ONE:There were plenty of people in Bracebridge who possessed it, but except at meetings and on official occasions he did not come in contact with them. As ex-fishmonger, as proprietor and managing director of the Stores, he moved in a society quite{70} distinct from those to whom John was learning so quickly to belong. But he could see them tellingly contrasted with each other if he cared to walk along Alfred Street, past the church where he was so regular an attendant on Sunday, to where there stood side by side the two social clubs of Bracebridge, namely the Bracebridge Club to which he himself and other business men belonged, and next door, the County Club from which those of his own social standing were excluded. The Bracebridge Club was far the more flourishing of the two: its bow-windows were always full of sleek and prosperous merchants, having their glass of sherry before lunch, or reading the papers when they arrived in the pleasant hour after offices and shops were shut in the evening. These premises were always crowded at the sociable hours of the business day, and at the last committee meeting the subject of an extension of accommodation had been discussed. There was no such congestion next door, where retired colonels, and occasional canons of the cathedral, and county magnates in Bracebridge for the day spoke softly to each other, or sought the isolation of a screening newspaper in a leather arm-chair. But the quality which Keeling found so hard to define and so easy to recognize, and which to him was perfectly distinct from any snobbish appreciation of position or title, brooded over those portals of the County{71} Club. In the families of those who frequented it the produce of his own secret garden grew wild, as it were: the culture, the education of which it was the fruit were indigenous to the soil. He did not suppose that Colonel Crawshaw, or Canon Arbuthnot, or Lord Inverbroom discussed Omar Khayyam or the Morte dArthur any more than did Alderman James, or Town-Councillor Phillips, but there was the soil from which culture sprang, just as from it sprang that indefinable air of breeding which already he observed in John. One day he had seen John standing in the window there with Colonel Crawshaw and his son, who was a schoolfellow of Johns, and Keelings heart had swelled with a strange mixture of admiration and envy to see how much John was at ease, sitting on the arm of a big chair, and with a nameless insouciance of respect refusing a cigarette which Colonel Crawshaw had offered him. Lord Inverbroom stood by John; and John was perfectly at ease in these surroundings. That was a tiny instance, but none could have been more typical. Keeling wanted, with the want of a thirsty man, not so much to belong to the County Club, as to feel himself at ease there if he did belong.
TWO:VIEW IN THE BAY OF YEDDO. VIEW IN THE BAY OF YEDDO.[Pg 94]
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ONE:But the contents were another matter, and they both annoyed him excessively, and kindled in him a blaze of defiance. He would much have{244} liked to know who were these members for whom he was not good enough, and whose opposition Lord Inverbroom had been unable to mitigate. But as far as withdrawing his candidature went for fear of the result of the election, or acquainting Lord Inverbroom of the fact that as purchaser of the property he had the ex officio privilege of being a member, such craven notions never entered his head. If sufficient members to secure his rejection, objected to him, they should record their objections: he was not going to withdraw on the chance of their doing so. He had never yet abandoned a business proposition for fear of competition, and it seemed to him that to withdraw his name was somehow parallel to being frightened out of a deal. Judging from the purely business standpoint (and there was his mistake) he expected to find that a large quantity of this supposed opposition was bluff. Besides, before the election came on, it would be known who had given the new wing to the hospital, and pulled the committee out of a quagmire of rotten finance: it would be known too, that whether the County Club thought him a suitable occupant of the bow-window that looked on Alfred Street, his Sovereign thought him good enough to go into dinner before any of them except Lord Inverbroom. He was no snob himself, but he suspected that a good many other people were."I meant it to," said Lilian, firmly. "I want you to be cut to the quick. It's our only chance."
TWO:"Well, what is it?"
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ONE:
TWO:
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TWO:"Ah, Richard, in there the war is all over."
FORE:"Well! you oughtn't to get mad at him for thinking you a gentleman."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.
FORE:Rose considered. "That's not as good as making runs though."The Doctor found his voice again. "Great heavens," he burst out, in a hysterical shout. "Stop it. You must stop itI simply can't stand it."
FORE:The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.
FORE:
FORE:GENERAL WARD. GENERAL WARD.
FORE:Charles made no definite promise on this point, and they walked on for a little in silence."Don't you like him?"
FORE:"Ah, certainly! Is it that little Harper girl?""Why, Mr. Smith, she's actually been sitting up--in the twilight--at the open window--while Aunt Martha and I smoothed up her bed." Harry groaned.
FORE:"Yes," I said, and handed her, as I dismounted, the General's gift, the pass.
TWO:Indeed, its allowed, said Mrs Keeling, but as for Alice smoking, well, that is a good joke. And as for your being too comfortable I call that another joke.The aide-de-camp laughed like a rustic and vanished. "Smith," said the Major, "your eyes are--"
TWO:"Nearly all the vast crowd in the streets consisted of men; now and then a woman was visible, but only rarely, except near the river-side, where there were some of the class that live on the water. We met some of the small-footed women, and it was really painful to see them stumping about as if they were barely able to stand. Double your fist and put it down on the table, and you have a fair resemblance of the small foot of a Chinese woman; and if you try to walk on your fists, you can imagine how one of these ladies gets along. Some of them have to use canes to balance themselves, and running is quite out of the question. The foot is compressed in childhood, and not allowed to grow much after five or six years of age. The compression is done by tight bandages, that give great pain at first, and sometimes cause severe inflammation.
$ 0$ 600
TWO:"What time in the evening must we go," said Fred, "so as to be there in season for the beginning of the performance?"
As the car sped swiftly along, Gregg sat back with folded arms and gazed upwards at the now crystalline skies, wondering, as he had never wondered before, about that incomprehensible immensity which for centuries of successive generations man had silently respected. No authoritative voice had ever claimed to penetrate that supreme mystery. Priests had evoked the gods from that starry depth, poets had sung of the swinging hemispheres, scientists had traced comets and knew the quality of each solar earth; but still that vast arch spanned all the movements of crawling mankind, and closed him in like a basin placed over a colony of ants.SQUEEZING THE ANKLES. SQUEEZING THE ANKLES.
TWO:"Yes, I said three weeks."
