XII. — SHANDY'S REVENGE
He was old enough to know better, and a superficial observer might have thought that he did. But a severe and haughty manner in repose is not any indication of knowledge, nor is a well-kept beard, even when it is turning gray. Melrose Welty, the possessor of these and other ways and features symbolical of wisdom, had no higher occupation in life than to sit in club-houses and cafés, telling of conquests won by him over women, chiefly over soubrettes and chorus girls.
Of his means of livelihood, no one had certain knowledge. He always dressed well, but he abode in a lodging-house, to which he never invited any of his associates. He affected the society of newspaper men, some of whom pronounced him a good fellow until they discovered that he was an ass; and he never refused an invitation to have a drink.
When he had you at a table in a quiet corner of a café, or in front of a bar, or in the lobby of a theatre between the acts, no matter how the conversation began, he would invariably turn it into that realm to which his thoughts were confined.
“I've got a supper on hand to-night after the performance,” he would probably say, “with a blonde in the —— Company. A lovely girl, too! It's curious, old man, how I happened to meet her. I've talked to her only twice, but I made a hit with her in the first five minutes. I'll tell you how it was—”
Whereupon, if you were polite, and did not know Welty sufficiently to flee on a pretext, he would tell you how it was, inflicting upon you the wearisome minute details of the most commonplace thing in the world, the birth and growth of an acquaintance between a man about town and a silly young woman, not fastidious as to who pays for her food and drink as long as the food and drink are adequate.
If you were a newspaper man, Welty was apt to supplement his story with something like this:
“By the way, old fellow, if you have any pull with your dramatic editor, can't you give her a line or two? She hasn't much to do in the piece, but she does it well, and she's clever. She may get a good part one of these days. Have something nice said about her, won't you?”