Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [34]
Mrs. Betterton went on with her exposition of the profundities. To Walter they sounded curiously like certain paragraphs in that article of Burlap’s, the proof of which he had only that morning been correcting for the printers. Reproduced—explosion after enthusiastic explosion—from Burlap’s spoken reproduction, the article did sound rather ridiculous. A light dawned. Could that be the reason? He looked at Burlap. His face was stony.
‘I’m afraid I must go,’ said Burlap abruptly, when Mrs. Betterton paused.
‘But no,’ she protested. ‘But why?’
He made an effort and smiled his Sodoma smile. ‘The world is too much with us,’ he quoted mysteriously. He liked saying mysterious things, dropping them surprisingly into the middle of the conversation.
‘But you’re not enough with us,’ flattered Mrs. Betterton.
‘It’s the crowd,’ he explained. ‘After a time, I get into a panic. I feel they’re crushing my soul to death. I should begin to scream if I stayed.’ He took his leave.
‘Such a wonderful man!’ Mrs. Betterton exclaimed before he was well out of earshot. ‘It must be wonderful for you to work with him.’
‘He’s a very good editor,’ said Walter.
‘But I was thinking of his personality. How shall I say? The spiritual quality of the man.’
Walter nodded and said, ‘Yes,’ rather vaguely. The spiritual quality of Burlap was just the thing he wasn’t very enthusiastic about.
‘In an age like ours,’ Mrs. Betterton continued, ‘he’s an oasis in the desert of stupid frivolity and cynicism.’
‘Some of his ideas are first rate,’ Walter cautiously agreed.
He wondered how soon he could decently make his escape.
‘There’s Walter,’ said Lady Edward.
‘Walter who?’ asked Bidlake. Borne by the social currents, they had drifted together again.
‘Your Walter.’
‘Oh, mine.’ He was not much interested, but he followed the direction of her glance. ‘What a weed!’ he said. He disliked his children for growing up; growing, they pushed him backwards, year after year, backwards towards the gulf and the darkness. There was Walter; it was only yesterday he was born. And yet the fellow must be five-and-twenty, if he was a day.
‘Poor Walter; he doesn’t look at all well.’
‘Looks as though he had worms,’ said Bidlake ferociously.
‘How’s that deplorable affair of his going?’ she asked.
Bidlake shrugged his shoulders. ‘As usual, I suppose.’
‘I never met the woman.’
‘I did. She’s awful.’
‘What, vulgar? ‘
‘No, no. I wish she were,’ protested Bidlake. ‘She’s refined, terribly refined. And she speaks like this.’ He spoke into a drawling falsetto that was meant to be an imitation of Marjorie’s voice. ‘Like a sweet little innocent girlie. And so serious, such a highbrow. He interrupted the imitation with his own deep laugh,’Do you know what she said to me once? I may mention that she always talks to me about Art. Art with a capital A. She said’: (his voice went up again to the babyish falsetto) ‘“I think there’s a place for Fra Angelico and Rubens.”’ He laughed again, homerically. ‘What an imbecile! And she has a nose that’s at least three inches too long.’
Marjorie had opened the box in which she kept her private papers. All Walter’s letters. She untied the ribbon and looked them over one by one. ‘Dear Mrs. Carling, I enclose under separate cover that volume of Keats’s Letters I mentioned to-day. Please do not trouble to return it. I have another copy, which I shall re-read for the pleasure of accompanying you, even at a distance, through the same spiritual adventure.’
That was the first of them. She read it through and recaptured in memory something of the pleased surprise which that passage about the spiritual adventure had originally evoked in her. In conversation he had always seemed to shrink from the direct and personal approach, he was painfully shy. She hadn