After the Fireworks (44 page)

At any rate, whatever the cause, it was to me that he talked about the whole affair, that spring of 1919, when he was staying with us in Sussex, recuperating after those dreary months of confinement. We used to go for long walks together, across the open downs, or between the grey pillars of the beech-woods; and painfully overcoming reluctance after reluctance, proceeding from confidence to more intimate confidence, my Uncle Spencer told me the whole story.

The story involved interminable discussions by the way. For we had to decide, first of all, whether there was any possible scientific explanation of prophecy; whether there was such a thing as an absolute future waiting to be lived through. And at much greater length, even, we had to argue about women—whether they were really ‘like that' (and into what depths of cynicism my poor Uncle Spencer
had learned, during the long, embittered meditations of his prison days and nights, to plunge and wallow!), or whether they were like the angels he had desired them to be.

But more important than to speculate on Emmy's possible character was to discover where she now was. More urgent than to wonder if prophecy could conceivably be reliable, was to take steps to fulfil this particular prophecy. For weeks my Uncle Spencer and I played at detectives.

I have often fancied that we must have looked, when we made our inquiries together, uncommonly like the traditional pair in the stories—my Uncle Spencer, the bright-eyed, cadaverous, sharp-featured genius, the Holmes of the combination; and I, moon-faced and chubby, a very youthful Watson. But, as a matter of fact, it was I, if I may say so without fatuity, who was the real Holmes of the two. My Uncle Spencer was too innocent of the world to know how to set about looking for a vanished mistress; just as he was too innocent of science to know how or where to find out what there was to be discovered on any abstracter subject.

It was I who took him to the British Museum and made him look up all the back numbers of the theatrical papers to see when Emmy had last advertised her desire to be engaged. It was I, the apparent Watson, who thought of the theatrical agencies and the stage doors of all the suburban music halls. Sleuth-like in aspect, innocent at heart, my Uncle Spencer followed, marvelling at my familiarity with the ways of the strange world.

But I must temper my boasting by the confession that we were always entirely unsuccessful. No agency had heard of Emmy Wendle since 1914. Her card had appeared in no paper. The porters of music halls remembered her, but only
as something antediluvian. ‘Emmy Wendle? Oh yes, Emmy Wendle . . .' And scratching their heads, they strove by a mental effort to pass from the mere name to the person, like palæontologists reconstructing the whole diplodocus from the single fossil bone.

Two or three times we were even given addresses. But the landladies of the lodging-houses where she had stayed did not even remember her; and the old aunt at Ealing, from whom we joyfully hoped so much, had washed her hands of Emmy two or three months before the war began. And the conviction she then had that Emmy was a bad girl was only intensified and confirmed by our impertinent inquiries. No, she knew nothing about Emmy Wendle, now, and didn't want to know. And she'd trouble us to leave respectable people like herself in peace. And, defeated, we climbed back into our taxi, while the inhabitants of the squalid little street peered out at us and our vehicle, as though we had been visitors from another planet, and the metropolitan hackney carriage a fairy chariot.

‘Perhaps she's dead,' said my Uncle Spencer softly, after a long silence.

‘Perhaps,' I said brutally, ‘she's found a husband and retired into private life.'

My Uncle Spencer shut his eyes, sighed, and drew his hand across his forehead. What dreadful images filled his mind? He would almost have preferred that she should be dead.

‘And yet the Indian,' he murmured, ‘he was always right . . .'

And perhaps he may still be right in this. Who knows?

ALDOUS HUXLEY
(1894-1963) is the author of the classic novels
Brave New World, Island
, and
Eyeless in Gaza
, as well as such critically acclaimed nonfiction works as
The Devils of Loudun, The Perennial Philosophy
, and
The Doors of Perception
. Born in Surrey, England, and educated at Oxford, he died in Los Angeles, California.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

NOVELS

The Genius and the Goddess

Ape and Essence

Time Must Have a Stop

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

Eyeless in Gaza

Point Counter Point

Those Barren Leaves

Antic Hay

Crome Yellow

Brave New World

Island

ESSAYS AND BELLES LETTRES

Brave New World Revisited

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Heaven and Hell

The Doors of Perception

The Devils of Loudun

Themes and Variations

Ends and Means

Texts and Pretexts

The Olive Tree

Music at Night

Vulgarity in Literature

Do What You Will

Proper Studies

Jesting Pilate

Along the Road

On the Margin

Essays New and Old

The Art of Seeing

The Perennial Philosophy

Science, Liberty and Peace

SHORT STORIES AND NOVELLAS

Collected Short Stories

Brief Candles

Two or Three Graces

Limbo

Little Mexican

Mortal Coils

After the Fireworks

BIOGRAPH

Grey Eminence

POETRY

The Cicadas

Leda

TRAVEL

Beyond the Mexique Bay

DRAMA

Mortal Coils—A Play

The World of Light

The Discovery, Adapted from Francis Sheridan

SELECTED WORKS

Rotunda

The World of Aldous Huxley

Cover design by Gregg Kulick

Cover art: © DeAgostini/Getty Images and © DoverPictura

AFTER THE FIREWORKS.
Copyright © 1926, 1930, 1933 by Aldous Huxley. Foreword © 2016 Gary Giddins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-242392-4

EPub Edition October 2016 ISBN 9780062423955

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*
It is (true) art to conceal art.

*
“Great”

†
“Fabulous.”

*
A person who pretends to be what she is not.

*
“Thank you, dear master.”

†
“Yes, dear mistress.”

*
In her essential form.

*
[Of the dead, say] nothing but good.

*
“Holding you tight, so tight, in the ecstasy of love.”

*
Civil status.

*
With the most honorable intentions.

*
Who knows?

†
Who knows? Who knows?

*
Let's go.

*
The gentlemen are served.

*
Family sorrow.

*
You are a big pig.

*
Look on me well; yes, I am, I am Beatrice.

*
At fifty, you become a bit crazy.

†
Crazy and piggish. I too have become a pig. Underage girls, at fifty, know they are an obsession. Just an obsession.

*
Etiquette, good manners.

*
Surrenders the sight to the touch, to the lip the light.

†
To the lip the light.

*
To the lip the light.