ey are underdone, they
are red meat. Their vices and their virtues and their music, and their
greed and their fairyism and their militarism, all seem to have been
roasted in a hurry, and to contain, like red meat, the natural juices to
an extent that seems to us excessive. The reason why some of us dislike
red meat is that it reminds us too much of what our food originally was.
As we ourselves, possibly, are rather overcooked by the fire of
civilisation, this vulgar deficiency in our enemy is very apparent to us.
This is an elaborate, but not a pleasing analogy, and it was fortunate
that Mr. Russell was interrupted. Otherwise, I think he might have been
trying to this day to explain it to an exasperated Cousin Gustus. He
spoke of it to his Hound, and the idea interested that animal very much.
Mr. Russell, unfortunately, had a cold, and was therefore unable on such
a wet day to leave the house or Cousin Gustus. But Anonyma went out in a
mackintosh that gave her the "silhouette" of a Cossack, and a beautiful
little tarpaulin sou'wester, and high boots, and a skirt short enough to
give the boots every chance of advertisement. The notebook was safe in a
water-tight pocket.
She covered with great speed and enthusiasm the few miles to the sea. She
reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the
gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall
breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore. The furthest breakwater
had seaweed like hair waving on the water. At intervals it would seem to
be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for
deliverance from the grip of some monster. And then the sea's lips would
close on it again. The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were
beaten into submission. The tide was rather low, and not very far away a
great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow
quadrille. There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of
these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to be
washed gracefully away.
"Lazy Nature!" said Anonyma reprovingly. "To sketch such a scheme in a
few careless lines."
For the whole world was rain-colour. There was no horizon to the sea, the
downs were blotted out, the wet shingle reflected its surroundings, the
waves broke unmarked by foam or shadow. There was nothing but the
porpoises and the breakwaters and the rocks, and a little bald sand
dune, sketched o
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