He rose, master of his limbs now, descended, unrobed in an alcove, and
in a corridor above the circular stair came upon Quilter-Beckett, who,
acting as guide, Rebekah's hand now resting on Hogarth's arm, led them
about the _Boodah_, now walking, now slipping in little trains over
eighty-foot rails, rolled in one heat, laid down the vanishing length
of dim-lit corridors floored with white tiles, their frieze of majolica,
with rows of ceramics; and they saw the armouries, piles of rifles,
cutlasses, pistols; ferneries grown by electric light; great
cold-storage rooms that struck a chill, for preserving meats, butter,
fruit; the doctors' _environ_, the dispensary, and roomy hospital;
watched from a railing the working engines that fixed the _Boodah's_
position, Hogarth here saying: “There you have a menagerie of
gnome-land: observe those two black beetles, sedately nodding; and there
is daddy-longlegs, working his legs gymnastically; and the three pairs
of gallant grey stallions, galloping grandly neck to neck; and those two
ridiculous beings, rubbing their palms together, round and round: each
preoccupied, comically solemn, busied about its own quaint affairs--like
a varied gnomeland”.
And Rebekah said in a meek tone, like the hen submitting: “Yes, I see
now you say it, my Lord King”.
Up stairs and down, round semicircles, up lifts, through nooks,
corridors: saw the guns, and how by hydraulics everything was done--the
hoisting of ammunition, loading, training: guns intact, guns wrecked by
the Dreadnoughts; and shimmering kitchens, which reeked a smell of heat,
and the dairy-maids, and the line of kine, and the row of prison-doors,
and the mechanism of ventilation, fans and blowers, the drainage-system,
and the dynamos for lighting, for supplying power to motors, for
heating, and for shimmering forth rich in the search-lights; and the
central ballroom, the clothes store, the original one-ninety-sixth
model, the Ambassador-region, the steaming laundry, and the roof, where
Rebekah saw her initials on the breeze, and the vertical pop-guns under
shields for dealing with aeroplane attack, and the cream theatre, and
the paymaster's suite, and the bunkers, the Government-offices,
and the tax-receiving rooms, the telephone system, and the
lady-telegraphists--till all were tired, though half had not been
seen. They luncheoned together; in the early afternoon there was an
Investiture, and she was there; for “five-o'clock” there was a Gounod
concert in the theatre, and she sat in his box; at night the Bulgarian
Ambassador gave a ball, and she danced a gavotte with him.
When they parted a dying wind sighed his name: “_Hogarth_...”; and when
Loveday before sleeping happened to ask: “When do we set out for London,
Richard?” Hogarth with a laugh turned upon him, replying: “When do we
set out for Arcturus and the Pleiades? Do give one time to look round
him!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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