Eyeless In Gaza by Aldous Huxley Read Free Book Online

importance to names and dates and figures; he prided himself on his power to reproduce them correctly. A lapse of memory drove him to fury. ‘Atherton? Anderson?’ And what made it more maddening was the fact that the young man was so good-looking, carried himself so well – not in that stupid, stiff, military way, like his father-in-law, the General, but gracefully, easily . . . ‘I shan’t know what to call him,’ he said to himself; and his right cheek began to twitch, as though some living creature had been confined beneath the skin and were violently struggling to escape.
    They walked on. It seemed to Anthony that he had swallowed his heart – swallowed it whole, without chewing.He felt rather sick, as though he were expecting to be caned.
    The black giants halted, turned, and came back to meet them. Hats were raised, hands shaken.
    â€˜And dear little Anthony!’ said Lady Champernowne, when at last it was his turn. Impulsively, she bent down and kissed him.
    She was fat. Her lips left a disgusting wet place on his cheek. Anthony hated her.
    â€˜Perhaps I ought to kiss him too,’ thought Mary Amberley, as she watched her mother. One was expected to do such odd things when one was married. Six months ago, when she was still Mary Champernowne and fresh from school, it would have been unthinkable. But now . . . one never knew. In the end, however, she decided that she wouldn’t kiss the boy, it would really be too ridiculous. She pressed his hand without speaking, smiling only from the remote security of her secret happiness. She was nearly five months gone with child, and had lived for these last two or three weeks in a kind of trance of drowsy bliss, inexpressibly delicious. Bliss in a world that had become beautiful and rich and benevolent out of all recognition. The country, as they drove that morning in the gently swaying landau, had been like paradise; and this little plot of green between the golden trees and the tower was Eden itself. Poor Mrs Beavis had died, it was true; so pretty still, so young. How sad that was! But the sadness, somehow, did not touch this secret bliss of hers, remained profoundly irrelevant to it, as though it were the sadness of somebody in another planet.
    Anthony looked up for a moment into the smiling face, so bright in its black setting, so luminous with inner peace and happiness, then was overcome with shyness and dropped his eyes.
    Fascinated, meanwhile, Roger Amberley observed his father-in-law and wondered how it was possible for anyone tolive so unfailingly in character; how one could contrive to be a real general and at the same time to look and sound so exactly like a general on the musical comedy stage. Even at a funeral, even while he was saying a few well-chosen words to the bereaved husband – pure Grossmith! Under his fine brown moustache his lips twitched irrepressibly.
    â€˜Looks badly cut up,’ the General was thinking, as he talked to John Beavis; and felt sorry for the poor fellow, even while he still disliked him. For of course the man was an affected bore and a prig, too clever, but at the same time a fool. Worst of all, not a man’s man. Always surrounded by petticoats. Mothers’ petticoats, aunts’ petticoats, wives’ petticoats. A few years in the army would have done him all the good in the world. Still, he did look most horribly cut up. And Maisie had been a sweet little thing. Too good for him, of course . . .
    They stood for a moment, then all together slowly moved towards the church. Anthony was in the midst of them, a dwarf among the giants. Their blackness hemmed him in, obscured the sky, eclipsed the amber tower and the trees. He walked as though at the bottom of a moving well. Its black walls rustled all around him. He began to cry.
    He had not wanted to know – had done his best not to know, except superficially, as one knows, for example, that thirty-five