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

Aunt Aggie! Oh, poor Aunt Aggie, indeed! In the light of Mr. Mercaptan’s boudoir her hammered copper and her leadless glaze certainly did look a bit comical.

After tea Mr. Mercaptan played cicerone in a tour of inspection round the room. They visited the papier-mâché writing-desk, the Condor fans, the Marie Laurencin, the 1914 edition of Du Côté de chez Swann, the Madonna that probably was a fake, the nigger mask, the Chelsea figures, the Chinese object of art in sculptured crystal, the scale model of Queen Victoria in wax under a glass bell. Toto, it became clear, had been no more than a forerunner; the definitive revelation was Mr. Mercaptan’s. Yes, poor Aunt Aggie! And indeed, when Mr. Mercaptan began to read her his little middle on the “Droit du Seigneur,” it was poor everybody. Poor mother, with her absurd, old-fashioned, prudish views; poor, earnest father, with his Unitarianism, his Hibbert Journal, his letters to the papers about the necessity for a spiritual regeneration.

“Bravo!” she cried from the depths of Crébillon. She was leaning back in one corner, languid, serpentine, and at ease, her feet in their mottled snake’s leather tucked up under her. “Bravo!” she cried as Mr. Mercaptan finished his reading and looked up for his applause.

Mr. Mercaptan bowed.

“You express so exquisitely what we⁠—” and waving her hand in a comprehensive gesture, she pictured to herself all the other fastidious ladies, all the marchionesses of fable, reclining, as she herself at this moment reclined, on upholstery of white satin, “what we all only feel and aren’t clever enough to say.”

Mr. Mercaptan was charmed. He got up from before his writing-desk, crossed the room and sat down beside her on Crébillon. “Feeling,” he said, “is the important thing.”

Rosie remembered that her father had once remarked, in blank verse: “The things that matter happen in the heart.”

“I quite agree,” she said.

Like movable raisins in the suet of his snouty face, Mr. Mercaptan’s brown little eyes rolled amorous avowals. He took Rosie’s hand and kissed it. Crébillon creaked discreetly as he moved a little nearer.

It was only the evening of the same day. Rosie lay on her sofa⁠—a poor, hire-purchase thing indeed, compared with Mr. Mercaptan’s grand affair in white satin and carved and gilded wood, but still a sofa⁠—lay with her feet on the arm of it and her long suave legs exposed, by the slipping of the kimono, to the top of her stretched stockings. She was reading the little vellum-jacketed volume of Crébillon, which Mr. Mercaptan had given her when he said “goodbye” (or rather, “À bientôt, mon amie”); given, not lent, as he had less generously offered at the beginning of their afternoon; given with the most graceful of allusive dedications inscribed on the flyleaf:

To
By-No-Other-Name-As-Sweet,
With Gratitude,
from
Crébillon Delivered.

À bientôt⁠—she had promised to come again very soon. She thought of the essay on the “Jus Primæ Noctis”⁠—ah! what we’ve all been feeling and none of us clever enough to say. We on the sofas, ruthless, lovely and fastidious.⁠ ⁠…

“I am proud to constitute myself”⁠—Mr. Mercaptan had said of it⁠—“l’esprit d’escalier des dames galantes.”

Rosie was not quite sure what he meant; but it certainly sounded very witty indeed.

She read the book slowly. Her French, indeed, wasn’t good enough to permit her to read it anyhow else. She wished it were better. Perhaps it if were better she wouldn’t be yawning like this. It was disgraceful: she pulled herself together. Mr. Mercaptan had said that, it was a masterpiece.

In his study, Shearwater was trying to write his paper on the regulative functions of the kidneys. He was not succeeding.

Why wouldn’t she see me yesterday? he kept wondering. With anguish he suspected other lovers; desired her, in consequence, the more. Gumbril had said something, he remembered, that night they had met her by the coffee-stall. What was it? He wished now that he had listened more attentively.

She’s bored with me. Already. It was obvious.

Perhaps he was too rustic for her. Shearwater looked at his hands. Yes, the nails were dirty. He took an orange stick out of his waistcoat pocket and began to clean them. He had bought a whole packet of orange sticks that morning.

Determinedly he took up his pen. “The hydrogen ion concentration in the blood⁠ ⁠…” he began a new paragraph. But he got no further than the first seven words.

If, he began thinking with a frightful confusion, if⁠—if⁠—if⁠—Past conditionals, hopelessly past. He might have been brought up more elegantly; his father, for example, might have been a barrister instead of a barrister’s clerk. He mightn’t have had to work so hard when he was young; might have been about more, danced more, seen more young women. If he had met her years ago⁠—during the war, should one say, dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Guards.⁠ ⁠…

He had pretended that he wasn’t interested in women; that they had no effect on him; that, in fact, he was above that sort of thing. Imbecile! He might as well have said that he was above having a pair of kidneys. He had only consented to admit, graciously, that they were a physiological necessity.

O God, what a fool he had been!

And then, what about Rosie? What sort of a life had she been having while he was being above that sort of thing? Now he came to think of it, he really knew nothing about her, except that she had been quite incapable of learning correctly, even by heart, the simplest facts about the physiology of frogs. Having found that out, he had really given up exploring further. How could he have been so stupid?

Rosie had been in love with him, he supposed. Had he been in love with her? No. He had taken care not to be. On principle. He had married her as a measure of intimate hygiene; out of protective affection, too, certainly out of affection; and a little for amusement, as one might buy a puppy.

Mrs. Viveash had opened his eyes; seeing her, he had also begun to notice