Reginald

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"Rather an unexpected attitude for you."

"I love people who do unexpected things. Didn't you always adore the man
who slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day? But about this unfortunate
innocence. Well, quite long ago, when I'd been quarrelling with more
people than usual, you among the number--it must have been in November, I
never quarrel with you too near Christmas--I had an idea that I'd like to
write a book. It was to be a book of personal reminiscences, and was to
leave out nothing."

"Reginald!"

"Exactly what the Duchess said when I mentioned it to her. I was
provoking and said nothing, and the next thing, of course, was that
everyone heard that I'd written the book and got it in the press. After
that, I might have been a gold-fish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I
got. People attacked me about it in the most unexpected places, and
implored or commanded me to leave out things that I'd forgotten had ever
happened. I sat behind Miriam Klopstock one night in the dress circle at
His Majesty's, and she began at once about the incident of the Chow dog
in the bathroom, which she insisted must be struck out. We had to argue
it in a disjointed fashion, because some of the people wanted to listen
to the play, and Miriam takes nines in voices. They had to stop her
playing in the 'Macaws' Hockey Club because you could hear what she
thought when her shins got mixed up in a scrimmage for half a mile on a
still day. They are called the Macaws because of their blue-and-yellow
costumes, but I understand there was nothing yellow about Miriam's
language. I agreed to make one alteration, as I pretended I had got it a
Spitz instead of a Chow, but beyond that I was firm. She megaphoned back
two minutes later, 'You promised you would never mention it; don't you
ever keep a promise?' When people had stopped glaring in our direction,
I replied that I'd as soon think of keeping white mice. I saw her
tearing little bits out of her programme for a minute or two, and then
she leaned back and snorted, 'You're not the boy I took you for,' as
though she were an eagle arriving at Olympus with the wrong Ganymede.
That was her last audible remark, but she went on tearing up her
programme and scattering the pieces around her, till one of her
neighbours asked with immense dignity whether she should send for a
wastepaper basket. I didn't stay for the last act."

"Then there is Mrs.--oh, I never can remember her name; she lives in a
street that the cabmen have never heard of, and is at home on Wednesdays.
She frightened me horribly once at a private view by saying mysteriously,
'I oughtn't to be here, you know; this is one of my days.' I thought she
meant that she was subject to periodical outbreaks and was expecting an
attack at any moment. So embarrassing if she had suddenly taken it into
her head that she was Cesar Borgia or St. Elizabeth of Hungary. That
sort of thing would make one unpleasantly conspicuous even at a private
view. However, she merely meant to say that it was Wednesday, which at
the moment was incontrovertible. Well, she's on quite a different tack
to the Klopstock. She doesn't visit anywhere very extensively, and, of
course, she's awfully keen for me to drag in an incident that occurred at
one of the Beauwhistle garden-parties, when she says she accidentally hit
the shins of a Serene Somebody or other with a croquet mallet and that he
swore at her in German. As a matter of fact, he went on discoursing on
the Gordon-Bennett affair in French. (I never can remember if it's a new
submarine or a divorce. Of course, how stupid of me!) To be
disagreeably exact, I fancy she missed him by about two
inches--over-anxiousness, probably--but she likes to think she hit him.
I've felt that way with a partridge which I always imagine keeps on
flying strong, out of false pride, till it's the other side of the hedge.
She said she could tell me everything she was wearing on the occasion. I
said I didn't want my book to read like a laundry list, but she explained
that she didn't mean those sort of things."

"And there's the Chilworth boy, who can be charming as long as he's
content to be stupid and wear what he's told to; but he gets the idea now
and then that he'd like to be epigrammatic, and the result is like
watching a rook trying to build a nest in a gale. Since he got wind of
the book, he's been persecuting me to work in something of his about the
Russians and the Yalu Peril, and is quite sulky because I won't do it."

"Altogether, I think it would be rather a brilliant inspiration if you
were to suggest a fortnight in Paris."