“Helll” said Virginia, who had made another slip.
“No, not even a suspicion of hell,” Dr. Obispo insisted. “Though, of course, they ought to have been on the lookout for it. They ought to have had the elementary prudence to guard against being sent there by the accident of sudden death. A few simple precautions, and they could have made the best of both worlds. Could have had their fun while the brother was out of the way and, when the time for having fun was over, could have repented and died in the odour of sanctity. But then it must be admitted that they hadn’t the advantage of reading Goethe’s ‘Faust.’ They hadn’t learnt that inconvenient relatives could be given sleeping draughts. And even if they had learnt, they wouldn’t have been able to go to the drug-store and buy a bottle of Nembutal. Which shows that education in the humanities isn’t enough; there must also be education in science. Dante and Goethe to teach you what to do. And the professor of pharmacology to show you how to put the old buzzard into a coma with a pinch of barbiturate.”
The toes were finished. Still holding her left foot, so as to keep it from any damaging contact until the varnish should be entirely dry, Virginia turned on her visitor. “I won’t have you calling him an old buzzard,” she said hotly.
“Well, shall we say ‘bastard’?” Dr. Obispo suggested.
“He’s a better man than you’ll ever be!” Virginia cried; and her voice had the ring of sincerity. “I think he’s wonderful.”
“You think he’s wonderful,” Dr. Obispo repeated. “But all the same in about fifteen minutes you’ll be sleeping with me.” He laughed as he spoke and, leaning forwards from his place on the bed, caught her two arms from behind, a little below the shoulders. “Look out for your toes,” he said, as Virginia cried out and tried to wrench herself away from him.
The fear of ruining her masterpiece made her check the movement before it was more than barely initiated. Dr. Obispo took advantage of her hesitation to stoop down, through the aura of acetone towards the nape of that delicious neck, towards the perfume of ‘Shocking/ towards a firm warmth against the mouth, a touch of hair like silk upon the cheeks. Swearing, Virginia furiously jerked her head away. But a fine tingling of agreeable sensation was running parallel, so to speak, with her indignation, was incorporating itself in it.
This time, Dr. Obispo kissed her behind the ear. “Shall I tell you,” he whispered, “what I’m going to do to you?” She answered by calling him a lousy ape man. But he told her all the same, in considerable detail.
Less than the fifteen minutes had elapsed when Virginia opened her eyes and, across the now darkened room, caught sight of Our Lady smiling benignantly from among the flowers of her illuminated doll’s house. With a cry of dismay she jumped up and, without waiting to put on any clothes, ran to the shrine and drew the curtains. The lights went out automatically. Stretching out her hands in the thick darkness, she groped her way cautiously back to bed.
PART II
Chapter I
“AGAIN, no dearth of news,” Jeremy wrote to his mother three weeks later. “News of every kind and from all the centuries. Here’s a bit of news, to begin with, about the Second Earl. In the intervals of losing battles for Charles I, the Second Earl was a poet. A bad poet, of course (for the chances are always several thousands to one against any given poet being good), but with occasional involuntary deviations into charm. What about this, for example, which I found in manuscript only yesterday?
One taper burns, but ‘tis too much;
Our loves demand complete eclipse.
Let sight give place to amorous touch,
And candle-light to limbs and lips!
Rather pretty, don’t you think? But alas, almost the only nugget so far unearthed from the alluvium. If only the rest were silence! But that’s the trouble with poets, good no less than bad. They will not keep their traps shut, as we say in the Western hemisphere. What joy if the rest of Wordsworth had been silence, the rest of Coleridge, the rest of Shelley!
“Meanwhile the Fifth Earl sprang a surprise on me yesterday in the form of a note-book full of miscellaneous jottings. I have only just started on them (for I mustn’t spend all my time on any one item till I have the whole collection unpacked and roughly catalogued); but the fragments I’ve read are decidedly appetizing. I found this on the first page: ‘Lord Chesterfield writes to his Son that a Gentleman never speaks to his footman, nor even the beggar in the street, d’un ton brusque, but “corrects the one coolly and refuses the other with humanity.” His lordship should have added that there is an Art by which such coolness may be rendered no less formidable than Anger and such humanity more wounding than Insult.
