The Firm of Girdlestone Chapter 10 - Dwellers in Bohemia

Ashton Hoffman (0:00)

Chapter 10 of The Throne of Girdlestone by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Read by Ashton Hoffman.

Dwellers in Bohemia.

The residence of Major Tobias Clutterbuck, late of the 119th Light Infantry, was not known to any of his friends. It is true that at times he eluded in a modest way to his little place, and even went to the length of marking early to the new acquaintances that he hoped they would look him up any time they happened to be in his direction.

As he carefully refrained, however, from ever giving the slightest indication of which direction that might be, his invitations never led to any practical results. Still, they had the effect of filling the recipient with a vague sense of proper hospitality and occasionally led to more substantial kindness in return. The Gallant Major's figure was a familiar one in the code room of the Rag and Bobtail. At the bow window of Janice's Dorie, tall and pompous, with a portly frame and a puffy, clean-shaven face which peered over an abnormally high collar and old-fashioned linen cravet, he stood as a very type and emblem of staid middle-age respectability. The Major's hat was always of the Glorious. The Major's coat was without a wrinkle, and in short, from the summit of the Major's bald head to his bulbous fingertips and his gaudy toes, there was not a flaw which the most severe critic of deportment, even the illustrious Tervide Drop himself could have detected. Let us add that the conversation that the Major was as irapproachable as his person, that he was a distinguished soldier and an accomplished traveler, with a retentive memory and a mind stuffed with the good things of a life. Combine all these qualities and one would naturally regard the Major as a most desirable acquaintance. It is painful to have to remark, however, that self-evident as this proposition might appear, it was vehemently contradicted by some of the annotated, there were rumors concerning the Major which seriously compromised his private character. Indeed, such a pitch had the reach that when that gallant officer put himself forward as a candidate for a certain select club, he had although proposed by a lord and seconded by a baronet, been most ignominiously pilled in public. The Major affected to laugh over this social failure, and to regard it as someone in the nature of a practical joke, but privately, he was deeply incensed. One day, mentally dropped his veil of unconcern while playing billers with an honorable fungus brown, who was generally credited with having had some hand in the Major's exclusions. Be dead, sir, the veteran suddenly exclaimed, inflating his chest and turning his apolactic face upon his companion. In the old days, I would have called a lot of you out, sir, every damn one. Beginning with the committee and working down, I would be George, at which savage attack the honorable fungus face grew as white as the Major's was red. And he began to wish that he had been more reserved in his confidences to some of his acquaintances, respect of the exclusionists of the club in question, or at least refrained from holding up the Major's pilling as a proof therefore. The cause of this vague feeling of distrust which had gone abroad concerning the old soldier was not a very easy matter to define. It is true that he was known to have a book on every race and to have secret means of information from stud-grooms and jockeys which occasionally stood him in good stead, but this was no uncommon thing among the men with whom he consorted. Again, it is true that Major Clutterbuck was much addicted to risks with genuine points and to billiard matches for substantial sums, but these stimulating recreations are also habitual to many men who have led eventful lives and require a strong seasoning to make ordinary existences endurable. Perhaps one reason may have been that the Major's billiard play in public varied to an extraordinary degree, so that on different occasions, he had appeared to be aiming at the process termed by the initiated getting on the money. The warm friendships too, which the old soldier had contracted with Sundry Vekas and Sapper Youths, who were kindly polite by him into quasi-fashionable life and show. How and when to spend their money had been most uncharitable commented upon.

Perhaps the vagueness about the major's private residence and the mystery which hung over him outside his clubs may also have excited prejudice against him. Still, however his detracts might mileage in him, they could not attempt to deny the fact that Tobias Clutterbuck was the third son of Honorable Charles Clutterbuck, who again was the second son of the Earl of Dunross, one of the most ancient of Heberianian families. His pedigree the old soldier took care to explain to everyone about him, more particularly to the sapid youths aforementioned. The chance that on the afternoon of which we speak, the major was engrossed by this very subject standing at the head of the Broadstone Steps, which led up to the Plattail edifice, which its occupiers irrevitably termed the Rag and Bobtail. He was explaining to a boarnet olive complex young man the series of marriages and intermarriages which had culminated in the production of his own portly stiffback figure. His companion who was none other than Ezra Girdlestone of the great African firm, of that name, leaned against one of the pillars of the portico and listened gloomily to the major's family reminiscences, giving an occasional yawn which he made no attempt to conceal. It's as plain as the fingers are of my hand, the old soldier said, in a wheezy muffled rogue as if he were speaking from under a featherbed. See here now, Girdlestone, this is Miss Latita Snackles of Snackleton, a cousin of old Sir Joseph. The major tapped his thumb with the silver head of his walking stick to represent the maiden Snackles. She married Crawford of the Blues, one of the Warwickshire Craftsfords. That's him.