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"I'll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service," said Donald, allowing his eyes to travel over the intricate wood-carvings of the chimney-piece, representing garlanded lyres, shields, and quivers, on either side of a draped ox-skull, and flanked by heads of Apollo and Diana in low relief.
It was an ordinary London sitting-room in a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather common and ugly. But there were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing, the carved negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human being. One was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking tortured, her abdomen stuck out.
On both sides flashed and glittered the little shops full of silver, glass, jewelry, terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and all the idle frippery of watering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, and they suggested Saratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no place else in the world, as the crowd which might have been that of other cities at certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its habitual effect.
Even the shop across the way, where they sold alpenstocks and wood-carvings and knick-knacks in polished lapis, was empty; in pleasant weather the shop was always crowded with curiosity- mongers. The raw wind spitefully blew the rain into Lynde's face as he looked out. "Quel temps de loup!" sighed a polite little French gentleman, making his unlighted cigarette an excuse for addressing Lynde.
She let her head and shoulders and neck droop like a wilted flower-stem, while she took into her mind the greater beauty of a wilted flower over the crass rigidity of a growing one; she breathed deeply and slowly and rhythmically, and summoned to her mind far-off and rarely, difficultly, beautiful things; the tranquil resignation of Chinese roofs, tempered with the merry human note of their tilted corners; Arabian traceries; cunningly wrought, depraved wood-carvings in the corners of Gothic cathedrals; the gay and amusing pink rotundities of a Boucher ceiling.
She was not afraid of her sins. Hell, so definitely set forth, did not frighten her. Really, it had not laid hold on her conscience. The old women and old men hobbling into church, bowed in prayer, murmuring over their beads, were objects of curious interest like the wood-carvings in the peculiar array of wood-reliefs emphasizing the Stations of the Cross.
Fourteen statues stood on pedestals set in the corners of the room, or among the pictures, or on brackets inlaid by Boule; sideboards of carved ebony, royally rich, surrounded the walls to elbow height, all the shelves filled with curiosities; in the middle of the room stood a row of carved credence-tables, covered with rare miracles of handicraft with ivories and bronzes, wood-carvings and enamels, jewelry and porcelain.
A soft rug or two lay here and there; a shawl of beautiful colour had fallen upon a chair-back; pictures hung on the walls, one stood on an easel in a corner; bits of statuary, bronzes, wood-carvings, trifles of art, mosaics, engravings, were everywhere; and my mother's presence was felt in the harmony which subdued and united all these in one delicious effect.
An American lady and her daughter, paying no heed to the heat of the sun, turned the corner of the Doge's palace and entered the Piazzetta, meaning to cross to the farther end of the large square, where wood-carvings are for sale in one of the shops. "Mother," said the girl suddenly, "I wish we knew of something to see besides the buildings in this square.
On both sides flashed and glittered the little shops full of silver, glass, jewelry, terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and all the idle frippery of watering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, and they suggested Saratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no place else in the world, as the crowd which might have been that of other cities at certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its habitual effect.
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