Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley (100 books to read txt) 📕

to give himself courage and the illusion of strength, he drank glass after glass of the strong red wine. He kept his eyes fixed most of the time on the tablecloth in front of his plate; but every now and then he would look up for a second to dart a glance at the other two⁠—for a moment only, then, fearful of being caught in the act and looked at straight in the face, he turned away again.

Mr. Cardan enjoyed his supper. Not that the food was particularly good; it was not. The old woman was one of those inept practitioners of Italian cookery who disguise their shortcomings under floods of tomato sauce, with a pinch of garlic thrown in to make the disguise impenetrable. No, what Mr. Cardan enjoyed was the company. It was a long time since he had sat down with such interesting specimens. One’s range, he reflected, is altogether too narrowly limited. One doesn’t know enough people; one’s acquaintanceship isn’t sufficiently diversified. Burglars, for example, millionaires, imbeciles, clergymen, Hottentots, sea captains⁠—one’s personal knowledge of these most interesting human species is quite absurdly small. Tonight, it seemed to him, he was doing something to widen his range.

“I’m so glad we met you,” Miss Elver was saying. “In the dark⁠—such a start you gave me too!” She shrieked with laughter. “We were getting so dull here. Weren’t we, Phil?” She appealed to her brother; but Mr. Elver said nothing, did not even look up. “So dull. I’m awfully glad you were there.”

“Not so glad as I am, I assure you,” said Mr. Cardan gallantly.

Miss Elver looked at him for a moment, coyly and confidentially; then putting up her hand to her face, as though she were screening herself from Mr. Cardan’s gaze, she turned away, tittering. Her face became quite red. She peeped at him between her fingers and tittered again.

It occurred to Mr. Cardan that he’d be in for a breach of promise case very soon if he weren’t careful. Tactfully he changed the subject; asked her what sort of food she liked best and learned that her favourites were strawberries, cream ice and mixed chocolates.

The dessert had been eaten. Mr. Elver suddenly looked up and said: “Grace, I think you ought to go to bed.”

Miss Elver’s face, from having been bright with laughter, became at once quite overcast. A film of tears floated up into her eyes, making them seem more lustrous; she looked at her brother appealingly. “Must I go?” she said. “Just this once!” She tried to coax him. “This once!”

But Mr. Elver was not to be moved. “No, no,” he said sternly. “You must go.”

His sister sighed and made a little whimpering sound. But she got up, all the same, and walked obediently towards the door. She was almost on the threshold, when she halted, turned and ran back to say good night to Mr. Cardan. “I’m so glad,” she said, “that we found you. Such fun. Good night. But you mustn’t look at me like that.” She put up her hand again to her face. “Oh, not like that.” And still giggling, she ran out of the room.

There was a long silence.

“Have some wine,” said Mr. Elver at last, and pushed the flask in Mr. Cardan’s direction.

Mr. Cardan replenished his glass and then, politely, did the same for his host. Wine⁠—it was the only thing that was likely to make this dismal devil talk. With his practised and professional eye, Mr. Cardan thought he could detect in his host’s expression certain hardly perceptible symptoms of incipient tipsiness. A spidery creature like that, thought Mr. Cardan contemptuously, couldn’t be expected to hold his liquor well; and he had been putting it down pretty steadily all through supper. A little more and, Mr. Cardan was confident, he’d be as clay in the hands of a sober interrogator (and Mr. Cardan could count on being sober for at least three bottles longer than a poor feeble creature like this); he’d talk, he’d talk; the only difficulty would be to get him to stop talking.

“Thanks,” said Mr. Elver, and gloomily gulped down the replenished glass.

That’s the style, thought Mr. Cardan; and in his liveliest manner he began to tell the story of the grocer’s brother’s statue and of his pursuit of it, ending up with an account, already more florid than the previous version, of how he lost himself.

“I console myself superstitiously,” he concluded, “by the reflection that fate wouldn’t have put me to these little troubles and inconveniences if it weren’t intending to do something handsome by me in the end. I’m paying in advance; but I trust I’m paying for something round and tidy. All the same, what a curse this hunt for money is!”

Mr. Elver nodded. “It’s the root of all evil,” he said, and emptied his glass. Unobtrusively Mr. Cardan replenished it.

“Quite right,” he confirmed. “And it’s twice cursed, if you’ll allow me to play Portia for a moment: it curses him that hath⁠—can you think of a single really rich person of your acquaintance who wouldn’t be less avaricious, less tyrannous, self-indulgent and generally porkish if he didn’t pay supertax? And it also curses him that hath not, making him do all manner of absurd, humiliating, discreditable things which he’d never think of doing if the hedgerows grew breadfruit and bananas and grapes enough to keep one in free food and liquor.”

“It curses him that hath not the most,” said Mr. Elver with a sudden savage animation. This was a subject, evidently, on which he felt deeply. He looked sharply at Mr. Cardan for a moment, then turned away to dip his long nose once more in his tumbler.

“Perhaps,” said Mr. Cardan judicially. “At any rate there are more complaints about this curse than about the other. Those that have not complain about their own fate. Those that have do not, it is only those in contact with them⁠—and since the havers are few these too are few⁠—who complain of the curse of having. In my time I have belonged to both categories. Once I had; and I can see that to my fellow