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

at last. Never again, never again. Instead of crying, she laughed, laughed aloud. The pigeon-breasted old gentleman who had just passed her, twirling between his finger and thumb the ends of a white military moustache, turned round startled. Could she be laughing at him?

“Never again,” murmured Mrs. Viveash.

“I beg your pardon?” queried the martial gentleman, in a rich, port-winey, cigary voice.

Mrs. Viveash looked at him with such wide-eyed astonishment that the old gentleman was quite taken aback. “A thousand apologies, dear lady. Thought you were addressing⁠ ⁠… H’m, ah’m.” He replaced his hat, squared his shoulders and went off smartly, left, right, bearing preciously before him his pigeon-breast. Poor thing, he thought, poor young thing. Talking to herself. Must be cracked, must be off her head. Or perhaps she took drugs. That was more likely: that was much more likely. Most of them did nowadays. Vicious young women. Lesbians, drug-fiends, nymphomaniacs, dipsos⁠—thoroughly vicious, nowadays, thoroughly vicious. He arrived at his club in an excellent temper.

Never again, never, never again. Mrs. Viveash would have liked to be able to cry.

St. James’s Square opened before her. Romantically under its trees the statue pranced. The trees gave her an idea: she might go down into the country for the afternoon, take a cab and drive out, out, goodness only knew where! To the top of a hill somewhere. Box Hill, Leith Hill, Holmbury Hill, Ivinghoe Beacon⁠—any hill where one could sit and look out over plains. One might do worse than that with one’s liberty.

But not much worse, she reflected.

Mrs. Viveash had turned up towards the northern side of the square and was almost at its northwestern corner when, with a thrill of genuine delight, with a sense of the most profound relief she saw a familiar figure, running down the steps of the London Library.

“Theodore!” she hallooed faintly but penetratingly, from her inward deathbed. “Gumbril!” She waved her parasol.

Gumbril halted, looked round, came smiling to meet her. “How delightful,” he said, “but how unfortunate.”

“Why unfortunate?” asked Mrs. Viveash. “Am I of evil omen?”

“Unfortunate,” Gumbril explained, “because I’ve got to catch a train and can’t profit by this meeting.”

“Ah no, Theodore,” said Mrs. Viveash, “you’re not going to catch a train. You’re going to come and lunch with me. Providence has decreed it. You can’t say no to Providence.”

“I must,” Gumbril shook his head. “I’ve said yes to somebody else.”

“To whom?”

“Ah!” said Gumbril, with a coy and saucy mysteriousness.

“And where are you going in your famous train?”

“Ah again,” Gumbril answered.

“How intolerably tiresome and silly you are!” Mrs. Viveash declared. “One would think you were a sixteen-year-old schoolboy going out for his first assignation with a shop girl. At your age, Gumbril!” She shook her head, smiled agonizingly and with contempt. “Who is she? What sordid pickup?”

“Not sordid in the least,” protested Gumbril.

“But decidedly a pickup. Eh?” A banana-skin was lying, like a bedraggled starfish, in the gutter, just in front of where they were standing. Mrs. Viveash stepped forward and with the point of her parasol lifted it carefully up and offered it to her companion.

“Merci,” Gumbril bowed.

She tossed the skin back again into the gutter. “In any case,” she said, “the young lady can wait while we have luncheon.”

Gumbril shook his head. “I’ve made the arrangement,” he said. Emily’s letter was in his pocket. She had taken the loveliest cottage just out of Robertsbridge, in Sussex. Ah, but the loveliest imaginable. For the whole summer. He could come and see her there. He had telegraphed that he would come today, this afternoon, by the two o’clock from Charing Cross.

Mrs. Viveash took him by the elbow. “Come along,” she said. “There’s a post office in that passage going from Jermyn Street to Piccadilly. You can wire from there your infinite regrets. These things always improve with a little keeping. There will be raptures when you do go tomorrow.”

Gumbril allowed himself to be led along. “What an insufferable woman you are,” he said, laughing.

“Instead of being grateful to me for asking you to luncheon!”

“Oh, I am grateful,” said Gumbril. “And astonished.”

He looked at her. Mrs. Viveash smiled and fixed him for a moment with her pale, untroubled eyes.⁠ ⁠… She said nothing.

“Still,” Gumbril went on, “I must be at Charing Cross by two, you know.”

“But we’re lunching at Verrey’s.”

Gumbril shook his head.

They were at the corner of Jermyn Street. Mrs. Viveash halted and delivered her ultimatum, the more impressive for being spoken in that expiring voice of one who says in articulo the final and supremely important things. “We lunch at Verrey’s, Theodore, or I shall never, never speak to you again.”

“But be reasonable, Myra,” he implored. If only he’d told her that he had a business appointment.⁠ ⁠… Imbecile, to have dropped those stupid hints⁠—in that tone!

“I prefer not to be,” said Mrs. Viveash.

Gumbril made a gesture of despair and was silent. He thought of Emily in her native quiet among the flowers; in a cottage altogether too cottagey, with honeysuckles and red ramblers and hollyhocks⁠—though, on second thoughts, none of them would be blooming yet, would they?⁠—happily, in white muslin, extracting from the cottage piano the easier sections of the Arietta. A little absurd, perhaps, when you considered her like that; but exquisite, but adorable, but pure of heart and flawless in her bright pellucid integrity, complete as a crystal in its faceted perfection. She would be waiting for him, expecting him; and they would walk through the twiddly lanes⁠—or perhaps there would be a governess cart for hire, with a fat pony like a tub on legs to pull it⁠—they would look for flowers in the woods and perhaps he would still remember what sort of noise a whitethroat makes; or even if he didn’t remember, he could always magisterially say he did. “That’s a whitethroat, Emily. Do you hear? The one that goes ‘Tweedly, weedly, weedledy dee.’ ”

“I’m waiting,” said Mrs. Viveash. “Patiently, however.”

Gumbril looked at her and found her smiling like a tragic mask. After all, he reflected, Emily would still be there if he went down tomorrow. It would be stupid to