Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [44]
Suddenly she moved, she walked out of sight. Walter followed. Passing the entrance to the dining-room, he noticed Burlap, no longer the anchorite, drinking champagne and being talked to by the Comtesse d’Exergillod. Gosh! thought Walter, remembering his own experiences with Molly d’Exergillod. ‘But Burlap probably adores her. He would…He…’ But there she was again, talking—damnation!—with General Knoyle. Walter hung about at a little distance, waiting impatiently for an opportunity to address her.
‘Caught at last,’ said the General patting her hand. ‘Been looking for you the whole evening.’
Half satyr, half uncle, he had an old man’s weakness for Lucy. ‘Charming little girl!’ he would assure all those who wanted to hear. ‘Charming little figure! Such eyes!’ For the most part he preferred them rather younger. ‘Nothing like youth!’ he was fond of saying. His lifelong prejudice against America and Americans had been transformed into enthusiastic admiration ever since, at the age of sixty-five, he had visited California and seen the flappers of Hollywood and the bathing beauties on the Pacific beaches. Lucy was nearly thirty; but the General had known her for years; he continued to regard her as hardly more than the young girl of his first memories. For him, she was still about seventeen. He patted her hand again. ‘We’ll have a good talk,’ he said.
‘That will be fun,’ said Lucy with sarcastic politeness.
From his post of observation Walter looked on. The General had been handsome once. Corseted, his tall figure still preserved its military bearing. The gallant and the guardsman, he smiled; he fingered his white moustache. The next moment he was the playful, protective and confidential old uncle. Faintly smiling, Lucy looked at him out of her pale grey eyes with a detached and unmerciful amusement. Walter studied her. She was not even particularly good looking. So why, why? He wanted reasons, he wanted justification. Why? The question persistently reverberated. There was no answer. He had just fallen in love with her—that was all; insanely, the first time he set eyes on her.
Turning her head, Lucy caught sight of him. She beckoned and called his name. He pretended to be surprised and delightfully astonished.
‘I hope you’ve not forgotten our appointment,’ he said.
‘Do I ever forget? Except occasionally on purpose,’ she qualified with a little laugh. She turned to the General. ‘Walter and I are going to see your stepson this evening,’ she announced in the tone and with the smile which one employs when one talks to people about those who are dear to them. But between Spandrell and his stepfather the quarrel, she knew very well, was mortal. Lucy had inherited all her mother’s fondness for the deliberate social blunder and with it a touch of her father’s detached scientific curiosity. She enjoyed experimenting, not with frogs and guinea-pigs, but with human beings. You did unexpected things to people, you put them in curious situations and waited to see what would happen. It was the method of Darwin and Pasteur.
What happened in this case was that General Knoyle’s face became extremely red. ‘I haven’t seen him for some time,’ he said stiffly.
‘Good, she said to herself. ‘He’s reacting.’
‘But he’s such good company,’ she said aloud.
The General grew redder and frowned. What he hadn’t done for that boy! And how ungratefully the boy had responded, how abominably he had behaved! Getting himself kicked out of every job the General had wangled him into. A waster, an idler; drinking and drabbing; making his mother miserable, sponging on her, disgracing the family name. Anid the insolence of the fellow, the things he had ventured to say the last time they had met and, as usual, had a scene together! The Genleral was never likely to forget being called ‘an impotent old fumbler.’
‘And so intelligent,’ Lucy was saying. With an inward smile she remembered Spandrell’s summary of his stepfather’s career. ‘Superannuated from Harrow,’ it began, ‘passed out from Sandhurst at the bottom of the list, he had a most distinguished career in the Army, rising durng the War to a high post in the Military Intelligence Department.