Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Intimately, as they walked towards the dining-room, Mrs. Ockham squeezed his arm.
‘What luck that the others should have been out for our first evening!’ she said; but added quickly, ‘Not but what I’m very fond of poor dear Granny. And Veronica’s so …’
She hesitated, remembering the Cresswells’ concern over the disquieting spirit that had started, before she was even out of pigtails, to peep through their daughter’s calm, bright eyes.
‘So pretty and clever,’ she concluded. ‘But all the same, I’m awfully glad they’re not here. I hope you are too,’ she added, smiling at him almost archly.
‘Oh, very,’ Sebastian answered without much conviction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BUT AFTER ALL, he had to admit long before the evening was over, she wasn’t a bad old thing by any manner of means. A bit blancmangeish, of course; but really very decent. She was going to give him all the volumes of the Loeb Classics that had been in her husband’s library. And the Oxford Press edition of Donne. And Saintsbury’s two volumes of Minor Caroline Poets. And on top of being kind, she wasn’t even such a fool. True, she had confessed to being unable to sing ‘Abide with me’ without crying; but she also liked George Herbert. And though she had an exasperating habit of referring to everyone she knew as ‘dear So-and-so,’ or at the very worst and most uncharitable as ‘poor dear,’ she had quite a sense of humour, and some of the stories she told were really very funny.
But her most precious gift was that she never made you feel shy. In that respect she was like Uncle Eustace; and in both of them, it seemed to Sebastian, the secret consisted in a certain absence of pretentiousness, a refraining from standing on rights or privileges or dignity. Whereas that fiendish old Queen Mother didn’t merely stand on her own dignity; she went out and deliberately trampled on yours. And more subtly, for all her desirableness, Mrs. Thwale did the same thing. It was as though she were always using you, in some way or other, as a means to further her own private ends — and the ends were disquietingly mysterious and unpredictable. Whereas with Mrs. Ockham it was you who were the end, and all she asked was to be allowed to be the adoring means of your glorification. Which was really rather pleasant. So pleasant, indeed, that Sebastian soon did more than merely cease to be shy with her; he began to show off and lay down the law. Except for Susan — and Susan didn’t really count — he had never known anyone who was ready to listen so respectfully to what he had to say. Stimulated by her admiration, and quite unhindered by Mr. Tendring, who never put in a word and allowed his presence to be completely ignored, he became, especially after his second glass of wine, extraordinarily loquacious. And when his own ideas failed him, he did not hesitate to fall back on Uncle Eustace’s. His remarks about the affinity between Mid-Victorian English and Italian Primitive were thought to be very startling and brilliant. Still, even with the wine to give him courage and take away discretion, he didn’t venture to repeat what Uncle Eustace had said in connection with Piero’s Venus and her Adonis. It was Mrs. Ockham who finally broke the silence that had settled down on them as they stood looking at the picture after dinner.
‘Art’s a funny thing,’ she said, pensively shaking her head. ‘Very funny indeed, sometimes.’
Sebastian gave her an amused and pitying smile. Her remark had made him feel delightfully superior.
‘Works of art aren’t moral tracts,’ he said sententiously.
‘Oh, I know, I know,’ Mrs. Ockham agreed. ‘But all the same …’
‘All the same what?’
‘Well, why bother about that sort of thing so much?’
She hadn’t bothered — except, of course, negatively, inasmuch as she’d always felt that the whole business was profoundly unpleasant. And, in spite of her mother’s vague but fearful warnings about the male sex, her darling Francis had really bothered very little. So why did other people find it necessary to think and talk so much about it, to write all those books and poems, to paint such pictures as this thing they were now looking at? Pictures which, if they weren’t Great Art, one would never dream of tolerating in a decent house, where innocent boys like Frankie, like Sebastian here …
‘Sometimes,’ she went on, ‘I just cannot understand …’
‘Excuse me,’ Mr. Tendring broke in, suddenly pushing his way between them and the mythological nudities.
Horizontally first, then vertically, he applied a tape-measure to the painting. Then, taking the pencil from between his pearly teeth, he made an entry in his notebook: Oil Painting: Antony and Cleopatra. Antique. 41 ins × 20 ins. Framed.
