Free Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley Page A

and pearly bathers grouped themselves in the water and on the banks of a stream so as to form with their moving bodies and limbs a kind of garland (completed above by the foliage of a tree) round the central point of the canvas. Through this wreath of nacreous flesh (and even their faces were just smiling flesh, not a trace of spirit to distract you from the contemplation of the lovely forms and their relations) the eye travelled on towards a pale bright landscape of softly swelling downland and clouds.
    Plate in hand and munching caviar sandwiches, old Bidlake stood with his companion, contemplating his own work. An emotion of mingled elation and sadness possessed him.
    ‘It’s good,’ he said, ‘it’s enormously good. Look at the way it’s composed. Perfect balance, and yet there’s no suggestion of repetition or artificial arrangement.’ The other thoughts and feelings which the picture had evoked in his mind he left unexpressed. They were too many and too confused to be easily put into words. Too melancholy above all; he did not care to dwell on them. He stretched out a finger and touched the sideboard; it was mahogany, genuine wood. ‘Look at the figure on the right with the arms up.’ He went on with his technical exposition in order that he might keep down, might drive away the uninvited thoughts.’see how it compensates for the big stooping one there on the left. Like a long lever lifting a heavy weight.’ But the figure with the arms up was Jenny Smith, the loveliest model he had ever had. Incarnation of beauty, incarnation of stupidity and vulgarity. A goddess as long as she was naked, kept her mouth shut, or had it kept shut for her with kisses; but oh, when she opened it, when she put on her clothes, her frightful hats! He remembered the time he had taken her to Paris with him. He had to send her back after a week. ‘You ought to be muzzled, Jenny,’ he told her, and Jenny cried. ‘It was a mistake going to Paris,’ he went on. ‘Too much sun in Paris, too many artificial lights. Next time, we’ll go to Spitzbergen. In winter. The nights are six months long up there.’ That had made her cry still more loudly. The girl had treasures of sensuality as well as of beauty. Afterwards she took to drink and decayed, came round begging and drank up the charity. And finally what was left of her died. But the real Jenny remained here in the picture with her arms up and the pectoral muscles lifting her little breasts. What remained of John Bidlake, the John Bidlake of five and twenty years ago, was there in the picture too. Another John Bidlake still existed to contemplate his own ghost. Soon even he would have disappeared. And in any case, was he the real Bidlake, any more than the sodden and bloated woman who died had been the real Jenny? Real Jenny lived among the pearly bathers. And real Bidlake, their creator, existed by implication in his creatures.
    ‘It’s good,’ he said again, when he had finished his exposition, and his tons was mournful; his face as he looked at his picture was sad.‘But after all,’ he added, after a little pause and with a sudden explosion of voluntary laughter,’ after all, everything I do is good; damn good even.’ It was a bidding of defiance to the stupid critics who had seen a falling off in his later paintings; it was a challenge to his own past, to time and old age, to the real John Bidlake who had painted real Jenny and kissed her into silence.
    ‘Of course it’s good,’ said Lucy, and wondered why the old man’s painting had fallen off so much of late. This last exhibition—it was deplorable. He himself, after all, had remained so young, comparatively speaking. Though of course, she reflected, as she looked at him, he had certainly aged a good deal during the last few months.
    ‘Of course,’ he repeated. ‘That’s the right spirit.’
    ‘Though I must confess,’ Lucy added, to change the subject, ‘I always find your bathers rather an