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

much the picture puzzled me. A bishop giving a naked old man five shillings in a church, with angels fluttering overhead, and a lion sleeping in the foreground. It was obscure, it was horribly obscure.” He turned away from the picture and confronted his hostess, who was standing a little way behind him smiling enigmatically and invitingly.

“Obscure,” he repeated. “But so is everything. So is life in general. And you,” he stepped towards her, “you in particular.”

“Am I?” she lifted her limpid eyes at him. Oh, how her heart was beating, how hard it was to be the fastidious lady, calmly satisfying her caprice. How difficult it was to be accustomed to this sort of thing. What was going to happen next?

What happened next was that the Complete Man came still closer, put his arms round her, as though he were inviting her to the foxtrot, and began kissing her with a startling violence. His beard tickled her neck; shivering a little, she brought down the magnolia petals across her eyes. The Complete Man lifted her up, walked across the room carrying the fastidious lady in his arms and deposited her on the rosy catafalque of the bed. Lying there with her eyes shut, she did her best to pretend she was dead.

Gumbril had looked at his wrist watch and found that it was six o’clock. Already? He prepared himself to take his departure. Wrapped in a pink kimono, she came out into the hall to wish him farewell.

“When shall I see you again, Rosie?” He had learnt that her name was Rosie.

She had recovered her great lady’s equanimity and detachment, and was able to shrug her shoulders and smile. “How should I know?” she asked, implying that she could not foresee what her caprice might be an hour hence.

“May I write then, and ask one of these days if you do know?”

She put her head on one side and raised her eyebrows, doubtfully. At last nodded. “Yes, you can write,” she permitted.

“Good,” said the Complete Man, and picked up his wide hat. She held out her hand to him with stateliness, and with a formal gallantry he kissed it. He was just closing the front door behind him, when he remembered something. He turned round. “I say,” he called after the retreating pink kimono. “It’s rather absurd. But how can I write? I don’t know your name. I can’t just address it ‘Rosie.’ ”

The great lady laughed delightedly. This had the real capriccio flavour. “Wait,” she said, and she ran into the sitting-room. She was back again in a moment with an oblong of pasteboard. “There,” she said, and dropped it into his greatcoat pocket. Then blowing a kiss she was gone.

The Complete Man closed the door and descended the stairs. Well, well, he said to himself; well, well. He put his hand in his coat pocket and took out the card. In the dim light of the staircase he read the name on it with some difficulty. Mrs. James⁠—but no, but no. He read again, straining his eyes; there was no question of it. Mrs. James Shearwater.

Mrs. James Shearwater.

That was why he had vaguely known the name of Bloxam Gardens.

Mrs. James Shear⁠—. Step after step he descended, ponderously. “Good Lord,” he said out loud. “Good Lord.”

But why had he never seen her? Why did Shearwater never produce her? Now he came to think of it, he hardly ever spoke of her.

Why had she said the flat wasn’t theirs? It was; he had heard Shearwater talk about it.

Did she make a habit of this sort of thing!

Could Shearwater be wholly unaware of what she was really like? But, for that matter, what was she really like?

He was halfway down the last flight, when with a rattle and a squeak of hinges the door of the house, which was only separated by a short lobby from the foot of the stairs, opened, revealing, on the doorstep, Shearwater and a friend, eagerly talking.

“… I take my rabbit,” the friend was saying⁠—he was a young man with dark, protruding eyes, and staring, doggy nostrils; very eager, lively and loud. “I take my rabbit and I inject into it the solution of eyes, pulped eyes of another dead rabbit. You see?”

Gumbril’s first instinct was to rush up the stairs and hide in the first likely-looking corner. But he pulled himself together at once. He was a Complete Man, and Complete Men do not hide; moreover, he was sufficiently disguised to be quite unrecognizable. He stood where he was, and listened to the conversation.

“The rabbit,” continued the young man, and with his bright eyes and staring, sniffing nose, he looked like a poacher’s terrier ready to go barking after the first white tail that passed his way; “the rabbit naturally develops the appropriate resistance, develops a specific anti-eye to protect itself. I then take some of its anti-eye serum and inject it into my female rabbit; I then immediately breed from her.” He paused.

“Well?” asked Shearwater, in his slow, ponderous way. He lifted his great round head inquiringly and looked at the doggy young man from under his bushy eyebrows.

The doggy young man smiled triumphantly. “The young ones,” he said, emphasizing his words by striking his right fist against the extended palm of his left hand, “the young ones are born with defective sight.”

Thoughtfully Shearwater pulled at his formidable moustache. “H’m,” he said slowly. “Very remarkable.”

“You realize the full significance of it?” asked the young man. “We seem to be effecting the germ-plasm directly. We have found a way of making acquired characteristics.⁠ ⁠…”

“Pardon me,” said Gumbril. He had decided that it was time to be gone. He ran down the stairs and across the tiled hall, he pushed his way firmly but politely between the talkers.

“… heritable,” continued the young man, imperturbably eager, speaking through and over and round the obstacle.

“Damn!” said Shearwater. The Complete Man had trodden on his toe. “Sorry,” he added, absentmindedly apologizing for the injury he had received.

Gumbril hurried off along the street. “If we