To-day the work was not heavy, and nearly an hour before the interval for lunch he had finished the dictation of his answers. She knew his business engagements as well as himself, and reminding him that a land-agent was coming to see him at twelve on some private matter, took her papers into the little inner room. Then she came back for her typewriter, which stood on the table in the window where she usually worked, paused and came over to his table."I thought we were going to a hall, but it was nothing of the sort, as we understand a hall. We went into a large tent, which was made by stretching matting over a space enclosed by a high fence; the fence formed the walls of the building, and the matting made the roof. We had the ground to sit on or stand on, but soon after we went in a man brought us some chairs, and we sat down. In the centre of the tent there was a circular mound something like a circus ring; it was perhaps two feet high and ten feet across, and there was a flat place outside of it where the master of ceremonies was to stand and see that everything was fair. We paid twenty-five cents to go in, and then we paid about five cents more for each chair; of course we were in the best places, and only a few others were in that part. I don't know how much the Japanese paid in the poor places, but I don't believe it was more than five cents.
Director
THE FEAST OF DOLLS (HINA MATSURI) IN A JAPANESE HOUSE. THE FEAST OF DOLLS ("HINA MATSURI") IN A JAPANESE HOUSE.[Pg 33]He did not fail to notice that he was sir no longer, but Mr Keeling, nor did he fail to grasp the significance. He was sir in his office, he was Mr Keeling in his house. Somehow that pleased him: it was like a mot juste in a comedy.Outwardly the days passed precisely as usual. They had made their appointment, and no further allusion or reminder was necessary. Each evening brought nearer the hour of azure in that hollow among the empty downs, and he desired neither to shorten nor to lengthen out the days that separated him from it. But to him everything, except that moment, regular but rarely recurring, when her eye sought his with need and love in it,{298} seemed dream-like and unsubstantial. Nothing had power either to vex or please him. He was, as always, busy all day, and transacted his own or municipal business with all his usual thoroughness and acute judgment. But it all went on outside him; the terra-cotta cupolas which his industry had reared in the market-place were as unreal as the new system of drainage in the lower part of the town, which he had exerted all his influence to get carried through the obdurate conservatism that pointed to the low-death rate of Bracebridge under the old conditions. He got his way; all his life he had been accustomed to dominate and command and organise. Then when his days work was done, and he returned home for dinner and the ensuing hours, which lately had been so intolerable, he found they irritated him no longer, and the fatuous drip of his wifes conversation was no more to him than some gutter that discharged not into his house but into the street outside. Simply he cared nothing for it, nor, when his failure to get elected to the County Club occurred to him, did he care: it appeared to have happened, but it must have happened to some stranger. Sometimes, before the pink clock announced that it was half-past ten, he would leave the drawing-room and go to his library, to see whether in his books there was to be found anything that stimulated his reactions {299}towards life. But they had no message: they were dumb or he was deaf. Even the catalogue showed no sign of life: it was Norahs work, of course, but it was not Norah.There is very little of what we call privacy in a Japanese house, as the paper screens are no obstructors of sound, and a conversation in an ordinary tone can be heard throughout the entire establishment. It is said that this form of building was adopted at a time when the government was very fearful of conspiracies, and wished to keep everybody under its supervision. Down to quite recent times there was a very complete system of espionage all over the country; and it used to be said that when three persons were together, one of them was certain to be a spy, and the other two were pretty sure to be spies as well. At the time Commodore Perry went to Japan, it was the custom to set a spy over every official to observe what he did and report accordingly. The system has been gradually dropped, but it is said to exist yet in some quarters."May I tell you?"