Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [132]
‘I call that cupboard love,’ Miss Fulkes was still going on. ‘And you mustn’t say “naughty” to me like that.’
Elinor gave a little sigh, shook herself out of her reverie and, picking up the child in her arms, pressed him against her. ‘Never mind,’ she said, half to the reproving Miss Fulkes, half to her own apprehensive self. ‘Never mind.’ She kissed him.
Philip was looking at his watch. ‘Perhaps we ought to go and wash and brush up a bit before lunch,’ he said. He had the sentiment of punctuality.
‘But first,’ said Elinor, to whom it seemed that meals were made for man, not man for meals,’ first we simply must run into the kitchen and say how-do-you-do to Mrs. Inman. It would be unforgivable if we didn’t. Come.’ Still carrying the child, she led the way through the dining-room. The smell of roast duck grew stronger and stronger as they advanced.
Fretted a little by his consciousness of unpunctuality, and a little uneasy at having to risk himself, even with Elinor for dragoman, in the kitchen among the servants, Philip reluctantly followed her.
At luncheon, little Phil celebrated the occasion by behaving atrociously.
‘The excitement has been too much for him,’ poor Miss Fulkes kept repeating, trying to excuse the child and indirectly to justify herself. She would have liked to cry. ‘You’ll see when he’s got used to your being here, Mrs. Quarles,’ she said, turning to Elinor, ‘you’ll see; he can be such an angel. It’s the excitement.’
She had come to love the child so much that his triumphs and humiliations, his virtues and his crimes made her exult or mourn, feel selfsatisfaction or shame, as if they had been her own. Besides there was her professional pride. She had been alone responsible for him all these months, teaching him the social virtues and why the triangle of India is painted crimson on the map; she had made him, had moulded him. And now, when this object of tenderest love, this product of her skill and patience, screamed at table, spat out mouthfuls of half-masticated food and spilt the water, Miss Fulkes not only blushed with agonizing shame, as though it were she who had screamed, had spat, had spilled, but experienced at the same time all the humiliation of the conjurer whose long-prepared trick fails to come off in public, the inventor of the ideal flying machine which simply refuses to leave the ground.
After all,’ said Elinor, consolingly, ‘it’s only to be expected.’ She felt genuinely sorry for the poor girl. She looked at the child. He was crying—and she had expected (how unreasonably!) that it would be quite different now, that she would find him entirely rational and grown up. Her heart sank. She loved him, but children were terrible, terrible. And he was still a child. ‘Now, Phil,’ she said severely, ‘you must eat. No more nonsense.’
The child howled louder. He would have liked to behave well, but he did not know how to stop behaving badly. He had voluntarily worked up this mood of rebellious misery within himself; but now the emotion was his master and stronger than his will. It was impossible for him, even though he desired it, to return by the way he had come. Besides he had always rather disliked roast duck; and having now, for five minutes, thought of roast duck with concentrated disgust and horror, he loathed it. The sight, the smell, the taste of it really and genuinely made him sick.
Mrs. Bidlake meanwhile preserved her metaphysical calm. Her soul swam on steadily, like a great ship through a choppy sea; or perhaps it was more like a balloon, drifting high above the waters in the serene and windless world of fancy. She had been talking to Philip about Buddhism (Mrs. Bidlake had a special weakness for Buddhism). At the first screams, she had not even turned round to see what was the matter., contenting herself with raising her voice so as to make it audible above the tumult. The yelling was renewed, was continued. Mrs. Bidlake was silent and shut her eyes. A cross-legged Buddha, serene and golden, appeared against the red background oi her closed lids; she saw the yellow-robed priests around him, each in the attitude of the god and plunged in ecstasic meditation.