Morning. As he awoke he perceived drowsily that the room had at the
same moment become dense with sunlight. The ebony panels of one wall
had slid aside on a sort of track, leaving his chamber half open to
the day. A large negro in a white uniform stood beside his bed.
“Good-evening,” muttered John, summoning his brains from the wild
places.
“Good-morning, sir. Are you ready for your bath, sir? Oh, don’t get
up--I’ll put you in, if you’ll just unbutton your pyjamas--there.
Thank you, sir.”
John lay quietly as his pyjamas were removed--he was amused and
delighted; he expected to be lifted like a child by this black
Gargantua who was tending him, but nothing of the sort happened;
instead he felt the bed tilt up slowly on its side--he began to roll,
startled at first, in the direction of the wall, but when he reached
the wall its drapery gave way, and sliding two yards farther down a
fleecy incline he plumped gently into water the same temperature as
his body.
He looked about him. The runway or rollway on which he had arrived had
folded gently back into place. He had been projected into another
chamber and was sitting in a sunken bath with his head just above the
level of the floor. All about him, lining the walls of the room and
the sides and bottom of the bath itself, was a blue aquarium, and
gazing through the crystal surface on which he sat, he could see fish
swimming among amber lights and even gliding without curiosity past
his outstretched toes, which were separated from them only by the
thickness of the crystal. From overhead, sunlight came down through
sea-green glass.
“I suppose, sir, that you’d like hot rosewater and soapsuds this
morning, sir--and perhaps cold salt water to finish.”
The negro was standing beside him.
“Yes,” agreed John, smiling inanely, “as you please.” Any idea of
ordering this bath according to his own meagre standards of living
would have been priggish and not a little wicked.
The negro pressed a button and a warm rain began to fall, apparently
from overhead, but really, so John discovered after a moment, from a
fountain arrangement near by. The water turned to a pale rose colour
and jets of liquid soap spurted into it from four miniature walrus
heads at the corners of the bath. In a moment a dozen little
paddle-wheels, fixed to the sides, had churned the mixture into a
radiant rainbow of pink foam which enveloped him softly with its
delicious lightness, and burst in shining, rosy bubbles here and there
about him.
“Shall I turn on the moving-picture machine, sir?” suggested the negro
deferentially. “There’s a good one-reel comedy in this machine to-day,
or I can put in a serious piece in a moment, if you prefer it.”
“No, thanks,” answered John, politely but firmly. He was enjoying his
bath too much to desire any distraction. But distraction came. In a
moment he was listening intently to the sound of flutes from just
outside, flutes dripping a melody that was like a waterfall, cool and
green as the room itself, accompanying a frothy piccolo, in play more
fragile than the lace of suds that covered and charmed him.
After a cold salt-water bracer and a cold fresh finish, he stepped out
and into a fleecy robe, and upon a couch covered with the same
material he was rubbed with oil, alcohol, and spice. Later he sat in a
voluptuous chair while he was shaved and his hair was trimmed.
“Mr. Percy is waiting in your sitting-room,” said the negro, when
these operations were finished. “My name is Gygsum, Mr. Unger, sir. I
am to see to Mr. Unger every morning.”
John walked out into the brisk sunshine of his living-room, where he
found breakfast waiting for him and Percy, gorgeous in white kid
knickerbockers, smoking in an easy chair.