“ ‘Furthermore, footmen and beggars are not the only objects on whom this Art may be exercised. His lordship has been ungallant enough in this instance to forget the Sex, for there is also an Art of coolly outraging a devoted female, and of abusing her Person, with all the bienstance befitting the most accomplished Gentleman.’
“Not a bad beginning! I will keep you posted of any subsequent discoveries in this field.
“Meanwhile contemporary news is odd, confused and a bit disagreeable. To begin with, Uncle Jo is chronically glum and ill-tempered these days. I suspect the green-eyed monster; for the blue-eyed monster (in other words Miss Maunciple, the Baby) has been rolling them, for some time now, in the direction of young Pete. Whether she rolls more than the eyes, I don’t know; but suspect the fact; for she has that inward, dreamy look, that far-away sleep-walker’s expression, which one often remarks on the faces of young ladies who have been doing a lot of strenuous love-making. You know the expression I mean: exquisitely spiritual and pre-Raphaelitish. One has only to look at such a face to know that God Exists.
The one incongruous feature in the present instance is the costume. A pre-Raphaelite expression demands pre-Raphaelite clothes: long sleeves, square yokes, yards and yards of Liberty velveteen. When you see it, as I did today, in combination with white shorts, a bandana and a cowboy hat, you’re disturbed, you’re all put out. Meanwhile, in defence of Baby’s Honour, I must insist that all this is mere hypothesis and guess-work. It may be, of course, that this new, spiritual expression of hers is not the result of amorous fatigue. For all I know to the contrary, Baby may have been converted by the teachings of the Propter-Object and is now walking about in a state of perpetual samadhi. On the other hand, I do see her giving the glad eye to Pete. What’s more, Uncle Jo exhibits all the symptoms of being suspicious of them and extremely cross with everybody else. With me among others, of course.
Perhaps even more with me than with others, because I happen to have read more books than the rest and am therefore more of a symbol of Culture. And Culture, of course, is a thing for which he has positively a Tartar’s hatred. Only, unlike the Tartars, he doesn’t want to burn the monuments of Culture, he wants to buy them up. He expresses his superiority to talent and education by means of possession rather than destruction; by hiring and then insulting the talented and educated rather than by killing them. (Though perhaps he would kill them, if he had the Tartar’s opportunities and power.) All this means that, when I am not in bed or safely underground with the Hauberks, I spend most of my time grinning and bearing, thinking of Jellybelly and my nice salary, in order not to think too much of Uncle Jo’s bad manners. It’s all very unpleasant; but fortunately not unbearable—and the Hauberks are an immense consolation and compensation.
“So much for the erotic and cultural fronts. On the scientific front, the news is that we’re all perceptibly nearer to living as long as crocodiles. At the time of writing, I haven’t decided whether I really want to live as long as a crocodile. (With the penning of the second ‘crocodile,’ Jeremy was seized by a sudden qualm. His mother would be seventy-seven in August. Under that urbanity of hers, under the crackled glaze of the admirable conversation, there was a passionate greed for life. She would talk matter-of-factly enough about her own approaching extinction; she would make little jokes about her death and funeral. But behind the talk and the little jokes there lurked, as Jeremy knew, a fierce determination to hold on to what was left, to go on doing what she had always done, in the teeth of death, in defiance of old age. This talk of crocodiles might give pain; this expression of doubt as to the desirability of prolonging life might be interpreted as an unfavourable criticism. Jeremy took a new sheet of paper and started the paragraph afresh.)
“So much for the erotic and cultural fronts,” he wrote. “On the scientific front, rien de nouveau, except that the Obispo is being more bumptious than ever; which isn’t news, because he’s always more bumptious than ever. Not one of my favourite characters, I’m afraid. Though