‘Thanks,’ he said, and passed on to the Seurat. Twenty-six by sixteen; and the frame, instead of being gilded and genuine hand-carved, was the cheapest-looking thing, painted in different colours, like one of those camouflaged ships during the war.
Mrs. Ockham led Sebastian away to the sofa and, while they sipped their coffee, began to ask him about his father.
‘He didn’t get on too well with poor dear Eustace, did he?’
‘He hated Uncle Eustace.’
Mrs. Ockham was shocked.
‘You mustn’t say that, Sebastian.’
‘But it’s true,’ he insisted.
And when she started trying to smother the whole thing in that soft sentimental blancmange of hers — mooing away about brothers not seeing eye to eye perhaps, but never hating one another, never really forgetting that they were brothers — he became annoyed.
‘You don’t know my father,’ he snapped.
And forgetting all about the heroic portrait he had painted for the benefit of Gabriel Weyl, Sebastian launched out into an embittered account of John Barnack’s character and behaviour. Greatly distressed, Mrs. Ockham tried to persuade him that it was all just a case of misunderstanding. When he was older he would realize that his father had always acted with the best intentions. But the only effect of these well-meaning interventions was to stimulate Sebastian to a greater intemperance of language. Then, by a natural transition, his resentment modulated into complaint. He felt all at once extraordinarily sorry for himself, and began to say so.
Mrs. Ockham was touched. Even if Mr. Barnack wasn’t as bad as he had been painted, even if he were nothing worse than a busy man with harsh manners and no time for affection, that would be quite enough to make a sensitive child unhappy. More than ever, as she listened to Sebastian, she felt convinced that it was God who had brought them together — the poor motherless boy, the poor mother who had lost her child — brought them together that they might help one another and, helping one another, might be strengthened to do God’s work in the world.
Meanwhile, Sebastian had begun to tell the story of the evening clothes.
Mrs. Ockham remembered how adorable Frankie had looked in the dinner jacket she had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. So grown-up, so touchingly childish. Her eyes filled with tears. But in the meantime it really did seem hard on poor Sebastian that his father should sacrifice him to a mere political prejudice.
‘Oh, how sweet of dear old Eustace to give it you!’ she cried, when he reached that point in his story.
Sebastian was offended by her cheerful all’s-well-that-ends-well tone.
‘Uncle Eustace only promised,’ he said gloomily. ‘Then … well, this thing happened.’
‘So you never got it after all?’
He shook his head.
‘Poor darling, you do have bad luck!’
To Sebastian, in his mood of self-pity, her commiseration was as balm. To be told, in that tone, that he had had bad luck was so delightful that it would be almost sacrilegious to mention the drawing, the two thousand two hundred lire, the visit to the tailor’s. Indeed, it never even occurred to him that they ought to be mentioned. In the present circumstances of mood and feeling these things were irrelevant to the point of being practically non-existent. Then, suddenly, they jumped out into the foreground of immediate reality. Mrs. Ockham leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee; her soft snubb
y face was transfigured by a smile of intense yearning tenderness.
‘Sebastian, I’ve got a favour to ask of you.’
He smiled charmingly and raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘Eustace made you a promise,’ she explained. ‘A promise he wasn’t able to keep. But I can keep it. Will you allow me, Sebastian?’
He looked at her for a moment, uncertain whether he had understood her aright. Then, as it became clear that her words could have only one meaning, the blood rushed up into his cheeks.
‘You mean … about the evening clothes?’
He averted his eyes in confusion.
‘I’d so love to do it,’ she said.
‘It’s awfully decent of you,’ he muttered. ‘But really …’
‘After all, it was one of poor Eustace’s last wishes.’
‘I know; but …’
He hesitated, wondering whether to tell her about the drawing. But she might think, as that Weyl fellow had obviously thought, that he oughtn’t to have sold it — not so quickly, not immediately after the funeral. And to her he couldn’t say it was for a debt of honour. Besides, if he were going to mention the drawing at all, he ought to have done it long ago. To mention it now would be to admit that he had been enjoying her sympathy and inviting her generosity on false pretences. And what a fool he would seem, as well as a humbug!
