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

such simple thoughts as they have, directly and instantaneously. They all go to sleep at once, wake at once, say the same thing at once; they turn all at once when they’re flying. Without a leader, without a word of command, they do everything together, in complete unison. Sitting here in the evenings, I sometimes fancy I can feel their thoughts striking against my own. It has happened to me once or twice: that I have known a second before it actually happened, that the birds were going to wake up and begin their half-minute of chatter in the dark. Wait! Hush.” Gumbril Senior threw back his head, pressed his hand over his mouth, as though by commanding silence on himself he could command it on the whole world. “I believe they’re going to wake now. I feel it.”

He was silent. Mrs. Viveash looked towards the dark trees and listened. A full minute passed. Then the old gentleman burst out happily laughing.

“Completely wrong!” he said. “They’ve never been more soundly asleep.” Mrs. Viveash laughed too. “Perhaps they all changed their minds, just as they were waking up,” she suggested.

Gumbril Junior reappeared; glasses clinked as he walked, and there was a little rattle of crockery. He was carrying a tray.

“Cold beef,” he said, “and salad and a bit of a cold apple-pie. It might be worse.”

They drew up chairs to Gumbril Senior’s worktable, and there, among the letters and the unpaid bills and the sketchy elevations of archiducal palaces, they ate the beef and the apple-pie, and drank the one-and-ninepenny vin ordinaire of the house. Gumbril Senior, who had already supped, looked on at them from the balcony.

“Did I tell you,” said Gumbril Junior, “that we saw Mr. Porteous’s son the other evening⁠—very drunk?”

Gumbril Senior threw up his hands. “If you knew the calamities that young imbecile has been the cause of!”

“What’s he done?”

“Gambled away I don’t know how much borrowed money. And poor Porteous can’t afford anything⁠—even now.” Mr. Gumbril shook his head and clutched and combed his beard. “It’s a fearful blow, but of course, Porteous is very steadfast and serene and.⁠ ⁠… There!” Gumbril Senior interrupted himself, holding up his hand. “Listen!”

In the fourteen plane trees the starlings had suddenly woken up.

There was a wild outburst, like a stormy sitting in the Italian Parliament. Then all was silent. Gumbril Senior listened, enchanted. His face, as he turned back towards the light, revealed itself all smiles. His hair seemed to have blown loose of its own accord, from within, so to speak; he pushed it into place.

“You heard them?” he asked Mrs. Viveash. “What can they have to say to one another, I wonder, at this time of night?”

“And did you feel they were going to wake up?” Mrs. Viveash inquired.

“No,” said Gumbril Senior with candour.

“When we’ve finished,” Gumbril Junior spoke with his mouth full, “you must show Myra your model of London. She’d adore it⁠—except that it has no electric sky-signs.”

His father looked all of a sudden very much embarrassed. “I don’t think it would interest Mrs. Viveash much,” he said.

“Oh, yes it would. Really,” she declared.

“Well, as a matter of fact it isn’t here.” Gumbril Senior pulled with fury at his beard.

“Not here? But what’s happened to it?”

Gumbril Senior wouldn’t explain. He just ignored his son’s question and began to talk once more about the starlings. Later on, however, when Gumbril and Mrs. Viveash were preparing to go, the old man drew him apart into a corner and began to whisper the explanation.

“I didn’t want to blare it about in front of strangers,” he said, as though it were a question of the housemaid’s illegitimate baby or a repair to the water-closet. “But the fact is, I’ve sold it. The Victoria and Albert had wind that I was making it; they’ve been wanting it all the time. And I’ve let them have it.”

“But why?” Gumbril Junior asked in a tone of astonishment. He knew with what a paternal affection⁠—no, more than paternal; for he was sure that his father was more wholeheartedly attached to his models than his son⁠—with what pride he regarded these children of his spirit.

Gumbril Senior sighed. “It’s all that young imbecile,” he said.

“What young imbecile?”

“Porteous’s son, of course. You see, poor Porteous has had to sell his library, among other things. You don’t know what that means to him. All these precious books. And collected at the price of such hardships. I thought I’d like to buy a few of the best ones back for him. They gave me quite a good price at the Museum.” He came out of his corner and hurried across the room to help Mrs. Viveash with her cloak. “Allow me, allow me,” he said.

Slowly and pensively Gumbril Junior followed him. Beyond good and evil? Below good and evil? The name of earwig.⁠ ⁠… The tubby pony trotted. The wild columbines suspended, among the shadows of the hazel copse, hooked spurs, helmets of aerial purple. The twelfth sonata of Mozart was insecticide; no earwigs could crawl through that music. Emily’s breasts were firm and pointed and she had slept at last without a tremor. In the starlight, good, true and beautiful became one. Write the discovery in books⁠—in books quos, in the morning, legimus cacantes. They descended the stairs. The cab was waiting outside.

“The Last Ride again,” said Mrs. Viveash.

“Golgotha Hospital, Southwark,” said Gumbril to the driver and followed her into the cab.

“Drive, drive, drive,” repeated Mrs. Viveash. “I like your father, Theodore. One of these days he’ll fly away with the birds. And how nice it is of those starlings to wake themselves up like that in the middle of the night, merely to amuse him. Considering how unpleasant it is to be woken in the night. Where are we going?”

“We’re going to look at Shearwater in his laboratory.”

“Is that a long way away?”

“Immensely,” said Gumbril.

“Thank God for that,” Mrs. Viveash piously and expiringly breathed.

XXII

Shearwater sat on his stationary bicycle, pedalling unceasingly like a man in a