The Gentleman In the Parlour by W. Somerset Maugham Page A

hadn’t looked at those damned photographs,’ he said. ‘I put them away on purpose.’
    I did not want to be inquisitive or to force a confidence my host had no wish to give, but neither did I desire to seem so unconcerned as to prevent him from telling me something he had in his heart. Often in some lonely post in the jungle or in a stiff grand house, solitary in the midst of a teeming Chinese city, a man has told me stories about himself that I was sure he had never told to a living soul. I was a stray acquaintance whomhe had never seen before and would never see again, a wanderer for a moment through his monotonous life, and some starved impulse led him to lay bare his soul. I have in this way learned more about men in a night (sitting over a syphon or two and a bottle of whisky, the hostile, inexplicable world outside the radius of an acetylene lamp) than I could have if I had known them for ten years. If you are interested in human nature it is one of the great pleasures of travel. And when you separate (for you have to be up betimes) sometimes they will say to you:
    â€˜I’m afraid I’ve bored you to death with all this nonsense. I haven’t talked so much for six months. But it’s done me good to get it off my chest.’
    The boy removed the porridge plates and gave each of us a piece of pale fried fish. It was rather cold.
    â€˜The fish is beastly, isn’t it?’ said Masterson. ‘I hate river fish, except trout; the only thing is to smother it with Worcester sauce.’
    He helped himself freely and passed me the bottle.
    â€˜She was a damned good housekeeper, my girl; I used to feed like a fighting-cock when she was here. She’d have had the cook out of the house in a quarter of an hour if he’d sent in muck like this.’
    He gave me a smile, and I noticed that his smile was very sweet. It gave him a peculiarly gentle look.
    â€˜It was rather a wrench parting with her, you know.’
    It was quite evident now that he wished to talk and I had no hesitation in giving him a lead.
    â€˜Did you have a row?’
    â€˜No. You could hardly call it a row. She lived with me five years and we never had a tiff even. She was the best-tempered little thing that ever was. Nothing seemed to put her out. She was always as merry as a cricket. You couldn’t look at her without her lips breaking into a smile. She was always happy. And there was no reason why she shouldn’t be. I was very good to her.’
    â€˜I’m sure you were,’ I answered.
    â€˜She was mistress here. I gave her everything she wanted. Perhaps if I’d been more of a brute she wouldn’t have gone away’
    â€˜Don’t make me say anything so obvious as that women are incalculable.’
    He gave me a deprecating glance and there was a trace of shyness in the smile that just flickered in his eyes.
    â€˜Would it bore you awfully if I told you about it?’
    â€˜Of course not.’
    â€˜Well, I saw her one day in the street and she rather took my fancy. I showed you her photograph, but the photograph doesn’t begin to do her justice. It sounds silly to say about a Burmese girl, but she was like a rose-bud, not an English rose, you know, she was as little like that as the glass flowers on that box I showed you are like real flowers, but a rose grown in an Eastern garden that had something strange and exotic about it. I don’t know how to make myself plain?’
    â€˜I think I understand what you mean all the same,’ I smiled.
    â€˜I saw her two or three times and found out where she lived. I sent my boy to make enquiries about her, and he told me that her parents were quite willing that I should have her if we could come to an arrangement. I wasn’t inclined to haggle and everything was settled in no time. Her family gave a party to celebrate the occasion and she came to live here. Of course I treated her in every way as my wife and put her