Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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“Come, come,” said Denis.
“True,” Mr. Wimbush continued, “the little I know about your past is certainly reassuring. But I know nothing of your present, and neither you nor I know anything of your future. It’s appalling; in living people, one is dealing with unknown and unknowable quantities. One can only hope to find out anything about them by a long series of the most disagreeable and boring human contacts, involving a terrible expense of time. It’s the same with current events; how can I find out anything about them except by devoting years to the most exhausting first-hand study, involving once more an endless number of the most unpleasant contacts? No, give me the past. It doesn’t change; it’s all there in black and white, and you can get to know about it comfortably and decorously and, above all, privately — by reading. By reading I know a great deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr. Johnson; a few weeks have made me thoroughly acquainted with these interesting characters, and I have been spared the tedious and revolting process of getting to know them by personal contact, which I should have to do if they were living now. How gay and delightful life would be if one could get rid of all the human contacts! Perhaps, in the future, when machines have attained to a state of perfection — for I confess that I am, like Godwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, the perfectibility of machinery — then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, like myself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by the delicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely secure from any human intrusion. It is a beautiful thought.”
“Beautiful,” Denis agreed. “But what about the desirable human contacts, like love and friendship?”
The black silhouette against the darkness shook its head. “The pleasures even of these contacts are much exaggerated,” said the polite level voice. “It seems to me doubtful whether they are equal to the pleasures of private reading and contemplation. Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce and difficult to reproduce. The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium. At present people in search of pleasure naturally tend to congregate in large herds and to make a noise; in future their natural tendency will be to seek solitude and quiet. The proper study of mankind is books.”
“I sometimes think that it may be,” said Denis; he was wondering if Anne and Gombauld were still dancing together.
“Instead of which,” said Mr. Wimbush, with a sigh, “I must go and see if all is well on the dancing-floor.” They got up and began to walk slowly towards the white glare. “If all these people were dead,” Henry Wimbush went on, “this festivity would be extremely agreeable. Nothing would be pleasanter than to read in a well-written book of an open-air ball that took place a century ago. How charming! one would say; how pretty and how amusing! But when the ball takes place to-day, when one finds oneself involved in it, then one sees the thing in its true light. It turns out to be merely this.” He waved his hand in the direction of the acetylene flares. “In my youth,” he went on after a pause, “I found myself, quite fortuitously, involved in a series of the most phantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist could have made his fortune out of them, and even if I were to tell you, in my bald style, the details of these adventures, you would be amazed at the romantic tale. But I assure you, while they were happening — these romantic adventures — they seemed to me no more and no less exciting than any other incident of actual life. To climb by night up a rope-ladder to a second-floor window in an old house in Toledo seemed to me, while I was actually performing this rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, as much to be taken for granted, as — how shall I put it? — as quotidian as catching the 8.52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Monday morning. Adventures and romance only take on their adventurous and romantic qualities at second-hand. Live them, and they are just a slice of life like the rest. In literature they become as charming as this dismal ball would be if we were celebrating its tercentenary.” They had come to the entrance of the enclosure and stood there, blinking in the dazzling light. “Ah, if only we were!” Henry Wimbush added.
Anne and Gombauld were still dancing together.
CHAPTER XXIX.
IT WAS AFTER ten o’clock. The dancers had already dispersed and the last lights were being put out. To-morrow the tents would be struck, the dismantled merry-go-round would be packed into waggons and carted away. An expanse of worn grass, a shabby brown patch in the wide green of the park, would be all that remained. Crome Fair was over.
By the edge of the pool two figures lingered.
“No, no, no,” Anne was saying in a breathless whisper, leaning backwards, turning her head from side to side in an effort to escape Gombauld’s kisses. “No, please. No.” Her raised voice had become imperative.
Gombauld relaxed his embrace a little. “Why not?” he said. “I will.”
With a sudden effort Anne freed herself. “You won’t,” she retorted. “You’ve tried to take the most unfair advantage of me.”
“Unfair advantage?” echoed Gombauld in genuine surprise.
“Yes, unfair advantage. You attack me after I’ve been dancing for two hours, while I’m still reeling drunk with the movement, when I’ve lost my head, when I’ve got no mind left but only a rhythmical body! It’s as bad as making love to someone you’ve drugged or intoxicated.”
Gombauld laughed angrily. “Call me a White Slaver and have done with it.”
