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

in men is villainous, but in women is only another⁠—a rather rustic one perhaps, rather canaille even, but definitely another⁠—attraction. There was no telling. As for her eyes, they were green, and limpid; set wide apart in her head they looked out from under heavy lids and through openings that slanted up towards the outer corners. Her nose was slightly aquiline. Her mouth was full-lipped, but straight and unexpectedly wide. Her chin was small, round and firm. She had a pale skin, a little flushed over the cheekbones, which were prominent.

On the left cheek, close under the corner of the slanting eye, she had a brown mole. Such hair as Gumbril could see beneath her hat was pale and inconspicuously blond. When she had finished looking at the New Season’s Models she moved slowly on, halting for a moment before the travelling trunks and the fitted picnic baskets; dwelling for a full minute over the corsets, passing the hats, for some reason, rather contemptuously, but pausing, which seemed strange, for a long pensive look at the cigars and wine. As for the tennis rackets and cricket bats, the school outfits and the gentleman’s hosiery⁠—she hadn’t so much as a look for one of them. But how lovingly she lingered before the boots and shoes! Her own feet, the Complete Man noticed with satisfaction, had an elegance of florid curves. And while other folk walked on neat’s leather she was content to be shod with nothing coarser than mottled serpent’s skin.

Slowly they drifted up Queen’s Road, lingering before every jeweller’s, every antiquarian’s, every milliner’s on the way. The stranger gave him no opportunity, and indeed, Gumbril reflected, how should she? For the imbecile game on which he was relying is a travelling piquet for two players, not a game of patience. No sane human being could play it in solitude. He would have to make the opportunity himself.

All that was mild in him, all that was melancholy, shrank with a sickened reluctance from the task of breaking⁠—with what consequences delicious and perilous in the future or, in the case of the deserved snub, immediately humiliating?⁠—a silence which, by the tenth or twelfth shop window, had become quite unbearably significant. The Mild and Melancholy one would have drifted to the top of the road, sharing, with that community of tastes which is the basis of every happy union, her enthusiasm for brass candlesticks and toasting-forks, imitation Chippendale furniture, gold watch-bracelets and low-waisted summer frocks; would have drifted to the top of the road and watched her, dumbly, disappearing forever into the green Park or along the blank pavements of the Bayswater Road; would have watched her forever disappear and then, if the pubs had happened to be open, would have gone and ordered a glass of port, and sitting at the bar would have savoured, still dumbly, among the other drinkers, the muddy grapes of the Douro, and his own unique loneliness.

That was what the Mild and Melancholy one would have done. But the sight, as he gazed earnestly into an antiquary’s window, of his own powerful bearded face reflected in a sham Heppelwhite mirror, reminded him that the Mild and Melancholy one was temporarily extinct, and that it was the Complete Man who now dawdled, smoking his long cigar, up the Queen’s Road towards the Abbey of Thelema.

He squared his shoulders; in that loose toga of Mr. Bojanus’s he looked as copious as François Premier. The time, he decided, had come.

It was at this moment that the reflection of the stranger’s face joined itself in the little mirror, as she made a little movement away from the Old Welsh dresser in the corner, to that of his own. She looked at the spurious Heppelwhite. Their eyes met in the hospitable glass. Gumbril smiled. The corners of the stranger’s wide mouth seemed faintly to move; like petals of the magnolia, her eyelids came slowly down over her slanting eyes. Gumbril turned from the reflection to the reality.

“If you want to say Beaver,” he said, “you may.”

The Complete Man had made his first speech.

“I want to say nothing,” said the stranger. She spoke with a charming precision and distinctness, lingering with a pretty emphasis on the n of nothing. “N⁠—n⁠—nothing”⁠—it sounded rather final. She turned away, she moved on.

But the Complete Man was not one to be put off by a mere ultimatum. “There,” he said, falling into step with her, “now I’ve had it⁠—the deserved snub. Honour is saved, prestige duly upheld. Now we can get on with our conversation.”

The Mild and Melancholy one stood by, gasping with astonished admiration.

“You are v⁠—very impertinent,” said the stranger, smiling and looking up from under the magnolia petals.

“It is in my character,” said the Complete Man. “You mustn’t blame me. One cannot escape from one’s heredity; that’s one’s share of original sin.”

“There is always grace,” said the stranger.

Gumbril caressed his beard. “True,” he replied.

“I advise you to pr⁠—ray for it.”

His prayer, the Mild and Melancholy one reflected, had already been answered. The original sin in him had been self-corrected.

“Here is another antique shop,” said Gumbril. “Shall we stop and have a look at it?”

The stranger glanced at him doubtfully. But he looked quite serious. They stopped.

“How revolting this sham cottage furniture is,” Gumbril remarked. The shop, he noticed, was called ‘Ye Olde Farme House.’

The stranger, who had been on the point of saying how much she liked those lovely Old Welsh dressers, gave him her heartiest agreement. “So v⁠—vulgar.”

“So horribly refined. So refined and artistic.”

She laughed on a descending chromatic scale. This was excitingly new. Poor Aunt Aggie with her Arts and Crafts, and her old English furniture. And to think she had taken them so seriously! She saw in a flash the fastidious lady that she now was⁠—with Louis whatever-it-was furniture at home, and jewels, and young poets to tea, and real artists. In the past, when she had imagined herself entertaining real artists, it had always been among really artistic furniture. Aunt