"Aldous Huxley - Crome Yellow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huxley Aldous)

"Ah, it's a fine book this, a beautiful book," said Priscilla, as
she let the pages flick back, one by one, from under her thumb.
"And here's the passage about the Lotus Pool. He compares the
Soul to a Lotus Pool, you know." She held up the book again and
read. "'A Friend of mine has a Lotus Pool in his garden. It
lies in a little dell embowered with wild roses and eglantine,
among which the nightingale pours forth its amorous descant all
the summer long. Within the pool the Lotuses blossom, and the
birds of the air come to drink and bathe themselves in its
crystal waters...' Ah, and that reminds me," Priscilla
exclaimed, shutting the book with a clap and uttering her big
profound laugh--"that reminds me of the things that have been
going on in our bathing-pool since you were here last. We gave
the village people leave to come and bathe here in the evenings.
You've no idea of the things that happened."

She leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper; every now
and then she uttered a deep gurgle of laughter. "...mixed
bathing...saw them out of my window...sent for a pair of field-
glasses to make sure...no doubt of it..." The laughter broke out
again. Denis laughed too. Barbecue-Smith was tossed on the
floor.

It's time we went to see if tea's ready," said Priscilla. She
hoisted herself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the
room, striding beneath the trailing silk. Denis followed her,
faintly humming to himself:

"That's why I'm going to
Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra,
Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-popera."

And then the little twiddly bit of accompaniment at the end:
"ra-ra."


CHAPTER III.

The terrace in front of the house was a long narrow strip of
turf, bounded along its outer edge by a graceful stone
balustrade. Two little summer-houses of brick stood at either
end. Below the house the ground sloped very steeply away, and
the terrace was a remarkably high one; from the balusters to the
sloping lawn beneath was a drop of thirty feet. Seen from below,
the high unbroken terrace wall, built like the house itself of
brick, had the almost menacing aspect of a fortification--a
castle bastion, from whose parapet one looked out across airy
depths to distances level with the eye. Below, in the
foreground, hedged in by solid masses of sculptured yew trees,
lay the stone-brimmed swimming-pool. Beyond it stretched the