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

“Must I talk of love, then?” asked Gumbril.

“It looks like it,” Mrs. Viveash answered, and closed her eyes.

Gumbril told the anecdote about Jo Peters, Connie Asticot and Jim Baum. The anecdote of Lola Knopf and the Baroness Gnomon. Of Margherita Radicofani, himself, and the Pastor Meyer. Of Lord Cavey and little Toby Nobes. When he had finished these, he saw that Mrs. Viveash had gone to sleep.

He was not flattered. But a little sleep would do her headache, he reflected, a world of good. And knowing that if he ceased to speak, she would probably be woken by the sudden blankness of the silence, he went on quietly talking to himself.

“When I’m abroad this time,” he soliloquized, “I shall really begin writing my autobiography. There’s nothing like a hotel bedroom to work in.” He scratched his head thoughtfully and even picked his nose, which was one of his bad habits, when he was alone. “People who know me,” he went on, “will think that what I write about the governess cart and my mother and the flowers and so on is written merely because I know in here,” he scratched his head a little harder to show himself that he referred to his brain, “that that’s the sort of thing one ought to write about. They’ll think I’m a sort of dingy Romain Rolland, hopelessly trying to pretend that I feel the emotions and have the great spiritual experiences, which the really important people do feel and have. And perhaps they’ll be right. Perhaps the Life of Gumbril will be as manifestly an ersatz as the Life of Beethoven. On the other hand, they may be astonished to find that it’s the genuine article. We shall see.” Gumbril nodded his head slowly, while he transferred two pennies from his right-hand trouser pocket to his left-hand trouser pocket. He was somewhat distressed to find that these coppers had been trespassing among the silver. Silver was for the right-hand, copper for the left. It was one of the laws which it was extremely unlucky to infringe. “I have a premonition,” he went on, “that one of these days I may become a saint. An unsuccessful flickering sort of saint, like a candle beginning to go out. As for love⁠—m’yes, m’yes. And as for the people I have met⁠—I shall point out that I have known most of the eminent men in Europe, and that I have said of all of them what I said after my first love affair: Is that all?”

“Did you really say that about your first love affair?” asked Mrs. Viveash, who had woken up again.

“Didn’t you?”

“No. I said: This is all⁠—everything, the universe. In love, it’s either all or nothing at all.” She shut her eyes and almost immediately went to sleep again.

Gumbril continued his lullaby-soliloquy.

“ ‘This charming little book.’⁠ ⁠… The Scotsman. ‘This farrago of obscenity, slander and false psychology.’⁠ ⁠… Darlington Echo. ‘Mr. Gumbril’s first cousin is St. Francis Xavier, his second cousin is the Earl of Rochester, his third cousin is the Man of Feeling, his fourth cousin is David Hume.’⁠ ⁠… Court Journal.” Gumbril was already tired of this joke. “When I consider how my light is spent,” he went on, “when I consider!⁠ ⁠… Herr Jesu, as Fraulein Nimmernein used to exclaim at the critical moment. Consider, dear cow, consider. This is not the time of year for grass to grow. Consider, dear cow, consider, consider.” He got up from his chair and tiptoed across the room to the writing-table. An Indian dagger lay next to the blotting-pad; Mrs. Viveash used it as a paper-knife. Gumbril picked it up, executed several passes with it. “Thumb on the blade,” he said, “and strike upwards. On guard. Lunge. To the hilt it penetrates. Poniard at the tip”⁠—he ran the blade between his fingers⁠—“caress by the time it reaches the hilt. Z⁠—zip.” He put down the knife and stopping for a moment to make a grimace at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he went back to his chair.

At seven o’clock Mrs. Viveash woke up. She shook her head to feel if the pain were still rolling about loose inside her skull.

“I really believe I’m all right,” she said. She jumped up. “Come on,” she cried. “I feel ready for anything.”

“And I feel like so much food for worms,” said Gumbril. “Still, Versiam’ a tazza piena il generoso umor.” He hummed the Drinking Song out of Robert the Devil, and to that ingenuously jolly melody they left the house.

Their taxi that evening cost them several pounds. They made the man drive back and forth, like a shuttle, from one end of London to the other. Every time they passed through Piccadilly Circus Mrs. Viveash leant out of the window to look at the sky signs dancing their unceasing St. Vitus’s dance above the monument to the Earl of Shaftesbury.

“How I adore them!” she said the first time they passed them. “Those wheels that whizz round till the sparks fly out from under them: that rushing motor, and that lovely bottle of port filling the glass and then disappearing and reappearing and filling it again. Too lovely.”

“Too revolting,” Gumbril corrected her. “These things are the epileptic symbol of all that’s most bestial and idiotic in contemporary life. Look at those beastly things and then look at that.” He pointed to the County Fire Office on the northern side of the Circus. “There stands decency, dignity, beauty, repose. And there flickers, there gibbers and twitches⁠—what? Restlessness, distraction, refusal to think, anything for an unquiet life.⁠ ⁠…”

“What a delicious pedant you are!” She turned away from the window, put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him. “Too exquisitely ridiculous!” And she kissed him.

“You won’t force me to change my opinion.” Gumbril smiled at her. “Eppur’ si muove⁠—I stick to my guns like Galileo. They move and they’re horrible.”

“They’re me,” said Mrs. Viveash emphatically. “Those things are me.”

They drove first to Lypiatt’s mews. Under the Piranesian arch. The clotheslines looped from