Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [28]
The trees reached up to the ceiling and from the ceiling they were bent back again, like mangroves, towards the floor. But in this particular room, Walter reflected, in this queer combination of a Roman courtyard and the Palm House at Kew, the growths of sound shooting up, uninterrupted, through the height of three floors, would have gathered enough momentum to break clean through the flimsy glass roof that separated them from the outer night. He pictured them going up and up, like the magic beanstalk of the Giant Killer, into the sky. Up and up, loaded with orchids and bright cockatoos, up through the perennial mist of London, into the clear moonlight beyond the smoke. He fancied them waving up there in the moonlight, the last thin aerial twigs of noise. That loud laugh, for example, that exploding guffaw from the fat man on the left-it would mount and mount, diminishing as it rose, till it no more than delicately tinkled up there under the moon. And all these voices (what were they saying? ‘… made an excellent speech…’; ‘… no idea how comfortable those rubber reducing belts are till you’ve tried them…’; ‘… such a bore…’; ‘… eloped with the chauffeur…’), all these voices—how exquisite and tiny they’d be up there! But meanwhile down here, in the jungle… Oh, loud, stupid, vulgar, fatuous.
Looking over the heads of the people who surrounded him, he saw Frank Illidge, alone, leaning against a pillar. His attitude, his smile were Byronic, at once world-weary and contemptuous; he glanced about him with a languid amusement, as though he were watching the drolleries of a group of monkeys. Unfortunately, Walter reflected, as he made his way through the crowd towards him, poor Illidge hadn’t the right physique for being Byronically superior. Satirical romantics should be long, slow-moving, graceful and handsome. Illidge was small, alert and jerky. And what a comic face! Like a street Arab’s, with its upturned nose and wide slit of a mouth; a very intelligent, sharp-witted street Arab’s face, but not exactly one to be languidly contemptuous with. Besides, who can be superior with freckles? Illidge’s complexion was sandy with them. Protectively coloured, the sandy-brown eyes, the sandyorange eyebrows and lashes disappeared, at a little distance, into the skin, as a lion dissolves into the desert. From across a room his face seemed featureless and unregarding, like the face of a statue carved out of a block of sandstone. Poor Illidge! The Byronic part made him look rather ridiculous.
‘Hullo,’ said Walter, as he got within speaking distance. The two young men shook hands. ‘How’s science?’ What a silly question! thought Walter as he pronounced the words.
Illidge shrugged his shoulders. ‘Less fashionable than the arts, to judge by this party.’ He looked round him. ‘I’ve seen half the writing and painting section of Who’s Who this evening. The place fairly stinks of art.’
‘Isn’t that rather a comfort for science?’ said Walter. ‘The arts don’t enjoy being fashionable.’
‘Oh, don’t they! Why are you here, then?’
‘Why indeed?’ Walter parried the question with a laugh. He looked round, wondering where Lucy could have gone. He had not caught sight of her since the music stopped.
‘You’ve come to do your tricks and have your head patted,’ said Illidge, trying to get a little of his own back; the memory of that slip on the stairs, of Lady Edward’s lack of interest in newts, of the military gentlemen’s insolence, still rankled. ‘Just look at that girl there with the frizzy dark hair, in cloth of silver. The one like a little white negress. What about her, for example? It’d be pleasant to have one’s head patted by that sort of thing—eh?’
‘Well, would it?’
Illidge laughed. ‘You take the high philosophical line, do you? But, my dear chap, admit it’s all humbug I take it myself, so I ought to know. To tell you the honest truth, I envy you art-mongers your success. It makes me really furious when I see some silly, halfwitted little writer…’
‘Like me, for example.’
‘No, you’re a cut above most of them,’ conceded Illidge. ‘But when