He is about fifty, clean
shaven, and close-cropped, with the corners of his mouth turned down
purposely, as if he suspected them of wanting to turn up, and was
determined not to let them have their way. He has large expansive ears,
cod colored eyes, and a brow kept resolutely wide open, as if, again, he
had resolved in his youth to be truthful, magnanimous, and
incorruptible, but had never succeeded in making that habit of mind
automatic and unconscious. Still, he is by no means to be laughed at.
There is no sign of stupidity or infirmity of will about him: on the
contrary, he would pass anywhere at sight as a man of more than average
professional capacity and responsibility. Just at present he is
enjoying the weather and the sea too much to be out of patience; but he
has exhausted all the news in his papers and is at present reduced to
the advertisements, which are not sufficiently succulent to induce him
to persevere with them.
THE GENTLEMAN (yawning and giving up the paper as a bad job).
Waiter!
WAITER. Sir? (coming down C.)
THE GENTLEMAN. Are you quite sure Mrs. Clandon is coming back before
lunch?
WAITER. Quite sure, sir. She expects you at a quarter to one, sir.
(The gentleman, soothed at once by the waiter's voice, looks at him with
a lazy smile. It is a quiet voice, with a gentle melody in it that
gives sympathetic interest to his most commonplace remark; and he speaks
with the sweetest propriety, neither dropping his aitches nor misplacing
them, nor committing any other vulgarism.
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