Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Perseverance, courage, endurance. All, fruits of love. Love goodness enough, and indifference and slackness are inconceivable. Courage comes as to the mother defending her child; and at the same time there is no fear of the opponent, who is loved, whatever he may do, because of the potentialities for goodness in him. As for pain, fatigue, disapproval — they are borne cheerfully, because they seem of no consequence by comparison with the goodness loved and pursued. Enormous gulf separating me from this state! The fact that Helen was not afraid of my perniciousness (as being only theoretical), while dreading Miller’s (because his life was the same as his argument), was a painful reminder of the existence of this gulf.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. July 18th 1914
THE CURTAIN ROSE, and before them was Venice, green in the moonlight, with Iago and Roderigo talking together in the deserted street.
‘Light, I say! Light!’ Brabantio called from his window. And in an instant the street was thronged, there was a clanking of weapons and armour, torches and lanterns burned yellow in the green darkness. . . .
‘Horribly vulgar scenery, I’m afraid,’ said Anthony as the curtain fell after the first scene.
Joan looked at him in surprise. ‘Was it?’ Then: ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ she added, hypocritically paying the tribute of philistinism to taste. In reality, she had thought it too lovely. ‘You know,’ she confessed, ‘this is only the fifth time I’ve ever been in a theatre.’
‘Only the fifth time?’ he repeated incredulously.
But here was another street and more armed men and Iago again bluff and hearty, and Othello himself, dignified like a king, commanding in every word and gesture; and when Brabantio came in with all his men, and the torchlight glittering on the spears and halberds, how heroically serene! ‘Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.’ A kind of anguish ran up and down her spine as she listened, as she saw the dark hand lifted, as the sword-points dropped, under his irresistible compulsion, towards the ground.
‘He speaks the lines all right,’ Anthony admitted.
The council chamber was rich with tapestry; the red-robed senators came and went. And here was Othello again. Still kingly, but with a kingliness that expressed itself, not in commands, this time, not in the lifting of a hand, but on a higher plane than that of the real world — in the calm, majestic music of the record of his wooing.
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak. . . .
Her lips moved as she repeated the familiar words after him — familiar but transfigured by the voice, the bearing of the speaker, the setting, so that, though she knew them by heart, they seemed completely new. And here was Desdemona, so young, so beautiful, with her neck and her bare shoulders rising frail and slender out of the heavy magnificence of her dress. Sumptuous brocade, and beneath it, the lovely irrelevance of a girl’s body; beneath the splendid words, a girl’s voice.
You are the Lord of duty,
I am hitherto your daughter; but here’s my husband.
She felt again that creeping anguish along her spine. And now they were all gone, Othello, Desdemona, senators, soldiers, all the beauty, all the nobleness — leaving only Iago and Roderigo whispering together in the empty room. ‘When she is sated of his body, she will find the error of her choice.’ And then that fearful soliloquy. Evil, deliberate, and conscious of itself. . . .
The applause, the lights of the entr’acte were a sacrilegious irrelevance; and when Anthony offered to buy her a box of chocolates she refused almost indignantly.
‘Do you think there really are people like Iago?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Men don’t tell themselves that the wrong they’re doing is wrong. Either they do it without thinking. Or else they invent reasons for believing it’s right. Iago’s a bad man who passes other people’s judgements of him upon himself.’
The lights went down again. They were in Cyprus. Under a blazing sun, Desdemona’s arrival; then Othello’s — and oh, the protective tenderness of his love!
The sun had set. In cavernous twilight, between stone walls, the drinking, the quarrel, the rasping of sword on sword, and Othello again, kingly and commanding, imposing silence, calling them all to obedience. Kingly and commanding for the last time. For in the scenes that followed, how terrible it was to watch the great soldier, the holder of high office, the civilized Venetian, breaking down, under Iago’s disintegrating touches, breaking down into the African, into the savage, into the uncontrolled and primordial beast! ‘Handkerchief — confessions — handkerchief! . . . Noses, ears, and lips! Is it possible?’ And then the determination to kill. ‘Do it not with poison, strangle her in bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.’ And afterwards the horrible outburst of his anger against Desdemona, the blow delivered in public; and in the humiliating privacy of the locked room, that colloquy between the kneeling girl and an Othello, momentarily sane again, but sane with the base, ignoble sanity of Iago, cynically knowing only the worst, believing in the possibility only of what was basest.
I cry you mercy then;
I took you for that cunning whore of Venice
That married with Othello.
There was a hideous note of derision in his voice, an undertone of horrible obscene laughter. Irrepressibly, she began to tremble.
‘I can’t bear it,’ she whispered to Anthony between the scenes. ‘Knowing what’s going to happen. It’s too awful. I simply can’t bear it.’
Her face was pale, she spoke with a violent intensity of feeling.
‘Well, let’s go,’ he suggested. ‘At once.’
She shook her head. ‘No, no. I must see it to the end. Must.’
‘But if you can’t bear it . . . ?’
‘You mustn’t ask me to explain. Not now.’
The curtain rose again.
My mother had a maid call’d Barbara;
She was in love, and he she lov’d prov’d mad
And did forsake her; she had a song of ‘willow’.
