Antic Hay, Aldous Huxley [whitelam books .txt] 📗

dirtier than ever. It would have been a pleasant and apposite thing if a cuckoo had started calling. But though the cuckoo was silent it was a happy day. A day, Gumbril reflected, as he strolled idly along, to be in love.

From the world of tailors Gumbril passed into that of the artificial pearl merchants and with a still keener appreciation of the amorous qualities of this clear spring day, he began a leisured march along the perfumed pavements of Bond Street. He thought with a profound satisfaction of those sixty-three papers on the Risorgimento. How pleasant it was to waste time! And Bond Street offered so many opportunities for wasting it agreeably. He trotted round the Spring Exhibition at the Grosvenor and came out, a little regretting, he had to confess, his eighteen pence for admission. After that, he pretended that he wanted to buy a grand piano. When he had finished practising his favourite passages on the magnificent instrument to which they obsequiously introduced him, he looked in for a few moments at Sotheby’s, sniffed among the ancient books and strolled on again, admiring the cigars, the lucid scent-bottles, the socks, the old masters, the emerald necklaces, everything, in fact, in all the shops he passed.

“Forthcoming Exhibition of Works by Casimir Lypiatt.” The announcement caught his eye. And so poor old Lypiatt was on the warpath again, he reflected, as he pushed open the doors of the Albemarle Galleries. Poor old Lypiatt! Dear old Lypiatt, even. He liked Lypiatt. Though he had his defects. It would be fun to see him again.

Gumbril found himself in the midst of a dismal collection of etchings. He passed them in review, wondering why it was that, in these hard days when no painter can sell a picture, almost any dull fool who can scratch a conventional etcher’s view of two boats, a suggested cloud and the flat sea should be able to get rid of his prints by the dozen and at guineas apiece. He was interrupted in his speculations by the approach of the assistant in charge of the gallery. He came up shyly and uncomfortably, but with the conscientious determination of one ambitious to do his duty and make good. He was a very young man with pale hair, to which heavy oiling had given a curious greyish colour, and a face of such childish contour and so imberb that he looked like a little boy playing at grownups. He had only been at this job a few weeks and he found it very difficult.

“This,” he remarked, with a little introductory cough, pointing to one view of the two boats and the flat sea, “is an earlier state than this.” And he pointed to another view, where the boats were still two and the sea seemed just as flat⁠—though possibly, on a closer inspection, it might really have been flatter.

“Indeed,” said Gumbril.

The assistant was rather pained by his coldness. He blushed; but constrained himself to go on. “Some excellent judges,” he said, “prefer the earlier state, though it is less highly finished.”

“Ah?”

“Beautiful atmosphere, isn’t it?” The assistant put his head on one side and pursed his childish lips appreciatively.

Gumbril nodded.

With desperation, the assistant indicated the shadowed rump of one of the boats. “A wonderful feeling in this passage,” he said, redder than ever.

“Very intense,” said Gumbril.

The assistant smiled at him gratefully. “That’s the word,” he said, delighted. “Intense. That’s it. Very intense.” He repeated the word several times as though to make sure of remembering it when the occasion next presented itself. He was determined to make good.

“I see Mr. Lypiatt is to have a show here soon,” remarked Gumbril, who had had enough of the boats.

“He is making the final arrangements with Mr. Albemarle at this very moment,” said the assistant triumphantly, with the air of one who produces, at the dramatic and critical moment, a rabbit out of the empty hat.

“You don’t say so?” Gumbril was duly impressed. “Then I’ll wait till he comes out,” he said, and sat down with his back to the boats.

The assistant returned to his desk and picked up the gold-belted fountain pen which his Aunt had given him when he first went into business, last Christmas. “Very intense,” he wrote in capitals on a half-sheet of notepaper. “The feeling in this passage is very intense.” He studied the paper for a few moments, then folded it up carefully and put it away in his waistcoat pocket. “Always make a note of it.” That was one of the business mottoes he had himself written out so laboriously in Indian ink and old English lettering. It hung over his bed between “The Lord is my Shepherd,” which his mother had given him, and a quotation from Dr. Frank Crane, “A smiling face sells more goods than a clever tongue.” Still, a clever tongue, the young assistant had often reflected, was a very useful thing, especially in this job. He wondered whether one could say that the composition of a picture was very intense. Mr. Albemarle was very keen on the composition, he noticed. But perhaps it was better to stick to plain ‘fine,’ which was a little commonplace, perhaps, but very safe. He would ask Mr. Albemarle about it. And then there was all that stuff about plastic values and pure plasticity. He sighed. It was all very difficult. A chap might be as willing and eager to make good as he liked; but when it came to this about atmosphere and intense passages and plasticity⁠—well, really, what could a chap do? Make a note of it. It was the only thing.

In Mr. Albemarle’s private room Casimir Lypiatt thumped the table. “Size, Mr. Albemarle,” he was saying, “size and vehemence and spiritual significance⁠—that’s what the old fellows had, and we haven’t.⁠ ⁠…” He gesticulated as he talked, his face worked and his green eyes, set in their dark, charred orbits, were full of a troubled light. The forehead was precipitous, the nose long and sharp; in the bony and almost fleshless