Angels and Insects by A. S. Byatt

blood and dust and destruction. And then, I think, no brute beast could have such thoughts. No frog, no hound even, could have a vision of the Angel of Annunciation.
Where does it all come from
?’
    ‘It is a mystery. Mystery may be another name for God. It hasbeen well argued that mystery is another name for Matter—we
are
and have access to Mind, but Matter is mysterious in its very nature, however we choose to analyse the laws of its metamorphoses. The laws of the transformation of Matter do not explain it away.’
    ‘Now you argue on my side. And yet I feel all these arguments are
nothing
, the motions of minds that are not equipped to carry them through.’
    ‘And there too is hope, as well as dread. Where do
they
come from, our minds?’
    Away from the hexagonal stadium, much attention was being paid to the mysteries of the mundane and the material. Eugenia and Rowena, and the other girls too, for there was to be a bevy of bridesmaids, were always undergoing fittings. A steady stream of dressmakers, milliners and seamstresses wove their paths in and out of the various nurseries and boudoirs. Odd glimpses could be had of the young ladies standing still, cocooned in silk, whilst the neat, self-effacing little attendants, their mouths bristling with pins and their hands busily snapping scissors, went round and round them. New bedrooms were in preparation for William and Eugenia. She occasionally brought him patterns of silk twill or damask to approve. He had no sense that
disapproval
was possible, and in any case was indifferent enough to his creature comforts to be mildly amused by all this industry and tastefulness, though he was less delighted to find himself the object of the attentions of Lionel Alabaster’s tailor and valet, who made him a wardrobe consisting not only of his wedding-suit, but of suitable gentlemen’s country wear, breeches, jackets, boots. As time drew on, the kitchens began to smell delightfully of the baking of batches of cakes and jellies and puddings. William was expected now, as he had not quite been before, to sit in the smoking-room with Edgar and Lionel and Robin Swinnerton and their friends, whose conversation had only two topics, the mysteries of breeding horses and hounds, and thelaying of bets and taking of dares. After several glasses of port, Edgar would, invariably, begin to recount the high moments of his life. The time he and Sultan had flown over the wall into the Far Paddock, where they had almost broken their necks. The time he had jumped Ivanhoe in through the window of the Hall for a bet, and skidded the length of it on a Turkey carpet. The time he had swum the river in flood on Ivanhoe, and nearly been swept away.
    William liked to sit quietly in his corner during these relations, invisible, he hoped, in a cloud of smoke. The veins stood out on Edgar’s temples and down his neck. He had both brute strength and a nervous spirit, like his horse. His voice varied between a deeply melodious mumble and a kind of strangled shout that was painful to hear. William judged him. He thought he was likely to die of an apoplexy in the not too distant future, and that this would be of no consequence, since his existence was entirely without aim or value. He imagined the poor horse, snorting and sliding on the Hall floor, its silk haunches twisted with stress. And the man, laughing as he laughed in action,
making
it dance on stone, as it would never have done in nature. William had not entirely thrown off his father’s censorious religion. He judged Edgar Alabaster in the eye of the God he no longer believed in, and found him wanting.
    One evening, only a week before the wedding, he became aware that Edgar judged him, too. He was sitting back invisibly whilst Edgar told a tale of driving a gig through narrow gaps in seven hedges, and must have allowed his thoughts to appear on his face, for he found Edgar’s hot, red face disagreeably close to his own.
    ‘
You
must not have the nerve