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They had no conception of the social obligation of each for all and of all for each. The result was an unnecessary amount of illness, especially of tuberculosis and typhoid fever, because of insanitary buildings and grounds, and a general air of shabbiness and neglect that pervaded many communities.
The damp remnants of the fog still hung about the house-tops in a filmy veil; there were no glimpses of green to break the monotony of tone; all was quiet, dingy, neglected. But to Chilcote the shabbiness was restful, the subdued atmosphere a satisfaction. Among these sad houses, these passers-by, each filled with his own concerns, he experienced a sense of respite and relief.
In the presence of this radiant creature and of her well-dressed brother, he felt terribly conscious of the shabbiness of the second best suit which his mother had thought good enough for the journey in the car. Tom glanced at the slight, poorly dressed, pale-faced lad who stood before him with an embarrassed, almost a beseeching look in his eyes. "Can you play ball?" asked Tom.
The great man made Enrique put his hat on, again. "What are you doing in Madrid?" asked he. "Studying." "Law?" "No, sir. Medicine." "That's a first-rate profession. What year are you in?" "Freshman," answered Darlés, and smiled in a shamefaced sort of way. He knew his answers were short and clumsy, and the feeling of shabbiness oppressed him more than ever.
They were all crowding into the hallway the officers of Stuart's staff, receiving their hats and cloaks from the servants and buckling on their weapons; the young ladies, their gay dresses showing only the first traces of wartime shabbiness; the matrons who chaperoned them; Stuart himself, the center of attention, with his hostess on his arm.
He himself was worth looking at, in spite of the shabbiness which betrayed either a bachelor habit of mind, or a lofty disdain for the trappings of life. A man of about forty-one, his face was a curious mixture of youth and age, of experience and of idealism.
They were an emaciated tribe, and in fact had the air of mummies temporarily revived and escaped out of museums. They were shabby, but not with the gallery shabbiness; they were shabby because shabbiness was part of their unworldly refinement; and it did not matter they would have got their free seats even if they had come in sacks and cerements.
When he saw the figure of the Curate in the imperfect light, he withdrew his head again as if deliberating with himself, and then, with a sudden rush, came in, and shut the door after him. "Confound these servants, they're always prowling about the house," said the new-comer. He was an alarming apparition in his great beard and his shabbiness, and the fugitive look he had.
Why must their ruffs be always crinkled like endive leaves, and not crimped with a crimping iron?" Poor fellow, I say, with his nervous honour, fancying they perceive a league off the patch on his shoe, the sweat-stains on his hat, the shabbiness of his cloak, and the hunger of his stomach!"
Then Bridgie appeared upon the scene, and stopped short, uttering shrill cries of astonishment, as she looked at the slovenly tie, the twisted skirt, the general air of dishevelment and shabbiness. "Esmeralda, you're an Object! Look at the dust on your skirt. You've not half brushed it, and everything is hanging the wrong way. It's a perfect disgrace you look, to ride out with any man!"
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