people have of entering a restaurant? There is the woman who races in as though her whole scheme of life were held together by a one-pin despotism which might abdicate its functions at any moment; it’s really a relief to see her reach her chair in safety. Then there are the people who troop in with an-unpleasant-duty-to-perform air, as if they were angels of Death entering a plague city. You see that type of Briton very much in hotels abroad. And nowadays there are always the Johannes-bourgeois, who bring a Cape-to-Cairo atmosphere with them—what may be called the Rand Manner, I suppose.”
    â€œTalking about hotels abroad,” said the Duchess, “I am preparing notes for a lecture at the Club on the educational effects of modern travel, dealing chiefly with the moral side of the question. I was talking to Lady Beauwhistle’s aunt the other day—she’s just come back from Paris, you know. Such a sweet woman—”
    â€œAnd so silly. In these days of the overeducation of women she’s quite refreshing. They say some people went through the siege of Paris without knowing that France and Germany were at war; but the Beauwhistle aunt is credited with having passed the whole winter in Paris under the impression that the Humberts were a kind of bicycle.… Isn’t there a bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we have known on earth in another world? How frightfully embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had last known at Prince’s! I’m sure in my nervousness I should talk of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they would be quite as offended if one hadn’t eaten them. I know if I were served up at a cannibal feast I should be dreadfully annoyed if any one found fault with me for not being tender enough, or having been kept too long.”
    â€œMy idea about the lecture,” resumed the Duchess hurriedly,“is to inquire whether promiscuous Continental travel doesn’t tend to weaken the moral fibre of the social conscience. There are people one knows, quite nice people when they are in England, who are so
different
when they are anywhere the other side of the Channel.”
    â€œThe people with what I call Tauchnitz morals,” observed Reginald. “On the whole, I think they get the best of two very desirable worlds. And, after all, they charge so much for excess luggage on some of those foreign lines that it’s really an economy to leave one’s reputation behind one occasionally.”
    â€œA scandal, my dear Reginald, is as much to be avoided at Monaco or any of those places as at Exeter, let us say.”
    â€œScandal, my dear Irene—I may call you Irene, mayn’t I?”
    â€œI don’t know that you have known me long enough for that.”
    â€œI’ve known you longer than your god-parents had when they took the liberty of calling you that name. Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people. Tell me, who is the woman with the old lace at the table on our left? Oh,
that
doesn’t matter; it’s quite the thing nowadays to stare at people as if they were yearlings at Tattersall’s.”
    â€œMrs. Spelvexit? Quite a charming woman; separated from her husband—”
    â€œIncompatibility of income?”
    â€œOh, nothing of that sort. By miles of frozen ocean, I was going