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Some went off on honest business; some on such pleasure as can be found in baking streets, hotel bars, and billiard-rooms: but the one place on which our eyes were set was a little cove a quarter of a mile off, under the steep hill, where a white line of sand shone between blue water and green wood.
But now she knew that she was about to pass a group of gentlemen, who were standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and she could not help seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass at his eye, and bow to her with that air of nonchalance which he might have bestowed on a friendly barmaid.
Then all at once Farquarson began as suddenly as he had left off "Now, let us make up our minds never to broach running the gauntlet again in Russian waters, for they're devils to listen, and you never know where they are. Why, I've seen them at the time of the war crawlin' and sneakin' about all over, lying on the sofa in the billiard-rooms, and come and ask you to play in good English.
For this the armies drilled, for this the Law was administered and the prisons did their duty, for this the millions toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle of witless waste!
This club was not to be opened till three o'clock in the afternoon, before which hour the promoters of the Beargarden thought it improbable that they and their fellows would want a club. There were to be no morning papers taken, no library, no morning-room. Dining-rooms, billiard-rooms, and card-rooms would suffice for the Beargarden.
I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowd in the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis.
Pen furnished his host with the desirable supplies a couple of days after he had made his appearance at Clavering: and no sooner were these small funds in Sir Francis's pocket, than the latter found he had business at Chatteris and at the neighboring watering-places, of which shire boasts many, and went off to see to his affairs, which were transacted, as might be supposed, at the county race-grounds and billiard-rooms.
Across the way the great hotels showed a hundred gleaming windows, their cafes and billiard-rooms filled with a comfortable, well-dressed, and pleasure- loving throng. All about was the night, pulsating with the thoughts of pleasure and exhilaration the curious enthusiasm of a great city bent upon finding joy in a thousand different ways.
Indeed, unless the atmosphere I breathe is rendered slightly narcotic by the smoke of Cabañas and slightly stimulating by the savor of heeltaps, excuse the technical term, I find myself debilitated to a degree. The open air is extremely offensive to me. I confine myself to clubs and billiard-rooms.
There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs' Court young gentlemen of very good family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and gaming-tables.
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