‘After all,’ said Mrs. Ockham, who had attributed his hesitation to a quite understandable reluctance to accept a present from a stranger, ‘after all, I’m really part of the family. A step-first cousin, to be precise.’
What delicate feelings he had! More tenderly than ever, she smiled at him again.
From the depths of his discomfort Sebastian tried to smile back. It was too late to explain now. There was nothing for it but to go ahead.
‘Well, if you really think it’s all right,’ he said.
‘Oh, good, good!’ cried Mrs. Ockham. ‘Then we’ll go to the tailor’s together. That will be fun, won’t it?’
He nodded and said it would be great fun.
‘It must be the best tailor in town.’
‘I noticed one in the Via Tornabuoni,’ he said, determined at any cost to head her off from the place near the cathedral.
But what a fool he had been to get rid of the drawing in such a hurry! Instead of waiting to see what might turn up. And now he’d be landed with two evening suits. And it wasn’t as though he could save up one of them for use later on. In a couple of years he’d have grown out of both. Well, after all, it didn’t really matter.
‘When we’re back in London,’ said Mrs. Ockham, ‘I hope you’ll come and dine with me sometimes in your evening clothes.’
‘I’d love to,’ he said politely.
‘You’ll be my excuse for going to all the plays and concerts I never have the heart or the energy to go to by myself.’
Plays and concerts…. His eyes brightened at the prospect.
They began talking about music. Mrs. Ockham, it seemed, had been a great concert-goer when her husband was alive, had travelled to Salzburg for Mozart and the moderns, to Bayreuth for Wagner, to Milan for Otello and Falstaff. Against these achievements Sebastian could only set a few poor evenings at the Queen’s Hall. In mere self-defence he found himself compelled to expatiate, with a kind of boastful possessiveness, on the wonderful playing of an old pianist friend of his own, retired now from the concert stage, but as brilliant as ever — Dr. Pfeiffer by name; she had probably heard of him. No? But in his day he had enjoyed a European reputation.
In the background, meanwhile, Mr. Tendring had measured all the paintings and was now working his way through the porcelain, jade and ivory. Thousands of pounds, he said to himself from time to time, lingering voluptuously over the Cockney diphthongs, thousands of pounds…. He felt extraordinarily happy.
At a quarter past ten there was a sudden commotion in the hall, and a moment later, as from a ghostly parade ground, the Queen Mother’s voice came to their ears.
‘There’s poor dear Granny,’ said Mrs. Ockham, interrupting Sebastian in the middle of a sentence.
She rose and hurried towards the door. In the hall, Mrs. Gamble’s maid had just divested the old lady of her wrap and was in process of handing over the Pomeranian.
‘Little Foxy-woxy,’ cried the Queen Mother. ‘Did he miss his old granny-wanny? Did he, then?’
Foxy VIII licked her chin, then turned to bark at the newcomer.
‘Granny dear!’
Scintillating like a whole chandelier of diamonds, Mrs. Gamble wheeled in the direction of the voice.
‘Is that Daisy?’ she rasped enquiringly.
And when Mrs. Ockham had said yes, she presented her with a withered brick-red cheek, lowering Foxy, as she did so, out of range, so that her granddaughter might not be bitten as she paid her respects.
Mrs. Ockham kissed her safely.
‘How nice to see you!’ she said through the yapping.
‘Why is your nose so cold?’ the Queen Mother asked sharply. ‘You haven’t got a chill, I hope?’
Mrs. Ockham assured her that she had never felt better, then turned to Mrs. Thwale, who had remained standing a little to one side, a silent, bright-eyed, faintly smiling spectator.
‘And here’s dear little Veronica,’ she said, holding out both her hands.
Mrs. Thwale took the cue and offered both of hers.
‘Looking more beautiful than ever,’ exclaimed Mrs. Ockham in a tone of whole-hearted admiration.
‘Now, Daisy,’ rasped the Queen Mother, ‘for goodness’ sake, stop gushing like a schoolgirl.’
