Олдос Хаксли - Eyeless in Gaza

He smiled without speaking and nodded.

In the dogcart on the way to the house he kept remembering the sudden brightening of her face in response to that voiceless gesture of his. And all he could do to repay her for so much love was to … He thought of the rhododendron coverts again and was overcome with shame.

When she learned from Brian that Joan had been at the station, Mrs Foxe felt a sharp pang of resentment. By what right? Before his own mother …And besides, what bad faith! For Joan had accepted her invitation to come to lunch the day after Brian’s return. Which meant that she had tacitly admitted Mrs Foxe’s exclusive right to him on the day itself. But here she was, stealing surreptitiously to the station to catch him as he stepped out of the train. It was almost dishonest.

Mrs Foxe’s passion of indignant jealousy lasted only a few seconds; its very intensity accelerated her recognition of its wrongness, its unworthiness. No sign of what she felt had appeared on her face, and it was with a smile of amused indulgence that she listened to Brian’s vaguely stammered account of the meeting. Then, with a strong effort of the will, she not only shut off the expression of her emotion, but even excluded the emotion itself from her consciousness. All that, as it seemed, an impersonal regard for right conduct justified her in still feeling was a certain regretful disapproval of Joan’s—how should she put it?—disingenuousness. For the girl to have stolen that march upon her was not quite right.

Not quite right; but still very understandable, she now went on to reflect, very excusable. When one’s in love … And Joan’s was an impulsive, emotional character. Which had its fortunate side, Mrs Foxe reflected. The impulses were as strong towards right as towards wrong. If one could canalize that deep and powerful stream of life within her, if one could make the right appeal to what was best in her, if one could confirm her in those fine generous aspirations of hers—why, she would be a splendid person. Splendid, Mrs Foxe insisted to herself.

‘Well,’ she said next day, when Joan came over to lunch, ‘I hear you caught our migrant on the wing before he’d even had time to settle.’ The tone was playful, there was a charming smile on Mrs Foxe’s face. But Joan blushed guiltily.

‘You didn’t mind, did you?’ she asked.

‘Mind?’ Mrs Foxe repeated. ‘But, my dear, why should I? I only thought we’d agreed on today. But, of course, if you felt you absolutely couldn’t wait … ’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joan. But something that was almost hatred mounted hot within her.

Mrs Foxe laid her hand affectionately on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Let’s stroll out into the garden,’ she suggested, ‘and see if Brian’s anywhere about.’

TIPTOEING out of the back drawing–room, Hugh Ledwidge had hoped to find the refreshment of a little solitude; but on the landing he was caught by Joyce and Colin. And Colin, it appeared, was tremendously keen on natives, had always been anxious to talk to a professional ethnologist about his experiences on shikar. For nearly half an hour he had to listen, while the young man poured out his illiterate nonsense about India and Uganda. An immense fatigue overwhelmed him. His one desire was to escape, to get away from this parrot house of stupid chatter, back to delicious silence and a book.

They left him, thank God, at last, and drawing a deep breath, he braced himself for the final ordeal of leave–taking. That saying good–bye at the end of an evening was one of the things Hugh most intensely disliked. To have to expose yourself yet once more to personal contact, to be compelled, weary as you were and thirsty for solitude, to grin again and gibber and make yet another effort of hypocrisy—how odious that could be! Particularly with Mary Amberley. There were evenings when the woman simply wouldn’t allow you to say good–bye but clung to you desperately, as though she were drowning. Questions, confidences, scabrous discussions of people’s love–affairs—anything to keep you a few minutes longer. She seemed to regard each successive departure of a guest as the death of a fragment of her own being. His heart sank as he made his way across the room towards her. ‘Damned woman!’ he thought, and positively hated her; hated her, as well as for all the other reasons, because Helen was still dancing with that groom; and now with a fresh access of malevolence, because, as he suddenly perceived through the mists of his dim sight, Staithes and that man Beavis were sitting with her. All his insane thoughts about the plot came rushing back into his mind. They had been talking about him, him and the fire escape, him on the football field, him when they threw the slippers over the partition of his cubicle. For a moment, he thought of turning back and slipping out of the house without a word. But they had seen him coming, they would suspect the reason of his flight, they would laugh all the louder. His common sense returned to him, it was all nonsense, there was no plot. How could there be a plot? And even if Beavis did remember, what reason had he to talk? But all the same, all the same … Squaring his narrow shoulders, Hugh Ledwidge marched resolutely towards the anticipated ambush.

To his immense relief, Mary Amberley let him go almost without a protest. ‘Must you be off, Hugh? So soon?’ That was all. She seemed to be absent, thinking of something else.

Beppo fizzled amiably; Staithes merely nodded; and now it was Beavis’s turn. Was that smile of his what it seemed to be—just vaguely and conventionally friendly? Or did it carry hidden significances, did it secretly imply derisive reminders of those past shames? Hugh turned and hurried away. Why on earth, he wondered, did one ever go to these idiotic parties? Kept on going, what was more, again and again, when one knew it was all utterly pointless and boring….

Mark Staithes turned to Anthony. ‘You realize who that is?’ he asked.

‘Who? Ledwidge? Is he anyone special?’

Staithes explained.

‘Goggler!’ Anthony laughed. ‘Why of course. Poor Goggler! How fiendish we were to him!’

‘That’s why I’ve always pretended I didn’t know who he was,’ said Staithes, and smiled an anatomical smile of pity and contempt. ‘I think it would be charitable,’ he added, ‘if you did the same.’ Protecting Hugh Ledwidge gave him genuine pleasure.

Utterly pointless and boring—yes, and humiliating, Hugh was thinking, humiliating as well. For there was always some humiliation. A Beavis smiling; a Gerry Watchett, like an insolent groom …

There was a hurrying of feet on the stairs behind him. ‘Hugh! Hugh!’ He started almost guiltily and turned round. ‘Why were you slinking away without saying good night to me?’

Essaying a joke, ‘You seemed so busy,’ he began, twinkling up at Helen through his spectacles; then fell silent in sudden astonishment, almost in awe.

She was standing there, three steps above him, one hand on the banister, the fingers of the other splayed out against the opposite wall, leaning forward as though on the brink of flight. But what had happened to her, what miracle? The flushed face that hung over him seemed to shine with an inward illumination. This was not Helen, but some supernatural creature. In the presence of such unearthly beauty, he blushed for the ignoble irrelevance of his waggery, his knowing look.

‘Busy?’ she echoed. ‘But I was only dancing.’ And it was as though some ingenuous and unconscious Moses had said to his bedazzled Israelites: ‘I was only talking to Jehovah.’ ‘You had no excuse,’ she went on. Then quickly, as though a new and curious idea had suddenly occurred to her, ‘Or were you cross with me for some reason?’ she added in another tone.