Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [173]
‘Naughty father!’ put in the child.
Philip was offended, the more so as he was secretly aware that what she said was true. The ideal of a rustic domesticity, filled with small duties and casual human contacts, was one that, for him, precariously verged on absurdity. And though the idea of supervising little Phil’s upbringing was interesting, he knew that the practice would be intolerably tedious. He remembered his own father’s spasmodic essays at education. He’d be just the same. Which was precisely why Elinor had no business to say so.
‘I’m not quite so childishly frivolous as you seem to imagine,’ he said with dignity and bottled anger.
‘On the contrary,’ she answered, ‘you’re too adultly serious. You couldn’t manage a child because you’re not enough of a child yourself. You’re like one of those dreadfully grown-up creatures in Shaw’s Methuselah.’
‘Naughty father!’ repeated little Phil exasperatingly, like a parrot with only one phrase.
Philip’s first impulse was to seize the child out of his mother’s arms, smack him for his impertinence, drive him from the room and then turn on Elinor and violently ‘have things out’ with her. But a habit of gentlemanly self-control and a dread of scenes made him keep his temper. Instead of healthily breaking out he made an effort of will and more than ever tightly shut himself in. Preserving his dignity and his unexpressed grievance, he got up and walked through the French window into the garden. Elinor watched his departure. Her impulse was to run after him, take him by the hand and make peace. But she too checked herself. Philip limped away out of sight. The child continued to whimper. Elinor gave him a little shake.
‘Stop, Phil,’ she said almost angrily. ‘That’s enough now. Stop at once.’
The two doctors were examining what to an untrained eye might have seemed the photograph of a typhoon in the Gulf of Siam, of an explosion of black smoke in the midst of clouds, or merely of an ink stain.
‘Particularly clear,’ said the young radiographer. ‘Look.’ He pointed at the smoke cloud. ‘There’s a most obvious new growth there, at the pylorus.’ He glanced with a certain enquiring deference at his distinguished colleague.
Sir Herbert nodded. ‘Obvious,’ he repeated. He had an oracular manner; what he said, you felt, was always and necessarily true.
‘It couldn’t very well be large. Not with the symptoms so far recorded. There’s been no vomiting yet.’
‘No vomiting?’ exclaimed the radiographer with an almost excessive display of interest and astonishment. ‘That would explain the smallness.’
‘The obstruction’s only slight.’
‘It would certainly be worth opening up the abdomen for exploration purposes.’
Sir Herbert made a little pouting grimace and dubiously shook his head. ‘One has to think of the patient’s age.’
‘Quite,’ the radiographer made haste to agree.
‘He’s older than he seems.’
‘Yes, yes. He certainly doesn’t look his age.’
‘Well, I must be going,’ said Sir Herbert.
The young radiographer darted to the door, handed him his hat and gloves, personally escorted him to the attendant Daimler. Returning to his desk he glanced again at the black-blotched, grey-cloudy photograph.
‘A really remarkably successful exposure,’ he said to himself with satisfaction and, turning the picture over, he wrote a few words in pencil on the back.
‘J. Bidlake, Esq. Stomach after barium meal. New growth at pylorus, small but v. clear. Photographed….’ He looked up at his calendar for the date, recorded it and put the photograph away in his file for future reference.
The old manservant announced the visitor and retired, closing the door of the studio behind him.
‘Well, John,’ said Lady Edward, advancing across the room. ‘How are you? I heard you’d been seedy. Nothing serious, I hope.’
John Bidlake did not even get up to receive her. From the depth of the armchair in which he had spent the day meditating in terror the themes of disease and death, he held out a hand.
‘But, my poor John!’ exclaimed Lady Edward sitting down beside him. ‘You look very low and wretched.