“A hemisphere, Mrs. Bredon,” said Brinkman in correction. “You have not been to America? The anecdote there is in its first youth; the anecdotes mostly in their extreme old age.”
“There is a pleasant dryness about American humour,” objected Pulteney. “But I confess that I miss piquancy in it.”
“Like Virginian tobacco?” suggested Bredon, and was rewarded by a savage kick from Angela under the table.
“The anecdote, however,” pursued Mr. Pulteney, “is the enemy of conversation. With its appearance, the shadow of egotism falls over our conviviality. The man who hoards up anecdotes, and lets them loose at intervals, is a social indecency; he might as well strip and parade some kind of acrobatic feat. See how your anecdotist lies in wait for his opportunity, prays for the moment that will lend excuse to his ‘That reminds me.’ There is a further pitch of shamelessness at which such a man will assault you openly with ‘Have you heard this one?’ But as long as men have some rags of behaviour left to them your sex, Mrs. Bredon, saves us from this conversational horror. When the ladies leave us, anecdotes flow out as from a burst dam.”
“That’s because we don’t know how to tell stories; we don’t drag them out enough. When I try to tell a story I always find I have got to the point when I’ve only just started.”
“You are too modest, Mrs. Bredon. It is your essential altruism which preserves you. You women are always for helping out the conversation, not strangling it at birth. You humour us men, fool us to the top of our bent, yet you always restrain conversation from its worst extravagances—like a low organ accompaniment you unobtrusively give us the note. All praise to your unselfishness!”
“I expect we are trained that way, or have trained ourselves that way. Civilization has taught us, perhaps, to play up to the men.”
“Indeed, no,” chirped Mr. Pulteney, now thoroughly enjoying himself. “Conversational receptivity is a natural glory of your sex. Nature itself, which bids the peacock strut to the admiration of the hen, bids you evoke the intellectual powers of the male. You flatter him by your attention and he basks unconsciously in your approval. How much more knowledge of human nature had Virgil than Homer! Alcinous would never have got all that long story out of Ulysses; challenged by a direct question the hero would probably have admitted, in a gruff voice, that he had been fooling around somewhere. It was a Dido that was needed to justify the hysteron proteron—‘Multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa’—she knew how to do it! But I become lyrical.”
“Do please be lyrical, Mr. Pulteney. It’s so good for Miles; he thinks he’s a strong, silent man, and there’s nothing more odious. The trouble is, of course, he thinks he’s a kind of detective, and he has to play up to the part. Look at you, Mr. Leyland, you’ve hardly uttered.”
“Is this helping us out in conversation, Mrs. Bredon? You seem to be flogging us into it.”