Pepper.
"Precisely," said Ambrose.
Each of the ladies, being after the fashion of their sex, highly trained
in promoting men's talk without listening to it, could think--about the
education of children, about the use of fog sirens in an opera--without
betraying herself. Only it struck Helen that Rachel was perhaps too
still for a hostess, and that she might have done something with her
hands.
"Perhaps--?" she said at length, upon which they rose and left, vaguely
to the surprise of the gentlemen, who had either thought them attentive
or had forgotten their presence.
"Ah, one could tell strange stories of the old days," they heard Ridley
say, as he sank into his chair again. Glancing back, at the doorway,
they saw Mr. Pepper as though he had suddenly loosened his clothes, and
had become a vivacious and malicious old ape.
Winding veils round their heads, the women walked on deck. They were
now moving steadily down the river, passing the dark shapes of ships
at anchor, and London was a swarm of lights with a pale yellow canopy
drooping above it. There were the lights of the great theatres, the
lights of the long streets, lights that indicated huge squares of
domestic comfort, lights that hung high in air. No darkness would
ever settle upon those lamps, as no darkness had settled upon them for
hundreds of years. It seemed dreadful that the town should blaze
for ever in the same spot; dreadful at least to people going away to
adventure upon the sea, and beholding it as a circumscribed mound,
eternally burnt, eternally scarred.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25