An expression of extreme disdain passes over the lecturer’s face.
“I did not invite you, Lord Marlow,” he says, very coldly. “If I had done I would have provided beer and skittles for your entertainment.”
“Oh, I say Wilfrid, come, finish your address to us; it’s extremely interesting,” observes, in amiable haste, a much older man, with a bald head and pleasant, ruddy countenance, who is his uncle, Lord Southwold.
“Immensely interesting!” echo everybody: they can say so with animation, almost with veracity, now that they are aware it is drawing to an end.
“I ask your pardon if my infirmities have done injustice to a noble theme. I fear I have failed to make myself intelligible,” says Bertram, in a tone intended to be apologetic, but which is actually only aggressive, since it plainly implies that his pearls have been thrown before swine. He closes the manuscript and note-books which are lying before him with the air of a person who is prepared for anything from the obtuseness and ingratitude of humanity.
“Nothing could be clearer than what you’ve said,” says the gentleman who wanted a drink. “Nobody is to have anything they can call their own, and everybody who likes is to eat in one’s plate and bathe in one’s bath.”
“At theatres the buffoon in the gallery is usually turned out, with the approval of the entire audience,” Bertram remarks, with sententious chilliness. “Were I not in my own chambers——”
Lord Marlow laughs rudely.
“I don’t think you could throw me downstairs. Your diet of brown bread and asparagus don’t make muscle.”
“My dear fellow—before women—pray be quiet,” murmurs a guardsman who is on the seat next to him.