Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [203]
Mr. Quarles was disconcerted. But he preserved his dignity. ‘You may laugh,’ he said. ‘But I speak syahriously. You had no right to come. You knew quite well how important it is that nothing should be suspected. Especially hyah—hyah, in my own house. You knew it.’
‘Yes, I knew it,’ Gladys repeated, nodding her head truculently. ‘And that’s exactly why I came.’ She was silent for a moment. But the pressure of her feelings made silence no longer bearable. ‘Because I knew you were frightened,’ she went on, ‘frightened that people might find out what you were reelly like. You dirty old swine!’ And suddenly losing all control of her fury, she sprang to her feet and advanced on Mr. Quarles so menacingly, that he recoiled a step. But her attack was only verbal. ‘Giving yourself such airs, as though you was the Prince of Wales. And then taking a girl to dinner at the Corner House. And blaming everybody else, worse than a parson, when you’re no better than a dirty old pig yourself. Yes, a dirty old pig, that’s what you are. Saying you loved me, indeed! I know what that sort of love is. Why, a girl isn’t safe with you in a taxi. No, she isn’t. You filthy old beast! And then…’
‘Ryahlly, ryahily!’ Mr. Quarles had sufficiently recovered from his first shock of horrified surprise to be able to protest. This was terrible, unheard of. He felt himself being devastated, laid waste to, ravaged.
‘“Ryahlly, ryably,”’ she mimicked derisively. ‘And then not even taking a girl to a decent seat at the theatre. But w hen it was a question of your having a bit of fun in your way—oh, lord! Nasty fat old swine! And carrying on all the time like Rudolph Valentino, with your chatter about all the women that had been in love with you. With you! You just look at yourself in the glass. Like a red egg, that’s what you are.’
‘Too unseemlah!’
‘Talking about love with a face like that!’ she went on, more shrilly than ever. ‘An old swine like you! And then you only give a girl a rotten old watch and a pair of earrings, and the stones in them aren’t even good ones, because I asked a jeweller and he said they weren’t. And now, on top of everything I’m going to have a baby.’
‘A babah?’ repeated Mr. Quarles incredulously, but with a deeper and more dreadful sinking of apprehension. ‘Surely not a babah.’
‘Yes, a baby!’ Gladys shouted, stamping her foot. ‘Can’t you hear what I say, you old idiot? A baby. That’s what I’ve come here about. And I won’t go away till…’
It was at this moment that Mrs. Quarles walked in through the French window from the garden. She had been having a talk with Marjorie at the cottage and had come to tell Sidney that she had asked the two young people to dinner that evening.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, halting on the threshold.
There was a moment’s silence. Then, addressing herself this time to Mrs. Quarles, Gladys began again with uncontrollable fury. Five minutes later she was no less uncontrollably sobbing and Mrs. Quarles was trying to console her. Sidney took the opportunity to sneak out of the room. When the gong sounded for lunch, he sent down word to say that he was feeling very ill and would they please send up two lightly boiled eggs, some toast and butter, and a little stewed fruit.
Meanwhile in the study Mrs. Quarles had hung solicitously over Gladys’s chair. ‘It’s all right,’ she kept repeating, patting the girl’s shoulder, ‘It’s all right. You mustn’t cry.’ Poor girl! she was thinking. And what a dreadful scent! And how could Sidney? And again, poor girl, poor girl! ‘Don’t cry. Try to be brave. It’ll be all right.’
Gladys’s sobbing gradually subsided. Mrs. Quarles’s calm voice talked on consolingly. The girl listened. Then suddenly she jumped up. The face that confronted Mrs. Quarles was savagely derisive through the tear stains.
‘Ow, shut it!’ she said sarcastically, ‘shut it! What do you take me for? A baby? Talking like that! You think you can talk me quiet, do you? Talk me out of my rights. Talky talky; baby’s going to be good, isn’t she? But you’re mistaken,