"That is what I mean, Harry. You know--many times you have heard me say--I don't believe in that kind of thing; I find that worse than the religion of Gholson; yet still,--what shall I say?--we are but soldiers anyhow--this time I make an exception in your favor. And of course this is confidential, on both sides; but you must make peace with Gholson, or you must fight with me.""Everybody says that one Chinese town is so much like another that a single one will do for a sample. This is undoubtedly true of the most of them, but you should make exceptions in the case of Canton and Pekin. They are of extra importance; and as one is in the extreme north, and the other in the far south, they have distinctive features of their own. We shall have a chance to talk about them by-and-by. As for Chin-kiang, I did not see anything worth notice while walking through it that I had not already seen at Shanghai, except, perhaps, that the dogs barked at us, and the cats ruffled their backs and tails, and fled from us as though we were bull-dogs. A pony tried to kick Fred as he walked by the brute,[Pg 332] and only missed his mark by a couple of inches. You see that the dumb animals were not disposed to welcome us hospitably. They were evidently put up to their conduct by their masters, who do not like the strangers any more than the dogs and cats do, and are only prevented from showing their spite by the fear that the foreigners will blow their towns out of existence if any of them are injured.
ONE:He rescued his trousers from underneath the mattress. It was only recently that he had discovered this obvious substitute for a trouser press, and so added one more nuisance to existence. It was something else to be remembered. He grinned pleasantly at the thought of the circumstance which had brought about these careful habits. Rose Lomas liked him to look smart, and he had managed it somehow. There were plenty of dapper youths in Great Wymering, and Arthur had been astute enough to notice wherein he had differed from them, in the first stages of his courting. Early rebuffs had led him to perceive that the[Pg 69] eye of love rests primarily upon a promising exterior, and only afterwards discovers the interior qualities that justify a wise choice. Arthur had been spurned at first on account of a slovenliness that, to do him justice, was rather the result of personal conviction, however erring, than mere carelessness. He really had felt that it was a waste of life even to spend half an hour a month inside a barber's shop. Not only that, but the experience was far-reaching in its unpleasant consequences. You went into the shop feeling agreeably familiar with yourself, conscious of intense personality; and you came out a nonentity, smelling of bay-rum. The barber succeeded in transforming you from an individual brimming over with original reflections and impulses into a stranger without a distinctive notion in your head. The barber, in fact, was a Delilah in trousers; he ravished the locks from your head and bewitched you into the bargain.I gather that the owner wishes the transaction to be private, he said. And I wish the same.
ONE:She had an easy word and a graceful speech for every one. An old diplomatist, watching her earnestly, went away muttering that she must be to the manner born. Her smile was so real and caressing, but it deepened now, and the red lips quivered slightly as a bright-eyed, square-headed young man came up the steps and bowed over her hand.Of a sudden vistas not wholly new to him, but at present very vaguely contemplated, rushed into focus. Some three years ago when, at the age of fourteen, John would naturally have taken his place in the Stores, beginning at the bottom even as Hugh had done, Keeling had determined his destiny otherwise, and had sent him to a public school. In taking this step, he had contemplated the vista that now was growing distinct and imminent. John was to enter a sphere of life which had not opened its gate to his father. The public school should be succeeded by the University, the University by some profession in which a perfectly different standard of person from that to which his father belonged made honourable careers. Putting it more bluntly, John was to be a gentleman. Though there was no one less of a snob than Keeling, he knew the difference between what John had already begun to be and himself perfectly well. Already John walked, talked, entered a room, sat down, got up in a manner quite different from that of the rest of his family. Even his mother, the daughter of the{69} P. & O. captain, even Alice, for all the French, German, and music lessons with which her girlhood had been made so laborious a time, had notKeeling found it hard to define his thought to himselfa certain unobtrusive certainty of themselves which after three years only of a public school was as much a personal possession of Johns as his brown eyes and his white teeth. That quality had grown even as Johns stature had grown each time he came back for his holidays, and it was produced apparently by mere association with gentlemen. Little as Keeling thought of Mr Silverdale, he was aware that Mr Silverdale had that quality too. He might be silly and affected and unmanly, but when he and John ten days ago had sat opposite each other on Sunday evening, John sick and disgusted, Silverdale familiar and self-advertising, though he appeared to talk about drunkards, it was easy to see that they both belonged to a different class from the rest of them. Keeling admired and envied the quality, whatever it was, which produced the difference, and, since association with those who had it produced it, he saw no reason to suppose that it was out of his reach.
TWO:But poor parsons going to be lonely again, isnt he? he went on. Didnt ickle bird tell him that Helper was going to spread wings and fly away to Brighton for a fortnight? He mustnt be selfish, mustnt poor parson, but only be glad to think of Helper sitting in the sun, and drinking in life and health again.
TWO:"Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them count us.
THREE:"Somewhere!" echoed the Clockwork man, "that's what seems to me so extraordinary! Everybody says that. The idea of a thing being somewhere, you know. Elsewhere than where you expect it to be. It's so confusing.""Oh!--we must never talk about that again, Richard; you saw me in the evilest guise I ever wore, and that is saying much."
THREE:It was late: a long days work was behind him, another lay in front of him, and he went out turning the key in the lock. He hung it on one of the chamois-horns tipped with brass, that formed the hat-rack.
