So the two men did not get a start till eleven o’clock. Jack rolled
along easily beside the smaller, quieter Somers. They were an odd
couple, ill-assorted. In a colonial way, Jack was handsome, well-built,
with strong, heavy limbs. He filled out his expensively tailored suit
and looked a man who might be worth anything from five hundred to five
thousand a year. The only lean, delicate part about him was his face.
See him from behind, his broad shoulders and loose erect carriage and
brown nape of the neck, and you expected a good square face to match. He
turned, and his long lean, rather pallid face really didn’t seem to
belong to his strongly animal body. For the face wasn’t animal at all,
except perhaps in a certain slow, dark, lingering look of the eyes,
which reminded one of some animal or other, some patient, enduring
animal with an indomitable but naturally passive courage.
Somers, in a light suit of thin cloth, made by an Italian tailor, and an
Italian hat, just looked a foreign sort of little bloke--but a
gentleman. The chief difference was that he looked sensitive all over,
his body, even its clothing, and his feet, even his brown shoes, all
equally sensitive with his face. Whereas Jack seemed strong and
insensitive in the body, only his face vulnerable. His feet might have
been made of leather all the way through, tramping with an insentient
tread. Whereas Somers put down his feet delicately, as if they had a
life of their own, mindful of each step of contact with the earth. Jack
strode along: Somers seemed to hover along. There was decision in both
of them, but oh, of such different quality. And each had a certain
admiration of the other, and a very definite tolerance. Jack just barely
tolerated the quiet finesse of Somers, and Somers tolerated with
difficulty Jack’s facetious familiarity and heartiness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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