Page 127 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 127

“I’d be scared,” said Lenina
“Well, you’ve only got to take half a gramme of soma first. And now I’m going
to have my bath.” She marched off, trailing her towel.
The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping that Helmholtz
would come that afternoon (for having at last made up his mind to talk to
Helmholtz about Lenina, he could not bear to postpone his confidences a mo-
ment longer), jumped up and ran to the door.

“I had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz,” he shouted as he opened.
On the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit,and with a round white cap
rakishly tilted over her left ear, stood Lenina.
“Oh!” said the Savage, as though some one had struck him a heavy blow.
Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget her fears and her em-
barrassments. “Hullo, John,” she said, smiling, and walked past him into the
room. Automatically he closed the door and followed her. Lenina sat down.
There was a long silence.
“You don’t seem very glad to see me, John,” she said at last.
“Not glad?” The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly fell on his
knees before her and, taking Lenina’s hand, reverently kissed it. “Not glad? Oh,
if you only knew,” he whispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face,
“Admired Lenina,” he went on, “indeed the top of admiration, worth what’s
dearest in the world.” She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. “Oh, you
so perfect” (she was leaning towards him with parted lips), “so perfect and so
peerless are created” (nearer and nearer) “of every creature’s best.” Still nearer.
The Savage suddenly scrambled to his feet. “That’s why,” he said speaking with
averted face, “I wanted to do something first. I mean, to show I was worthy of
you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn’t
absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something.”
“Why should you think it necessary .” Lenina began, but left the sentence unfi-
nished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When one has leant forward,
nearer and nearer, with parted lips-only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as a
clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all-well, there is a
reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one’s blood-stream, a
genuine reason for annoyance.
“At Malpais,” the Savage was incoherently mumbling, “you had to bring her
the skin of a mountain lion-I mean, when you wanted to marry some one. Or
else a wolf.”

“There aren’t any lions in England,” Lenina almost snapped.

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