Page:Those Barren Leaves - Huxley - 1925.djvu/31

Rh "Well now," said Mrs. Aldwinkle to her new guest, "I must show you the view and the house and all that."

"Miss Thriplow's already very kindly been doing that," said Calamy.

At this piece of information Mrs. Aldwinkle looked extremely annoyed. "But she can't have shown you everything," she said, "because she doesn't know what there is to show. And besides, Mary knows nothing about the history of the place, or the Cybo Malaspinas, or the artists who worked on the palace, or " she waved her hand with a gesture indicating that, in fine, Mary Thriplow knew nothing whatever and was completely incapable of showing any one round the house and its gardens

"In any case," said Calamy, doing his best to say the right thing, "I've seen enough already to make me think the place perfectly lovely."

But Mrs. Aldwinkle was not content with this spontaneous and untutored admiration. She was sure that he had not really seen the beauty of the view, that he had not understood it, not known how to analyse it into its component charms. She began to expound the prospect.

"The cypresses make such a wonderful contrast with the olives," she explained, prodding the landscape with the tip of her parasol, as though she were giving a lantern lecture with coloured slides.

She understood it all, of course; she was entirely qualified to appreciate it in every detail. For the view was now her property. It was therefore the finest in the world; but at the same time, she alone had the right to let you know the fact.

We are all apt to value unduly those things which happen to belong to us. Provincial picture galleries are always stuffed with Raphaels and Giorgiones. The most brilliant metropolis in Christendom, according to its inhabitants, is Dublin. My gramophone and my Ford car are better than yours. And how pathetically boring are those poor but cultured tourists who show us their col-