FORE:
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FORE:Of course, Lilian's impression of his menag would have been unsatisfactory, even though he had escorted her over the house himself; but it was highly significant that she should have preferred to come alone. Holding advanced opinions about the simplification of the house, and of the woman's duties therein,[Pg 121] she would regard his establishment as unwieldy, overcrowded, old-fashioned, even musty. It would represent to her unnecessary responsibilities, labour without reward, meaningless ostentation. The Doctor's own tastes lay in the direction of massive, ornate furniture, rich carpets and hangings, a multiplicity of ornaments. He liked a house filled to the brim with expensive things. He was a born collector and accumulator of odds and ends, of things that had become necessary to his varying moods. He was proud of his house, with its seventeen rooms, including two magnificent reception rooms, four spare bedrooms in a state of constant readiness, like fire-stations, for old friends who always said they were coming and never did; its elaborate kitchen arrangements and servants' quarters. Then there were cosy little rooms which a woman of taste would be able to decorate according to her whim, workrooms, snuggeries, halls and landings. There was much in the place that ought to appeal to a woman with right instincts."You mean those little things the Japanese sleep on?"
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FORE:"I certainly value my wit more than my prescriptions," laughingly agreed the Doctor, "But, tell me, what was the lady's impression of my menag? And that reminds me, you have not told me her name yet. Did she carry a red parasol, or was it a white one?""Of course, you will want to know if the Japanese women are pretty. Now, you mustn't be jealous when I say they are. Fred thinks so too, and you know it won't do for me to have a quarrel with Fred when we are travelling together, and especially when I think he's right. They are all brunettes, and have sharp, bright eyes, full of smiles, and their skins are clear and healthy. They look very pleasant and happy; and they have such sweet, soft voices that nobody could help liking them even if he didn't want to. They have such nice manners, too, that you feel quite at your ease in their company. They may be wishing you ten thousand miles away, and saying to themselves that they hate the sight of a foreigner; but if they do, they manage to conceal their thoughts so completely that you can never know them. You may say this is all deception, and perhaps it is; but it is more agreeable than to have them treat you rudely, and tell you to get out of the way.
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FORE:I know you did. That is all that concerns me."You can hardly have dreamed of the beautiful things we found in Canton cut out of ivory. There were combs and brooches so delicate that it seemed as if they could be blown to pieces by a breath; and there were boxes and card-cases with representations of landscapes, and men and animals on them so small that we needed a microscope to see them distinctly. In one shop we saw the whole tusk of an elephant carved from one end to the other so closely that you could hardly put a pin on it without hitting some part of the work. They told us that the tusk had been sent there by the gentleman who killed the elephant in India, and he was having it carved to keep as a trophy. The carving had cost six hundred[Pg 419] dollars; and if it had been done in America, it would have cost nearer six thousand. Skilled labor is cheap in China, just as unskilled labor is, and it is astonishing for how little a man can be employed on the kind of work that would bring a high price in Europe or America.
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FORE:Gradually, while still his ear was alert to catch the silence next door which would show that Norah had finished her work, his surface-faculties moved more slowly and drowsily. The page he was reading, concerning some estimate, lay long unturned before him, and his eye ceased to travel along the lines that no longer conveyed any meaning to him. It was not the ceremony of to-day that occupied him, nor the moment when all Bracebridge knew that it was he who had made this munificent gift. Those things formed but the vaguest of backgrounds, in which too a veiled hatred of his wife was mingled: in front of that grey mist was the sunlit windy down, the skylark, the tufts of blue-bell foliage, and the companionship which gave them all their significance. And how significant, he now asked himself, were these same things to his companion? Did they mean anything to her because of him? True, she had silently and unconsciously taken him into her confidence when they listened together{255} to the sky-lost song, but would not anybody else, her brother for instance, have done just as well? Did her heart want him? He had no answer to that.
FORE:They strolled along to where there were some black-eyed girls in charge of booths, where, for a small consideration, a visitor can practise shooting with bows and arrows. The bows were very small, and the arrows were blunt at the ends. The target was a drum, and consequently the marksman's ear, rather than the eye, told when a shot was successful. The drums were generally square, and in front of each there was a little block of wood. A click on the wood showed that a shot was of more value than when it was followed by the dull boom of the drum. The girls brought tea to the boys, and endeavored to engage them in conversation, but, as there was no common language in which they could talk, the dialogue was not particularly interesting. The boys patronized the archery business, and tried a few shots with the Japanese equipments; but they found the little arrows rather difficult to handle, on account of their diminutive size. An arrow six inches long is hardly heavy enough to allow of a steady aim, and both of the youths declared they would prefer something more weighty.
FORE:This person Kendall and I had the luck to meet at the Roy's breakfast-table. "Yes, left lung," he said. "No, hardly 'perforated,' but the top deeply grazed." The ball, he said, had passed on and out, and he went into particulars with me, while I wondered if Kendall knew, as I did, what parts of the body the pleura, the thorax, the clavicle and the pyemia were.
FORE:"If you want to be there in season for the beginning," the Doctor answered, "you should go in the morning, or, at all events, very early in the day."
FORE:He had done everything possible to calm himself. He had taken bromide; he had been out for a smart turn around the roads; he had forced himself to sit down and answer some letters. But it was impossible to ease the pressure of his thoughts; he felt that his brain would never cease from working round and round in a circle of hopeless enquiry. In the end, and late as it was, he had telephoned for Gregg.That Ive been making preachment.
