Island - Aldous Huxley [6]
“I fell.”
“Again.”
It was tearing him to pieces, but he said it. “I fell.”
“Again, Will.” She was implacable. “Again.”
“I fell, I fell. I fell…”
Gradually the sobbing died down. The words came more easily and the memories they aroused were less painful.
“I fell,” he repeated for the hundredth time.
“But you didn’t fall very far,” Mary Sarojini now said.
“No, I didn’t fall very far,” he agreed.
“So what’s all the fuss about?” the child inquired.
There was no malice or irony in her tone, not the slightest implication of blame. She was just asking a simple, straightforward question that called for a simple, straightforward answer. Yes, what was all the fuss about? The snake hadn’t bitten him; he hadn’t broken his neck. And anyhow it had all happened yesterday. Today there were these butterflies, this bird that called one to attention, this strange child who talked to one like a Dutch uncle, looked like an angel out of some unfamiliar mythology and within five degrees of the equator was called, believe it or not, MacPhail. Will Farnaby laughed aloud.
The little girl clapped her hands and laughed too. A moment later the bird on her shoulder joined in with peal upon peal of loud demonic laughter that filled the glade and echoed among the trees, so that the whole universe seemed to be fairly splitting its sides over the enormous joke of existence.
3
“WELL, I’M GLAD IT’S ALL SO AMUSING,” A DEEP VOICE SUDDENLY commented.
Will Farnaby turned and saw, smiling down at him, a small spare man dressed in European clothes and carrying a black bag. A man, he judged, in his late fifties. Under the wide straw hat the hair was thick and white, and what a strange beaky nose! And the eyes—how incongruously blue in the dark face!
“Grandfather!” he heard Mary Sarojini exclaiming.
The stranger turned from Will to the child.
“What was so funny?” he asked.
“Well,” Mary Sarojini began, and paused for a moment to marshal her thoughts. “Well, you see, he was in a boat and there was that storm yesterday and he got wrecked—somewhere down there. So he had to climb up the cliff. And there were some snakes, and he fell down. But luckily there was a tree, so he only had a fright. Which was why he was shivering so hard, so I gave him some bananas and I made him go through it a million times. And then all of a sudden he saw that it wasn’t anything to worry about. I mean, it’s all over and done with. And that made him laugh. And when he laughed, I laughed. And then the mynah bird laughed.”
“Very good,” said her grandfather approvingly. “And now,” he added, turning back to Will Farnaby, “after the psychological first aid, let’s see what can be done for poor old Brother Ass. I’m Dr. Robert MacPhail, by the way. Who are you?”
“His name’s Will,” said Mary Sarojini before the young man could answer. “And his other name is Far-something.”
“Farnaby, to be precise. William Asquith Farnaby. My father, as you might guess, was an ardent Liberal. Even when he was drunk. Especially when he was drunk.” He gave vent to a harsh derisive laugh strangely unlike the full-throated merriment which had greeted his discovery that there was really nothing to make a fuss about.
“Didn’t you like your father?” Mary Sarojini asked with concern.
“Not as much as I might have,” Will answered.
“What he means,” Dr. MacPhail explained to the child, “is that he hated his father. A lot of them do,” he added parenthetically.
Squatting down on his haunches, he began to undo the straps of his black bag.
“One of our ex-imperialists, I assume,” he said over his shoulder to the young man.
“Born in Bloomsbury,” Will confirmed.
“Upper class,” the doctor diagnosed, “but not a member of the military or county subspecies.”
“Correct. My father was a barrister and political journalist. That is, when he wasn’t too busy being an alcoholic. My mother, incredible as it may seem, was the daughter of an archdeacon. An archdeacon,” he repeated, and laughed again as he had laughed over his father’s taste for brandy.
Dr. MacPhail looked at him for a moment,