Blow evensong! said Alice ecstatically. Wasnt that delicious of him. And the Pope, too; the thin end of the Pope. But how could father be so rude as to begin dictating about linoleum?Keeling seldom wasted thought or energy on{271} irremediable mischances: if a business proposition turned out badly he cut his loss on it, and dismissed it from his mind. But it was equally characteristic of him to strike, and strike hard, if opportunity offered at any firm which had let him in for his loss, and, in this case, since the Club had hit at him, he felt it was but fair that he should return the blow with precise and instantaneous vigour. That was right and proper, and his rejoinder to Norah that the Club who did not consider him sufficient of a gentleman to enter their doors should have the pleasure of knowing how right they were, had at least as much sober truth as irony about it. The opportunity to hit back was ready to hand; it would have been singular indeed, and in flat contradiction to his habits, if he had not taken it. But when once he had done that, he was satisfied; they did not want him as a member, and he did not want them as tenants, and there was the end of it. Yet, like some fermenting focus in his brain, minute as yet, but with the potentiality of leaven in it, was the fact that Norah had implored him not to send his answer to Lord Inverbroom. He still considered her interference an impertinence, but what stuck in his mind and began faintly to suggest other trains of thought was the equally undeniable fact that she had not meant it as an impertinence. In intention it had been a friendly speech inspired by the good-will of a friend. But he shrugged{272} his shoulders at it: she did not understand business, or, possibly, he did not understand clubs. So be it then: he did not want to understand them.I waited on. So absorbed was I that I did not hear the coming of a horseman in the fields beyond the grove, nor the click of a field gate; but when the strange quietude of Ferry and the dogs had begun to reassure me I became aware of this new-comer approaching the dooryard. There he reined in and hallooed. I knew the voice. An answer came from an upper window. "Is this Squire Wall's?" asked the traveller. "Well, Squire, I'm from General Austin's headquarters, with orders to Captain Ferry."
ONE:"I ain't a going to laugh," said Mr. Flack, "not unless I see fit to laugh." And he continued to stare gravely at Arthur's elaborate posturing. Presently the latter remembered his urgent appointment and disappeared through the narrow door that led upstairs."It is the rule in Japan for a man to have only one wife at a time, but he does not always stick to it. If he has children, a man is generally contented; but if he has none, he gets another wife, and either divorces the first one or not, as he chooses. Divorce is very easy for a man to obtain, but not so for the woman; and when she is divorced, she has hardly any means of obtaining justice. But, in justice to the Japanese, it should be said that the men do not often abuse their opportunities for divorce, and that the married life of the people is about as good as that of most countries. Among the reasons for divorce, in addition to what I have mentioned, there are the usual ones that prevail in America. Furthermore, divorce is allowed if a wife is disobedient to her husband's parents, and[Pg 262] also if she talks too much. The last reason is the one most frequently given; but a woman cannot complain of her husband and become divorced from him for the same cause. I wonder if Japan is the only country in the world where women have ever been accused of talking too much.
ONE:"The rebellion," he continued, "is known in history as the Tae-ping[Pg 340] insurrection. The words 'tae ping' mean 'general peace,' and were inscribed on the banners of the rebels. The avowed intention of the leader of the revolt was to overthrow the imperial power, and deliver the country from its oppressors. There were promises of a division of property, or, at all events, the rebels were to have free license to plunder wherever they went; and as there are always a great many people who have everything to gain and nothing to lose, the rebellion gathered strength as time went on. The leaders managed to convince the foreigners that they were inclined to look favorably on Christianity, and the idea went abroad that the Tae-pings were a sort of Chinese Protestants, who wanted to do away with old abuses, and were in favor of progress and of more intimate relations with foreign nations. Many of the missionaries in China were friendly to the rebellion, and so were some of the merchants and others established there.You made me cry two mornings ago, she said, and I felt so ashamed of myself. I dont feel ashamed of myself now. II am rather proud of myself, and I want you to be proud of me.
THREE:Yes, sir, if youll pay the price, theres an important site which the owner wants to sell the freehold of. Its the site of the County Club. The price asked seems rather high, but then I consider the Club are getting their premises absurdly cheap. You might fairly ask a much higher rental."They are the vehicles in which the Japanese used to travel, and which are still much employed in various parts of the country. We shall see them before long, and then we shall have an excellent opportunity to know what they are. We shall probably be travelling in them in a few days, and I will then have your opinion concerning them.
A street leads up from the water towards the centre of the island, and along this street are the principal houses of the town. The most of these houses are hotels for the accommodation of the numerous pilgrims that come to the sacred shrines of Enoshima; and, as our party approached, there was a movement among the attendants of the nearest hostelry to invite the strangers to enter. They halted at the door of a large building on the left. The proprietor was just inside the entrance, and bowed to them in true Japanese style, with his head touching the floor. He not only bowed to the party in general, but to each one of them separately, and it took two or three minutes to go through with the preliminaries of politeness and begin negotiations for the desired accommodations.John has had enough shop from his pastor, havent you, my dear boy? he said, with the greatest good humour. We clergy are terrible people for talking shop, and we dont seem to mind how boring and tiresome we are. You get enough jaw at school, pijaw we used to call it, without being preached at when you come home.Mr Keeling sat at one end of the varnished pitch-pine pew with his children in a row between him and their mother at the other end. There were large schedules of commandments on either side of the plain, bare table (miscalled an altar), so that everybody could see what was expected of him, while Dr Inglis told them what they could expect if they were not very careful. Next his father sat John, who, from the unfortunate accident of his being the youngest, went last into the pew, while Mr Keeling stood like an angry shepherd in the aisle to herd his family into the fold, just{3} above which rose the pulpit where Dr Inglis at this moment was speaking in a voice of icy conviction.She made no reply, and two minutes afterwards he again found her at fault. And the brutality, the desire to make the beloved suffer, which in very ugly fashion often lies in wait close to the open high road of love, became more active.Are you serious? she asked.Then, while still the industrious press-cutters had not yet come to the end of those appetising morsels, the packets on her breakfast table swelled{261} in size again, and she was privileged to read over and over again that the honour of a baronetcy had been conferred on her husband. She did not mind how often she read this; all the London papers reproduced the gratifying intelligence, and though the wording in most of these was absolutely identical, repetition never caused the sweet savour to cloy on her palate. She was like a girl revelling in chocolate-drops; though they all tasted precisely alike, each tasted delicious, and she felt she could go on eating them for ever. Even better than those stately clippings from the great London luminaries were the more detailed coruscations of the local press. They gave biographies of her husband, magnanimously suppressing the fish-shop, and dwelling only on the enterprise which had made and the success which had crowned the Stores, and many (these were the sweetest of all) gave details about herself and her parentage and the number of her children. She was not habitually a great reader, only using books as a soporific till they tumbled from her drowsy grasp, but now she became a wakeful and enthusiastic student. The whole range of literature, since the days of primeval epics, had never roused in her one tithe of the emotion that those clippings afforded.