“Luckily,” said Anne, “I am now completely sobered, and if you try and kiss me again I shall box your ears. Shall we take a few turns round the pool?” she added. “The night is delicious.”
For answer Gombauld made an irritated noise. They paced off slowly, side by side.
“What I like about the painting of Degas...” Anne began in her most detached and conversational tone.
“Oh, damn Degas!” Gombauld was almost shouting.
From where he stood, leaning in an attitude of despair against the parapet of the terrace, Denis had seen them, the two pale figures in a patch of moonlight, far down by the pool’s edge. He had seen the beginning of what promised to be an endless passionate embracement, and at the sight he had fled. It was too much; he couldn’t stand it. In another moment, he felt, he would have burst into irrepressible tears.
Dashing blindly into the house, he almost ran into Mr. Scogan, who was walking up and down the hall smoking a final pipe.
“Hullo!” said Mr. Scogan, catching him by the arm; dazed and hardly conscious of what he was doing or where he was, Denis stood there for a moment like a somnambulist. “What’s the matter?” Mr. Scogan went on. “you look disturbed, distressed, depressed.”
Denis shook his head without replying.
“Worried about the cosmos, eh?” Mr. Scogan patted him on the arm. “I know the feeling,” he said. “It’s a most distressing symptom. ‘What’s the point of it all? All is vanity. What’s the good of continuing to function if one’s doomed to be snuffed out at last along with everything else?’ Yes, yes. I know exactly how you feel. It’s most distressing if one allows oneself to be distressed. But then why allow oneself to be distressed? After all, we all know that there’s no ultimate point. But what difference does that make?”
At this point the somnambulist suddenly woke up. “What?” he said, blinking and frowning at his interlocutor. “What?” Then breaking away he dashed up the stairs, two steps at a time.
Mr. Scogan ran to the foot of the stairs and called up after him. “It makes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the same, always, under whatever circumstances — under whatever circumstances,” he added, raising his voice to a shout. But Denis was already far out of hearing, and even if he had not been, his mind to-night was proof against all the consolations of philosophy. Mr.
Scogan replaced his pipe between his teeth and resumed his meditative pacing. “Under any circumstances,” he repeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true? And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burned itself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went to bed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep.
Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silk pyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards on his bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle which he had left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. He looked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, his dry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind, and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He got up, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the passage, and began to mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants’ quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right he opened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-dark cupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and old leather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with his hands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads of the western tower. He found the ladder, and set his feet on the rungs; noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his head; the moonlit sky was over him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a moment he was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourless landscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feet below.
Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to look at the moon? Was it to commit suicide? As yet he hardly knew. Death — the tears came into his eyes when he thought of it. His misery assumed a certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind of exaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything, however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop was sheer there and uninterrupted. A good leap, and perhaps one might clear the narrow terrace and so crash down yet another thirty feet to the sun-baked ground below. He paused at the corner of the tower, looking now down into the shadowy gulf below, now up towards the rare stars and the waning moon. He made a gesture with his hand, muttered something, he could not afterwards remember what; but the fact that he had said it aloud gave the utterance a peculiarly terrible significance. Then he looked down once more into the depths.
“What ARE you doing, Denis?” questioned a voice from somewhere very close behind him.
Denis uttered a cry of frightened surprise, and very nearly went over the parapet in good earnest. His heart was beating terribly, and he was pale when, recovering himself, he turned round in the direction from which the voice had come.
“Are you ill?”
In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of the tower, he saw something he had not previously noticed — an oblong shape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that first memorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was a sort of manifestation of fidelity.
“It gave me a fright,” she went on, “to wake up and see you waving your arms and gibbering there. What on earth were you doing?”
Denis laughed melodramatically. “What, indeed!” he said. If she hadn’t woken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of the tower; he was certain of that, now.
“You hadn’t got designs on me, I hope?” Mary inquired, jumping too rapidly to conclusions.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Denis, laughing more bitterly and artificially than before.
“What IS the matter, Denis?”
He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went on laughing in the same frightful and improbable tone.
An hour later he was reposing with his head on Mary’s knees, and she, with an affectionate solicitude that was wholly maternal, was running her fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything, everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, his suicide — as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He had solemnly promised never to think of self-destruction again. And now his soul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathy that Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receiving sympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; it was also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about his miseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in return everything, or very nearly everything, about her own.
