Those Barren Leaves, Aldous Huxley [best ereader for textbooks .txt] 📗

not yet ventured to declare himself. A minute more and he would speak, would reveal himself the unique soul-mate. Good night, and he would remain forever merely diffident little Mr. Jones. Must she part with this day too, before it was transfigured?

Good night. Every evening she put off the saying of it as long as she possibly could. It was generally half-past one or two before she could bring herself to leave the drawing-room. And even then the words were not finally spoken. For on the threshold of her bedchamber she would halt, desperately renewing the conversation with whichever of her guests had happened to light her upstairs. Who knew? Perhaps in these last five minutes, in the intimacy, in the nocturnal silence, the important thing really would be said. The five minutes often lengthened themselves out to forty, and still Mrs. Aldwinkle stood there, desperately putting off and putting off the moment when she would have to pronounce the sentence of death.

When there was nobody else to talk to, she had to be content with the company of Irene, who always, when she herself had undressed, came back in her dressing-gown to help Mrs. Aldwinkle⁠—since it would have been unfair to keep a maid up to such late hours⁠—make ready for the night. Not that little Irene was particularly likely to utter the significant word or think the one apocalyptic thought. Though of course one never knew: out of the mouths of babes and sucklings⁠ ⁠… And in any case, talking with Irene, who was a dear child and so devoted, was better than definitely condemning oneself to bed.

Tonight, it was one o’clock before Mrs. Aldwinkle made a move towards the door. Miss Thriplow and Mr. Falx, protesting that they too were sleepy, accompanied her. And like an attendant shadow, Irene silently rose when her aunt rose and silently walked after her. Halfway across the room Mrs. Aldwinkle halted and turned round. Formidable she was, a tragedy queen in coral-red velvet. Her little white muslin mirage halted too. Less patient, Mr. Falx and Miss Thriplow moved on towards the door.

“You must all come to bed soon, you know,” she said, addressing herself to the three men who remained at the further end of the room in a tone at once imperious and cajoling. “I simply won’t allow you, Cardan, to keep those poor young men out of their beds to all hours of the night. Poor Calamy has been travelling all day. And Hovenden needs all the sleep, at his age, that he can get.” Mrs. Aldwinkle took it hardly that any of her guests should be awake and talking while she was lying dead in the tomb of sleep. “Poor Calamy!” she pathetically exclaimed, as though it were a case of cruelty to animals. She felt herself filled, all at once, with an enormous and maternal solicitude for this young man.

“Yes, poor Calamy!” Mr. Cardan repeated, twinkling. “Out of pure sympathy I was suggesting that we should drink a pint or two of red wine before going to bed. There’s nothing like it for making one sleep.”

Mrs. Aldwinkle turned her bright blue eyes on Calamy, smiled her sweetest and most piercing smile. “Do come,” she said. “Do.” She extended her hand in a clumsy and inexpressive gesture. “And you, Hovenden,” she added, almost despairingly.

Hovenden looked uncomfortably from Mr. Cardan to Calamy, hoping that one or other of them would answer for him.

“We shan’t be long,” said Calamy. “The time to drink a glass of wine, that’s all. I’m not a bit tired, you know. And Cardan’s suggestion of Chianti is very tempting.”

“Ah well,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle, “if you prefer a glass of wine⁠ ⁠…” She turned away with a sad indignation and rustled off towards the door, sweeping the tiled floor with the train of her velvet dress. Mr. Falx and Miss Thriplow, who had been lingering impatiently near the door, drew back in order that she might make her exit in full majesty. With a face that looked very gravely out of the little window in her bell of copper hair, Irene followed. The door closed behind them.

Calamy turned to Mr. Cardan. “If I prefer a glass of wine?” he repeated on a note of interrogation. “But prefer it to what? She made it sound as if I had had to make a momentous and eternal choice between her and a pint of Chianti⁠—and had chosen the Chianti. It passes my understanding.”

“Ah, but then you don’t know Lilian as well as I do,” said Mr. Cardan. “And now, let’s go and hunt out that flask and some glasses in the dining-room.”

Halfway up the stairs⁠—they were a grand and solemn flight loping gradually upwards under a slanting tunnel of barrel vaulting⁠—Mrs. Aldwinkle paused. “I always think of them,” she said ecstatically, “going up, coming down. Such a spectacle!”

“Who?” asked Mr. Falx.

“Those grand old people.”

“Oh, the tyrants.”

Mrs. Aldwinkle smiled pityingly. “And the poets, the scholars, the philosophers, the painters, the musicians, the beautiful women. You forget those, Mr. Falx.” She raised her hand, as though summoning their spirits from the abyss. Psychical eyes might have seen a jewelled prince with a nose like an anteater’s slowly descending between obsequious human hedges. Behind him a company of buffoons and little hunchbacked dwarfs, stepping cautiously, sidelong, from stair to stair.⁠ ⁠…

“I forget nothing,” said Mr. Falx. “But I think tyrants are too high a price to pay.”

Mrs. Aldwinkle sighed and resumed her climbing. “What a queer fellow Calamy is, don’t you think?” she said, addressing herself to Miss Thriplow. Mrs. Aldwinkle, who liked discussing other people’s characters and who prided herself on her perspicacity and her psychological intuition, found almost everybody “queer,” even, when she thought it worth while discussing her, little Irene. She liked to think that everyone she knew was tremendously complicated; had strange and improbable motives for his simplest actions, was moved by huge, dark passions; cultivated secret vices; in a word, was larger than life and a good deal more interesting. “What did you think of him, Mary?”

“Very intelligent,” thought Miss Thriplow.

“Oh, of course, of course,” Mrs. Aldwinkle agreed almost impatiently; that wasn’t