Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley Page A

curiosity stirred the assembled guests. The apparition from a world so different from theirs of this huge bent old man, pipe-smoking and tweed-jacketed, seemed strangely portentous. He had a certain air of the skeleton in the cupboard—broken loose; or of one of those monsters which haunt the palaces of only the best and most aristocratic families. The Beastie of Glamis, the Minotaur itself could hardly have aroused more interest than did Lord Edward. Lorgnons were raised, there was a general craning to left and right, as people tried to look round the well-fed obstacles in front of them. Becoming suddenly aware of so many inquisitive glances, Lord Edward took fright. A consciousness of social sin possessed him; he took his pipe out of his mouth and put it away, still smoking, into the pocket of his jacket. He halted irresolutely. Flight or advance? He turned this way and that, pivoting his whole bent body from the hips with a curious swinging motion, like the slow ponderous balancing of a camel’s neck. For a moment he wanted to retreat. But love of Bach was stronger than his terrors. He was the bear whom the smell of molasses constrains in spite of all his fears to visit the hunters’ camp; the lover who is ready to face an armed and outraged husband and the divorce court for the sake of an hour in his mistress’s arms. He went forward, tiptoeing down the stairs more conspiratorially than ever—Guy Fawkes discovered, but yet irrationally hoping that he might escape notice by acting as though the Gunpowder Plot were still unrolling itself according to plan. Illidge followed him. His face had gone very red with the embarrassment of the first moment; but in spite of this embarrassment, or rather because of it, he came downstairs after Lord Edward with a kind of swagger, one hand in his pocket, a smile on his lips. He turned his eyes coolly this way and that over the crowd. The expression on his face was one of contemptuous amusement. Too busy being the Martian to look where he was going, Illidge suddenly missed his footing on this unfamiliarly regal staircase with its inordinate treads and dwarfishly low risers. His foot slipped, he staggered wildly on the brink of a fall, waving his arms, to come to rest, however, still miraculously on his feet, some two or three steps lower down. He resumed his descent with such dignity as he could muster up. He felt exceedingly angry, he hated Lady Edward’s guests one and all, without exception.

CHAPTER IV
    Pongileoni surpassed himself in the final Badinerie. Euclidean axioms made holiday with the formulae of elementary statics. Arithmetic held a wild saturnalian kermesse; algebra cut capers. The music came to an end in an orgy of mathematical merry-making. There was applause. Tolley bowed, with all his usual grace; Pongileoni bowed, even the anonymous fiddlers bowed. The audience pushed back its chairs and got up. Torrents of pent-up chatter broke loose.
    ‘Wasn’t the Old Man too marvellously funny?’ Polly Logan had found a friend.
    ‘And the little carroty man with him.’
    ‘Like Mutt and Jeff.’
    ‘I thought I should die of laughing,’ said Norah.
    ‘Such an old magician!’ Polly spoke in a thrilling whisper, leaning forward and opening her eyes very wide, as though to express in dramatic pantomime as well as words the mysteriousness of the magical old man. ‘A wizard.’
    ‘But what does he do up there?’
    ‘Cuts up toads and salamanders and all that,’ Polly answered.
     
    ‘Eye of newt and toe of frog,
    Wool of bat and tongue of dog…’
     
    She recited with gusto, intoxicated by the words. ‘And he takes guinea-pigs and makes them breed with serpents. Can you imagine it—a cross between a cobra and a guinea-pig?’
    ‘Ugh!’ the other shuddered. ‘But why did he ever marry her, if that’s the only sort of thing he’s interested in? That’s what I always wonder.’
    ‘Why did she marry him?’ Polly’s voice dropped again to a stage whisper. She