Eyeless In Gaza by Aldous Huxley Read Free Book Online Page A

comes after thirty-four. But this black well was dark with the concentrated horror of death. There was no escape. His sobs broke out uncontrollably.
    Mary Amberley, who had been lost in the rapturous contemplation of golden leaves patterned against the pale sky, looked down for a moment at this small creature weeping on another planet, then turned away again.
    â€˜Poor child!’ his father said to himself; and then, overbidding as it were, ‘Poor motherless child!’ he added deliberately, and was glad (for he wanted to suffer) that the words should cost him so much pain to pronounce. He lookeddown at his son, saw the grief-twisted face, the full and sensitive lips so agonizingly hurt, and above this tear-stained distortion the broad high forehead, seemingly unmoved in its smooth purity; saw, and felt his heart wrung with an additional pain.
    â€˜Dear boy!’ he said aloud, thinking, as he spoke, how this grief would surely bring them nearer together. It was so difficult somehow with a child – so hard to be natural, to establish a contact. But surely, surely this sadness, and their common memories . . . He squeezed the small hand within his own.
    They were at the church door. The well disintegrated.
    â€˜One might be in Tibet,’ thought Uncle James as he took off his hat. ‘Why not one’s boots as well?’
    Inside the church was an ancient darkness, smelly with centuries of rustic piety. Anthony took two breaths of that sweet-stale air, and felt his midriff heave with a qualm of disgust. Fear and misery had already made him swallow his heart; and now this smell, this beastly smell that meant that the place was full of germs. . . . ‘Reeking with germs!’ He heard her voice – her voice that always changed when she talked about germs, became different, as though somebody else was speaking. At ordinary times, when she wasn’t angry, it sounded so soft and somehow lazy – laughingly lazy, or else tiredly lazy. Germs made it suddenly almost fierce, and at the same time frightened. ‘Always spit when there’s a bad smell about,’ she had told him. ‘There might be typhoid germs in the air.’ His mouth, as he recalled her words, began to water. But how could he spit here, in church? There was nothing to do but swallow his spittle. He shuddered as he did so, with fear and a sickening disgust. And suppose he really should be sick in this stinking place? The apprehension made him feel still sicker. And what did one have to do during the service? He had never been to a funeral before.
    James Beavis looked at his watch. In three minutes the hocus-pocus was timed to begin. Why hadn’t John insisted on a plain-clothes funeral? It wasn’t as if poor Maisie had ever set much store by this kind of thing. A silly little woman; but never religiously silly. Hers had been the plain secular silliness of mere female frivolity. The silliness of reading novels on sofas, alternating with the silliness of tea-parties and picnics and dances. Incredible that John had managed to put up with that kind of foolery – had even seemed to like it! Women crackling like hens round the tea-table. James Beavis frowned with angry contempt. He hated women – was disgusted by them. All those soft bulges of their bodies. Horrible. And the stupidity, the brainlessness. But anyhow, poor Maisie had never been one of the curate-fanciers. It was those awful relations of hers. There were deans in the family – deans and deanesses. John hadn’t wanted to offend them. Weak-minded of him. One ought to be offensive on a matter of principle.
    The organ played. A little procession of surplices entered through the open door. Some men carried in what seemed a great pile of flowers. There was singing. Then silence. And then, in an extraordinary voice, ‘Now is Christ risen from the dead,’ began the clergyman; and went on and on, all about God, and death,