Her heart was beating heavily; she felt sick with anticipation. In an almost childish voice, sweet, but thin and untrained, Desdemona began to sing.
The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow.
The vision wavered before Joan’s eyes, became indistinct; the tears rolled down her cheeks.
It was over at last; they were out in the street again.
Joan drew a deep breath. ‘I feel I’d like to go for a long walk,’ she said. ‘Miles and miles without stopping.’
‘Well, you can’t,’ he said shortly ‘Not in those clothes.’
Joan looked at him with an expression of pained astonishment. ‘You’re angry with me,’ she said.
Blushing, he did his best to smile it off. ‘Angry? Why on earth should I be angry?’ But she was right, of course. He was angry — angry with everyone and everything that entered into the present insufferable situation: with Mary for having pushed him into it; with himself for having allowed her to push him in; with Joan for being the subject of that monstrous bet; with Brian because he was ultimately responsible for the whole thing; with Shakespeare, even, and the actors and this jostling crowd. . . .
‘Don’t be cross,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s been such a lovely evening. If you knew how marvellous it’s made me feel! But I have to be so careful with the marvellousness. Like carrying a cup that’s full to the brim. The slightest jolt — and down it goes. Let me carry it safely home.’
Her words made him feel very embarrassed, almost guilty. He laughed nervously. ‘Don’t you think you can carry it home safely in a hansom?’ he asked.
Her face lit up with pleasure at the suggestion. He waved his hand; the cab drew up in front of them. They climbed in and closed the door upon themselves. The driver jerked his reins. The old horse walked a few steps, then, at the crack of the whip, broke reluctantly into a very slow trot. Along Covent
ry Street, through the glare of the Circus, into Piccadilly. Above the spire of St James’s the dilute blackness of the sky was flushed with a coppery glow. Reflected in the polished darkness of the roadway, the long recession of the lamps seemed inexpressibly mournful, like a reminder of death. But here were the trees of the Green Park — bright wherever the lamplight struck upwards into the leaves with an earthly, a more than spring-like freshness. There was life as well as death.
Joan sat in silence, holding firm within herself the fragile cup of that strange happiness that was also and at the same time intensest sadness. Desdemona was dead, Othello was dead, and the lamps retreating for ever down their narrowing vistas were symbols of the same destiny. And yet the melancholy of these converging parallels and the pain of the tragedy were as essential constituents of her present joy as her delight in the splendour of the poetry, as her pleasure in the significant and almost allegorical beauty of those illumined leaves. For this joy of hers was not one particular emotion exclusive of all others; it was all emotions — a state, so to speak, of general and undifferentiated movedness. The overtones and aftertones of horror, of delight, of pity and laughter — all lingered harmoniously in her mind. She sat there, behind the slowly trotting horse, serene, but with a serenity that contained the potentiality of every passion. Sadness, delight, fear, mirth — they were all there at once, impossibly conjoined within her mind. She cherished the precarious miracle.
A hansom, he was thinking — it was the classical opportunity. They were already at Hyde Park Corner; by this time he ought at least to have been holding her hand. But she sat there like a statue, staring at nothing in another world. She would feel outraged if he were to call her roughly back to reality.
‘I shall have to invent a story for Mary,’ he decided. But it wouldn’t be easy; Mary had an extraordinary talent for detecting lies.
Reined in, the old horse gingerly checked itself, came to a halt. They had arrived. Oh, too soon, Joan thought, too soon. She would have liked to drive on like this for ever, nursing in silence her incommunicable joy. It was with a sigh that she stepped on to the pavement.
‘Aunt Fanny said you were to come and say good night to her if she was still up.’
That meant that the last chance of doing it had gone, he reflected, as he followed her up the steps and into the dimly lighted hall.
‘Aunt Fanny,’ Joan called softly as she opened the drawing-room door. But there was no answer; the room was dark.
‘Gone to bed?’
She turned back towards him and nodded affirmatively. They stood there for a moment in silence.
‘I shall have to go,’ he said at last.
‘It was a wonderful evening, Anthony. Simply wonderful.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ Behind his smile, he was thinking with apprehension that that last chance had not yet disappeared.
‘It was more than enjoying,’ she said. ‘It was . . . I don’t know how to say what it was.’ She smiled at him, added ‘Good night,’ and held out her hand.
Anthony took it, said good night in his turn; then, suddenly deciding that it was now or never, stepped closer, laid an arm round her shoulder and kissed her.
The suddenness of his decision and his embarrassment imparted to his movements a clumsy abruptness indistinguishable from that which would have been the result of a violent impulse irrepressibly breaking through restraints. His lips touched her cheek first of all, then found her mouth. She made as if to withdraw, to avert her face; but the movement was checked almost before it was begun. Her mouth came back to his, drawn irresistibly. All the diffuse and indefinite emotion that had accumulated within her during the evening suddenly crystallized, as it were, round her surprise and the evidence of his desire and this almost excruciating pleasure that, from her lips, invaded her whole body and took possession of her mind. The astonishment and anger of the first second were swallowed up in an apocalypse of new sensations. It was as though a quiet darkness were violently illuminated, as though the relaxed dumb strings of an instrument had been wound up and were vibrating ever more shrilly and piercingly, until at last the brightness and the tension annihilated themselves in their own excess. She felt herself becoming empty; enormous spaces opened up within her, gulfs of darkness.
