Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/141

 shapeless sheep. The table, at dinner, was usually a confusion of fragile, opaque Bristol Glass, with decorations of birds and flowers, old Staffordshire china, and ornaments of artificial grapes and crystal, laid on the bare walnut board. Sometimes a great bronze Buddha panted on his back in a bowl of nasturtiums, his hexagonal belly looming high above the posies.

The second floor was divided into two bedrooms, the walls of one of which were hung with an old eighteenth century paper, depicting rather fanciful South Sea Islanders enjoying themselves in the shade of great palm-trees, while other cannibals with formidable spears navigated the sea in extravagant canoes. This was the back chamber, and because it overlooked the garden and was free from the noises of the street, the Duke had chosen it for his own. When the Duke moved into a hotel room, the decorations of which were distasteful to him, he frequently sent for a paper-hanger and ordered the room repapered. He did not go so far in this instance, but he had contrived to conceal a good part of the pseudo-Marquesan landscape with shungwa, a special class of Japanese prints, erotic and often obscene. The room was always in the uttermost disorder, as most of his personal belongings and the books and pictures and knick-knacks which he was constantly picking up were littered within its four walls. A gate-legged table in the corner served as an uneasy resting place for a bronze torso by Dujam