The younger man cleverly avoided shaking hands with Clavering, but replied, also smiling, “Your attorneys say we shan’t be able to ‘do you up,’ Senator.”
“I hope they’re right. I swear, in that business the amount of lying and perjury, if placed on end, would reach to the top of the Washington Monument. Have a cigar?”
Such indeed was Baskerville’s own view of the lying and perjury, but he opined that it was all on Senator Clavering’s side, and he was trying to prove it. He got out of taking one of Clavering’s cigars—for he was nice upon points of honor—by taking a cigarette out of his case.
“I don’t know what you youngsters are coming to,” said Clavering, as he smoked. “Cigarettes and vermouth, and that sort of thing, instead of a good strong cigar and four fingers of whiskey.”
“I was on the foot-ball team at the university for three terms, and we had to lead lives like boarding-school misses,” replied Baskerville, toying with his cigarette. “Our coach was about the stiffest man against whiskey and cigars I ever knew—and used to preach to us seven days in the week that a couple of cigars a day and four fingers of whiskey would shortly land any fellow at the undertaker’s. I fell from grace, it is true, directly I was graduated; but that coach’s gruesome predictions have stuck to me like the shirt of Nemesis, as your colleague, Senator Jephson, said the other day on the floor of the Senate.”
“Jephson’s an ass. He is the sort of man that would define a case of mixed property as a suit for a mule.”
“Hardly. And he’s an honest old blunderbuss.”
“Still, he’s an ass, as I say. His honesty doesn’t prevent that.”
“Well, yes, in a way it does. I’m not a professional moralist, but I don’t believe there is any really good substitute for honesty.” Then Baskerville suddenly turned red; the discussion of honesty with a man whose dishonesty he firmly believed in, and was earnestly trying to prove, was a blunder into which he did not often fall. Clavering, who saw everything, noted the other’s flush, understood it perfectly, and smiled in appreciation of the joke. Baskerville did not propose to emphasize his mistake by running away, and was prepared to stay some minutes longer, when the entrance doors were swung open by the gorgeous footman, and Mrs. Clavering, leaning upon Anne’s arm, appeared for a walk. When he saw his wife, Clavering’s face grew dark; that old woman, with her bad grammar and her big hands, was always in his way. He said good morning abruptly and went indoors at once.
Anne greeted Baskerville with a charming smile, and introduced him at once to her mother. Something in his manner to Mrs. Clavering revealed the antique respect he had for every decent woman, no matter how unattractive she might be. He assisted Mrs. Clavering down the great stone steps as if she were a young and pretty girl instead of a lumbering, ignorant, elderly woman; and Mrs. Clavering found courage to address him, a thing she rarely did to strangers.