Anthony felt her body droop limp and heavy in his arms. So heavy indeed, and with so unexpected a weight, that he almost lost his balance. He staggered, then braced himself and held her up more closely.
‘What is it, Joan?’
She did not answer, but leaned her forehead against his shoulder. He could feel that if he were now to let her go, she would fall. Perhaps she was ill. He would have to call for help — wake up the aunt — explain what had happened. . . . Wondering desperately what to do, he looked about him. The lamp in the hall projected through the open door of the drawing-room a strip of light that revealed the end of a sofa covered with yellow chintz. Still holding her up with one arm about her shoulders, he bent down and slid the other behind her knees; then, with an effort (for she was heavier than he had imagined), lifted her off her feet, carried her along the narrow path of illumination that led into the darkness, and lowered her as gently as her weight would allow him on to the sofa.
Kneeling on the floor beside her, ‘Are you feeling better now?’ he asked.
Joan drew a deep breath, passed a hand across her forehead, then opened her eyes and looked at him, but only for a moment; overcome by an access of timidity and shame, she covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what happened. I felt so faint all of a sudden.’ She was silent for a little; the lamps were alight again, the stretched wires were vibrating — but tolerably, not to excess. She parted her hands once more and turned towards him, shyly smiling.
With eyes that had grown accustomed to the faint light, he looked anxiously into her face. Thank God, she seemed to be all right. He wouldn’t have to call the aunt. His feeling of relief was so profound that he took her hand and pressed it tenderly.
‘You’re not cross with me, Anthony?’
‘Why should I be?’
‘Well, you have every right. Fainting like that . . .’ Her face felt naked and exposed; withdrawing her hand from his grasp, she once more hid her shame. Fainting like that . . . The recollection humiliated her. Thinking of that sudden, silent, violent gesture of his, ‘He loves me,’ she said to herself. And Brian? But Brian’s absence seemed to have been raised to a higher power. He was not there with an unprecedented intensity, not there to the point of never having been there. All that was really there was this living presence beside her — the presence of desire, the presence of hands and mouth, the presence, potential but waiting, waiting to actualize itself again, of those kisses. She felt her breasts lift, though she was unaware of having taken a deep breath; it was as though someone else had drawn it.’ He loves me,’ she repeated; it was a justification. She dropped her hands from her face, looked at him for a moment, then reached out and, whispering his name, drew his head down towards her.
*
‘Well, what’s the result?’ Mary called from the sofa as he entered. By the gloomy expression on Anthony’s face she judged that it was she who had won the bet; and this annoyed her. She felt suddenly very angry with him — doubly and trebly angry; because he was so spiritless; because he hadn’t cared enough for her to win his bet in spite of the spiritlessness; because he was forcing upon her a gesture which she didn’t in the least want to make. After a day’s motoring with him in the country she had come to the conclusion that Sidney Gattick was absolutely insufferable. By contrast, Anthony seemed the most charming of men. She didn’t want to banish him, even temporarily. But her threat had been solemn and explicit; if she didn’t carry it out, at least in part, all her authority was gone. And now the wretch was forcing her to keep her word. In a tone of angry reproach, ‘You’ve been a coward and lost,’ she said. ‘I can see it.’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’ve won.’
Mary regarded him doubtfully. ‘I believe you’re lying.’
‘I’m not.’ He sat down beside her on the sofa.
‘Well, then, why do you look so glum? It’s not very flattering to me.’
‘Why on earth did you make me do it?’ he burst out. ‘It was idiotic.’ It had also been wrong; but Mary would only laugh if he said that. ‘I always knew it was idiotic. But you insisted.’ His voice was shrill with a complaining resentment. ‘And now God knows where I’ve landed myself.’ Where he’d landed Joan and Brian, for that matter. ‘God knows.’
‘But explain,’ cried Mary Amberley, ‘explain! Don’t talk like a minor prophet.’ Her eyes were bright with laughing curiosity. She divined some delightfully involved and fantastic situation. ‘Explain,’ she repeated.
‘Well, I did what you told me,’ he answered sullenly.
‘Hero!’
‘There’s nothing funny about it.’
‘What! did you get your face slapped?’
Anthony frowned angrily and shook his head.
‘Then how did she take it?’
‘That’s just the trouble: she took it seriously.’
‘Seriously?’ Mary questioned. ‘You mean, she threatened to tell papa?’
‘I mean, she thought I was in love with her. She wants to break it off with Brian.’
Mrs Amberley threw back her head and gave utterance to a peal of her clear, richly vibrant laughter.
Anthony felt outraged. ‘It’s not a joke.’
‘That’s where you make your mistake.’ Mary wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘It’s one of the best jokes I ever heard. But what do you propose to do?’
‘I shall have to tell her it’s all a mistake.’
‘That’ll be an admirable scene!’