Act IV - Page 2

This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock coat,
tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and lilac
blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie tied into a
bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose social position
needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without regard to climate:
one who would dress thus for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont
Blanc. And since he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its
life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate tailoring and
millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in a working dress of
any kind he would look dignified enough. He is a bullet cheeked man with
a red complexion, stubbly hair, smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds
down at the corners, and a dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes
with age has attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is
still hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his
face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of one who
has made money, and something of the truculence of one who has made it
in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having under it a perceptible
menace that he has other methods in reserve if necessary. Withal, a man
to be rather pitied when he is not to be feared; for there is something
pathetic about him at times, as if the huge commercial machine which has
worked him into his frock coat had allowed him very little of his own
way and left his affections hungry and baffled. At the first word
that falls from him it is clear that he is an Irishman whose native
intonation has clung to him through many changes of place and rank. One
can only guess that the original material of his speech was perhaps the
surly Kerry brogue; but the degradation of speech that occurs in London,
Glasgow, Dublin and big cities generally has been at work on it so long
that nobody but an arrant cockney would dream of calling it a brogue
now; for its music is almost gone, though its surliness is still
perceptible. Straker, as a very obvious cockney, inspires him with
implacable contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak his
own language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old
gentleman's accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence
expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him
normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky species, but
occasionally with indignant alarm when the old gentleman shows signs of
intending his Irish nonsense to be taken seriously.

STRAKER. I'll go tell the young lady. She said you'd prefer to stay here
[he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].

MALONE. [who has been looking round