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

“We couldn’t tell the driver to⁠ ⁠… ?”

“Certainly not.”

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Viveash. “Perhaps one’s better without stimulants. I remember when I was very young, when I first began to go about at all, how proud I was of having discovered champagne. It seemed to me wonderful to get rather tipsy. Something to be exceedingly proud of. And, at the same time, how much I really disliked wine! Loathed the taste of it. Sometimes, when Calliope and I used to dine quietly together, tête-à-tête, with no awful men about, and no appearances to keep up, we used to treat ourselves to the luxury of a large lemon-squash, or even raspberry syrup and soda. Ah, I wish I could recapture the deliciousness of raspberry syrup.”

Coleman was at home. After a brief delay he appeared himself at the door. He was wearing pyjamas, and his face was covered with red-brown smears, the tips of his beard were clotted with the same dried pigment.

“What have you been doing to yourself?” asked Mrs. Viveash.

“Merely washing in the blood of the Lamb,” Coleman answered, smiling, and his eyes sparkling blue fire, like an electric machine.

The door on the opposite side of the little vestibule was open. Looking over Coleman’s shoulder, Gumbril could see through the opening a brightly lighted room and, in the middle of it, like a large rectangular island, a wide divan. Reclining on the divan an odalisque by Ingres⁠—but slimmer, more serpentine, more like a lithe pink length of boa⁠—presented her back. That big, brown mole on the right shoulder was surely familiar. But when, startled by the loudness of the voices behind her, the odalisque turned round⁠—to see in a horribly embarrassing instant that the Cossack had left the door open and that people could look in, were looking in, indeed⁠—the slanting eyes beneath their heavy white lids, the fine aquiline nose, the wide, full-lipped mouth, though they presented themselves for only the fraction of a second, were still more recognizable and familiar. For only the fraction of a second did the odalisque reveal herself definitely as Rosie. Then a hand pulled feverishly at the counterpane, the section of buff-coloured boa wriggled and rolled; and, in a moment, where an odalisque had been, lay only a long packet under a white sheet, like a jockey with a fractured skull when they carry him from the course.

Well, really.⁠ ⁠… Gumbril felt positively indignant; not jealous, but astonished and righteously indignant.

“Well, when you’ve finished bathing,” said Mrs. Viveash, “I hope you’ll come and have dinner with us.” Coleman was standing between her and the farther door; Mrs. Viveash had seen nothing in the room beyond the vestibule.

“I’m busy,” said Coleman.

“So I see.” Gumbril spoke as sarcastically as he could.

“Do you see?” asked Coleman, and looked round. “So you do!” He stepped back and closed the door.

“It’s Theodore’s last dinner,” pleaded Mrs. Viveash.

“Not even if it were his last supper,” said Coleman, enchanted to have been given the opportunity to blaspheme a little. “Is he going to be crucified? Or what?”

“Merely going abroad,” said Gumbril.

“He has a broken heart,” Mrs. Viveash explained.

“Ah, the genuine platonic towsers?” Coleman uttered his artificial demon’s laugh.

“That’s just about it,” said Gumbril, grimly.

Relieved by the shutting of the door from her immediate embarrassment, Rosie threw back a corner of the counterpane and extruded her head, one arm and the shoulder with the mole on it. She looked about her, opening her slanting eyes as wide as she could. She listened with parted lips to the voices that came, muffled now, through the door. It seemed to her as though she were waking up; as though now, for the first time, she were hearing that shattering laugh, were looking now for the first time on these blank, white walls and the one lovely and horrifying picture. Where was she? What did it all mean? Rosie put her hand to her forehead, tried to think. Her thinking was always a series of pictures; one after another the pictures swam up before her eyes, melted again in an instant.

Her mother taking off her pince-nez to wipe them⁠—and at once her eyes were tremulous and vague and helpless. “You should always let the gentleman get over the stile first,” she said, and put on her glasses again. Behind the glasses her eyes immediately became clear, piercing, steady and efficient. Rather formidable eyes. They had seen Rosie getting over the stile in front of Willie Hoskyns, and there was too much leg.

James reading at his desk; his heavy, round head propped on his hand. She came up behind him and threw her arms round his neck. Very gently, and without turning his eyes from the page, he undid her embrace and, with a little push that was no more than a hint, an implication, signified that he didn’t want her. She had gone to her pink room, and cried.

Another time James shook his head and smiled patiently under his moustache. “You’ll never learn,” he said. She had gone to her room and cried that time too.

Another time they were lying in bed together, in the pink bed; only you couldn’t see it was pink because there was no light. They were lying very quietly. Warm and happy and remote she felt. Sometimes as it were the physical memory of pleasure plucked at her nerves, making her start, making her suddenly shiver. James was breathing as though he were asleep. All at once he stirred. He patted her shoulder two or three times in a kindly and businesslike way. “I know what that means,” she said, “when you pat me like that.” And she patted him⁠—pat-pat-pat, very quickly. “It means you’re going to bed.” “How do you know?” he asked. “Do you think I don’t know you after all this time? I know that pat by heart.” And suddenly all her warm, quiet happiness evaporated; it was all gone. “I’m only a machine for going to bed with,” she said. “That’s all I am for you.” She felt