Some of these faces smiled, others
scowled, others protruded forked tongues like snakes and seemed to hiss
along the blackness of the background. The shapes of the figures were
voluptuous and yet suggested, rather than fully revealed, deformity, as
if the minds of these monsters sought to reveal their distortion by the
very lines of their curved and wanton limbs. Upon the top of this cabinet
stood a gigantic rose-coloured jar filled with orchids, the Messalinas of
the hothouse, whose mauve corruption and spotted faces leered down to
greet the gold goblins beneath. It was easy to imagine them whispering to
each other soft histories of unknown sins, and jeering at the corrupt
respectabilities of London, as they clustered together and leaned above
the ruddy ramparts of the china, wild flowers as no hedgerow violet, or
pale smirking primrose, is ever wild in the farthest wood.
Glancing from this cabinet, and those that stood upon it, the doctor
was aware of a deep and dusty note of red in the room, sounding from
carpet and walls, tingling drowsily in the window curtains and in the
cushions that lay upon the couches. This was not the crude and cheerful
sealing-wax red with which the festive Philistine loves to dye the
whiteness of his dining-room walls, cooling its chubby absurdity with
panels of that old oak, which is forever new.
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