“Poor Mary!” He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessed that Ivor wasn’t precisely a monument of constancy.
“Well,” she concluded, “one must put a good face on it.” She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be weak. There was a silence.
“Do you think,” asked Denis hesitatingly— “do you really think that she...that Gombauld...”
“I’m sure of it,” Mary answered decisively. There was another long pause.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” he said at last, utterly dejected.
“You’d better go away,” advised Mary. “It’s the safest thing, and the most sensible.”
“But I’ve arranged to stay here three weeks more.”
“You must concoct an excuse.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I know I am,” said Mary, who was recovering all her firm self-possession. “You can’t go on like this, can you?”
“No, I can’t go on like this,” he echoed.
Immensely practical, Mary invented a plan of action. Startlingly, in the darkness, the church clock struck three.
“You must go to bed at once,” she said. “I’d no idea it was so late.”
Denis clambered down the ladder, cautiously descended the creaking stairs. His room was dark; the candle had long ago guttered to extinction. He got into bed and fell asleep almost at once.
CHAPTER XXX.
DENIS HAD BEEN called, but in spite of the parted curtains he had dropped off again into that drowsy, dozy state when sleep becomes a sensual pleasure almost consciously savoured. In this condition he might have remained for another hour if he had not been disturbed by a violent rapping at the door.
“Come in,” he mumbled, without opening his eyes. The latch clicked, a hand seized him by the shoulder and he was rudely shaken.
“Get up, get up!”
His eyelids blinked painfully apart, and he saw Mary standing over him, bright-faced and earnest.
“Get up!” she repeated. “You must go and send the telegram. Don’t you remember?”
“O Lord!” He threw off the bed-clothes; his tormentor retired.
Denis dressed as quickly as he could and ran up the road to the village post office. Satisfaction glowed within him as he returned. He had sent a long telegram, which would in a few hours evoke an answer ordering him back to town at once — on urgent business. It was an act performed, a decisive step taken — and he so rarely took decisive steps; he felt pleased with himself. It was with a whetted appetite that he came in to breakfast.
“Good-morning,” said Mr. Scogan. “I hope you’re better.”
“Better?”
“You were rather worried about the cosmos last night.”
Denis tried to laugh away the impeachment. “Was I?” he lightly asked.
“I wish,” said Mr. Scogan, “that I had nothing worse to prey on my mind. I should be a happy man.”
“One is only happy in action,” Denis enunciated, thinking of the telegram.
He looked out of the window. Great florid baroque clouds floated high in the blue heaven. A wind stirred among the trees, and their shaken foliage twinkled and glittered like metal in the sun. Everything seemed marvellously beautiful. At the thought that he would soon be leaving all this beauty he felt a momentary pang; but he comforted himself by recollecting how decisively he was acting.
“Action,” he repeated aloud, and going over to the sideboard he helped himself to an agreeable mixture of bacon
and fish.
Breakfast over, Denis repaired to the terrace, and, sitting there, raised the enormous bulwark of the “Times” against the possible assaults of Mr. Scogan, who showed an unappeased desire to go on talking about the Universe. Secure behind the crackling pages, he meditated. In the light of this brilliant morning the emotions of last night seemed somehow rather remote. And what if he had seen them embracing in the moonlight? Perhaps it didn’t mean much after all. And even if it did, why shouldn’t he stay? He felt strong enough to stay, strong enough to be aloof, disinterested, a mere friendly acquaintance. And even if he weren’t strong enough...
“What time do you think the telegram will arrive?” asked Mary suddenly, thrusting in upon him over the top of the paper.
Denis started guiltily. “I don’t know at all,” he said.
“I was only wondering,” said Mary, “because there’s a very good train at 3.27, and it would be nice if you could catch it, wouldn’t it?”
“Awfully nice,” he agreed weakly. He felt as though he were making arrangements for his own funeral. Train leaves Waterloo 3.27. No flowers...Mary was gone. No, he was blowed if he’d let himself be hurried down to the Necropolis like this. He was blowed. The sight of Mr. Scogan looking out, with a hungry expression, from the drawing-room window made him precipitately hoist the “Times” once more. For a long while he kept it hoisted. Lowering it at last to take another cautious peep at his surroundings, he found himself, with what astonishment! confronted by Anne’s faint, amused, malicious smile. She was standing before him, — the woman who was a tree, — the swaying grace of her movement arrested in a pose that seemed itself a movement.