Free Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

I like.’ The phrase seemed to give him confidence. He cleared his throat and started again. ‘What I always say is…’
    ‘And now,’ Lady Edward concluded triumphantly, ‘I want to introduce Mr. Babbage, who helps Edward with his work and who is a real expert on newts. Mr. Babbage, this is General Knoyle and this is Colonel Pilchard.’ She gave a last smile and was gone.
    ‘Well, I’m damned!’ exclaimed the General, and the Colonel said she was a holy terror.
    ‘One of the holiest,’ Illidge feelingly agreed.
    The two military gentlemen looked at him for a moment and decided that from one so obviously beyond the pale the comment was an impertinence. Good Catholics may have their little jokes about the saints and the habits of the clergy; but they are outraged by the same little jokes on the lips of infidels. The General made no verbal comment and the Colonel contented himself with looking his disapproval. But the way in which they turned to one another and continued their interrupted discussion of race-horses, as though they were alone, was so intentionally offensive, that Illidge wanted to kick them.
     

     
    ‘Lucy, my child!’
    ‘Uncle John!’ Lucy Tantamount turned round and smiled at her adopted uncle. She was of middle height and slim, like her mother, with short dark hair, oiled to complete blackness and brushed back from her forehead. Naturally pale, she wore no rouge. Only her thin lips were painted and there was a little blue round the eyes. A black dress emphasized the whiteness of her arms and shoulders. It was more than two years now since Henry Tantamount had died—for Lucy had married her second cousin. But she still mourned in her dress, at any rate by artificial light. Black suited her so well. ‘How are you?’ she added, thinking as she spoke the words that he was beginning to look very old.
    ‘Perishing,’ said John Bidlake. He took her arm familiarly, grasping it just above the elbow with a big, blue-veined hand. ‘Give me an excuse for going to have supper. I’m ravenously hungry.’
    ‘But I’m not.’
    ‘No matter,’ said old Bidlake. ‘My need is greater than thine, as Sir Philip Sidney so justly remarked.’
    ‘But I don’t want to eat.’ She objected to being domineered, to following instead of leading. But Uncle John was too much for her.
    ‘I’ll do all the eating,’ he declared. ‘Enough for two.’ And jovially laughing, he continued to lead her along towards the dining-room.
    Lucy abandoned the struggle. They edged their way through the crowd. Greenish-yellow and freckled, the orchid in John Bidlake’s button-hole resembled the face of a yawning serpent. His monocle glittered in his eye.
    ‘Who’s that old man with Lucy?’ Polly Logan enquired as they passed.
    ‘That’s old Bidlake.’
    ‘Bidlake? The man who…who painted the pictures?’ Polly spoke hesitatingly, in the tone of one who is conscious of a hole in her education and is afraid of making a ridiculous mistake.’do you mean that Bidlake?’ Her companion nodded. She felt enormously relieved. ‘Well I never,’ she went on, raising her eyebrows and opening her eyes very wide. ‘I always thought he was an Old Master. But he must be about a hundred by this time, isn’t he?’
    ‘I should think he must be.’ Norah was also under twenty.
    ‘I must say,’ Polly handsomely admitted, ‘he doesn’t look it. He’s still quite a beau, or a buck, or a Champagne Charlie, or whatever people were in his young days.’
    ‘He’s had about fifteen wives,’ said Norah.
    It was at this moment that Hugo Brockle found the courage to present himself. ‘You don’t remember me. We were introduced in our perambulators.’ How idiotic it sounded! He felt himself blushing all over.
    The third and finest ofJohn Bidlake’s ‘Bathers’ hung over the mantelpiece in the dining-room of Tantamount House. It was a gay and joyous picture, very light in tone, the colouring very pure and brilliant. Eight plump