To hear other people complimented in her presence was distasteful to her. But instead of taking the hint, Mrs. Ockham proceeded to deepen her original offence.
‘I’m not gushing,’ she protested, as she took her grandmother’s arm and started with her towards the drawing-room. ‘It’s the simple truth.’
The Queen Mother snorted angrily.
‘I’ve never seen Veronica look so radiant as she does tonight.’
Well, if that was true, Mrs. Thwale was thinking, as she followed them, it meant that she had been living in a fool’s paradise. Flattering herself with the conviction that she had built up an ironclad facial alibi, when in fact she could still be read like an open book.
She frowned to herself. It was bad enough to have a hypothetical God, unto whom all hearts were open, all desires known. But to be known and open to Daisy Ockham, of all people — that was the ultimate humiliation.
True, there were excuses. It wasn’t every evening that one was proposed to by Paul De Vries. But, on the other hand, it was precisely on the exceptional and important occasions that it was most necessary to keep other people in ignorance of what one was really feeling. And she had permitted the symptoms of her elation to appear so clearly that even a fat old goose like Daisy could detect them. Not that much harm had been done this time. But it just showed how careful one had to be, how sleeplessly vigilant.
Mrs. Thwale frowned once more; then, as she relaxed her facial muscles, made a conscious effort to assume an expression of detached indifference. No more of that tell-tale radiance. For the outside world, nothing but the opaque symbol of a rather distant and amused politeness. But behind it, for herself, what gay bright secrets, what an effervescence of unuttered laughter and private triumph!
It had happened after dinner, when old Lord Worplesden, who was an amateur astronomer, insisted on taking Mrs. Thwale and the little Contessina up to the top of the tower on which he had installed his six-inch refracting telescope. A first-rate instrument, he boasted. By Zeiss of Jena. But among the young ladies of the neighbourhood it was celebrated for other reasons. The star-gazer would take you in, under the dome of his baby observatory, and then, under the pretext of getting you and the telescope into the right position for seeing the satellites of Jupiter, would paw you about, booming away all the time about Galileo. Then, if you hadn’t objected too much, he’d show you the rings of Satu
rn. And finally there were the spiral nebulae. These required at least ten minutes of the most laborious adjustment. Girls who had seen a spiral nebula got a big bottle of scent the next day, with a playful invitation, embossed with a coronet and signed, ‘Yours very affectionately, W.,’ to come again another time and really explore the Moon.
The Contessina’s stock of scent had evidently run low; for it was nearly half an hour before she and the old gentleman emerged again from the observatory. Time enough for Paul, who had followed them uninvited up the tower, to look at the night sky and talk a little about Eddington; to look down at the lights of Florence and reflect aloud that they were beautiful, that earth had its constellations too; to be silent for a little, and then say something about Dante and the Vita Nuova·, and again be silent and hold her hand; and at last, rather breathlessly and, for once, inarticulately, to ask her to marry him.
The intrinsic ludicrousness of what had happened, and the sudden glory of her own elation, had almost caused her to laugh aloud.
At last! The magnet had done its work; the philosophic Eye had finally succumbed to life’s essential shamelessness. In the tug-of-war between appearance and reality, reality had won, as it always must, it always must.
Ludicrous spectacle! But for her, at least, the joke would have important and serious consequences. It meant freedom; it meant power over her surroundings; it meant a little cushioned world of privacy outside herself as well as merely within — a house of her own as well as an attitude, a suite at the Ritz as well as a state of mind and a luxuriant fancy.
‘Will you, Veronica?’ he had repeated anxiously, as her averted silence persisted through the seconds. ‘Oh, my darling, say you will!’
Confident at last of being able to speak without betraying herself, she had turned back to him.
Dear Paul … touched inexpressibly … taken so utterly by surprise … would like to wait a day or two before giving her final answer….
The door of the little observatory had opened and Lord Worplesden could be heard loudly recommending the Contessina to read the more popular writings of Sir James Jeans, F.R.S. In his case, she reflected, the Eye was astronomical and proconsular; but it was the same old magnet, the identical shamelessness. And in a few more years there would be the final shamelessness of dying.