Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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‘Such a view,’ said Mrs. Aldwinkle, poking at it with the tip of her sunshade. ‘The contrast between the cypresses and the olive trees . . .’
‘But the view’s still lovelier from the temple,’ said the little niece, who was evidently very anxious to make me realize the full pricelessness of her Aunt Lilian’s possessions.
Mrs. Aldwinkle turned on her. ‘How utterly thoughtless you are!’ she said severely. ‘Do try to remember that poor Mr. Chelifer is still suffering from the effects of his accident. And you expect him to go climbing up to the temple!’
The little niece blushed and drooped beneath the reproach. We sat down.
‘How are you feeling now?’ asked Mrs. Aldwinkle, remembering once more to be solicitous. . . . ‘Too appalling to think,’ she added, ‘how nearly . . . And I’ve always so enormously admired your work.’
‘So have I,’ declared my colleague in the green frock. ‘Most awfully. Still, I confess, I find some of your things a little, how shall I say, a little alembicated. I like my poetry to be rather straightforwarder.’
‘A very sophisticated desire,’ said the red-faced gentleman. ‘Really simple, primitive people like their poetry to be as complicated, conventional, artificial and remote from the language of everyday affairs as possible. We reproach the eighteenth century with its artificiality. But the fact is that Beowulf is couched in a diction fifty times more complicated and unnatural than that of the Essay on Man. And when you compare the Icelandic Sagas with Dr. Johnson, you find that it’s the Doctor who lisps and prattles. Only the most complicated people, living in the midst of the most artificial surroundings, desire their poetry to be simple and straightforward.’
I shut my eyes and allowed the waves of conversation to roll over me. And what a classy conversation! Prince Papadiamantopoulos could hardly have kept the ball rolling on a higher level. Fatigue was sobering me.
Fatigue, the body’s weariness — some industrious little scientific emmet ought to catalogue and measure all its various effects. All — for it isn’t enough to show that when wage-slaves have worked too long they tend to fall into the machines and get pulped. The fact is interesting, no doubt; but there are other facts of no less significance. There is the fact, for example, that slight fatigue increases our capacity for sentiment. Those compromising love letters are always written in the small hours; it is at night, not when we are fresh and reposed, that we talk about ideal love and indulge our griefs. Under the influence of slight fatigue we feel more ready than at other times to discuss the problems of the universe, to make confidences, to dogmatize about the nature of God and to draw up plans for the future. We are also inclined to be more languidly voluptuous. When, however, the fatigue is increased beyond a certain point, we cease entirely to be sentimental, voluptuous, metaphysical or confiding. We cease to be aware of anything but the decrepitude of our being. We take no further interest in other people or the outside world — no further interest unless they will not leave us in peace, when we come to hate them with a deep but ineffectual loathing, mingled with disgust.
With me, fatigue had almost suddenly passed the critical point. My convalescent’s delight in the world evaporated. My fellow beings no longer seemed to me beautiful, strange and amiable. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s attempts to bring me into the conversation exasperated me; when I looked at her, I thought her a monster. I realized, too late (which made the realization the more vexatious), what I had let myself in for when I accepted Mrs. Aldwinkle’s invitation. Fantastic surroundings, art, classy chats about the cosmos, the intelligentsia, love. . . . It was too much, even on a holiday.
I shut my eyes. Sometimes, when Mrs. Aldwinkle interpellated me, I said yes or no, without much regard to the sense of her remark. Discussion raged around me. From the alembication of my poetry they had gone on to art in general. Crikey, I said to myself, crikey. . . . I did my best to close the ears of my mind; and for some little time I did, indeed, contrive to understand nothing of what was said. I thought of Miss Carruthers, of Fluffy and Mr. Brimstone, of Gog’s Court and Mr. Bosk.
Mrs. Aldwinkle’s voice, raised by irritation to a peculiar loudness, made itself audible to my muffled mind. ‘How often have I told you, Cardan,’ it said, ‘that you understand nothing of modern art?’
‘At least a thousand times,’ Mr. Cardan replied cheerfully. ‘But bless your heart,’ he added (and I opened my eyes in time to see his benevolent smile), ‘I never mind at all.’
The smile was evidently too much for Mrs. Aldwinkle’s patience. With the gesture of a queen who implies that the audience is at an end she rose from her seat. ‘Just time,’ she said, looking at her watch, ‘there’s just time. I really must give Mr. Chelifer some idea of the inside of the palace before lunch. You’d like to come?’ She smiled at me like a siren.
Too polite to remind her of her recent outburst against the little niece, I declared myself delighted by the idea. Wamblingly I followed her into the house. Behind me I heard the young rower exclaiming on a note of mingled astonishment and indignation: ‘But a moment ago she was saying that Mr. Chelifer was too ill to . . .’
‘Ah, but that was different,’ said the voice of the red-faced man.
‘Why was it different?’
‘Because, my young friend, the other fellow is in all cases the rule; but I am invariably the exception. Shall we follow?’
Mrs. Aldwinkle made me look at painted ceilings till I almost fell down from giddiness. She dragged me through room after baroque room; then drove me up dark stairs into the Middle Ages. By the time we were back in the trecento I was so much exhausted that I could hardly stand. My knees trembled, I felt sick.
‘This is the old armoury,’ said Mrs. Aldwinkle with mounting enthusiasm. ‘And there are the stairs leading up to the tower.’ She pointed to a low archway, through which, in a dusty twilight, the bottom of a steep stair could be seen corkscrewing up to unknown heights. ‘There are two hundred and thirty-two steps,’ she added.
At this moment the gong for luncheon rumbled remotely from the other end of the huge empty house.
‘Thank God!’ said the red-faced man devoutly.
But our hostess, it was evident, had no feeling for punctuality. ‘What a bore!’ she exclaimed. ‘But never mind. We can make time. I wanted just to run up the tower before lunch. There’s such a wonderful bird’s-eye . . .’ She looked inquiringly round. ‘What do you think, all of you? Shouldn’t we just dash up? It won’t take a minute.’ She repeated the siren smile. ‘Do let’s. Do!’ And without waiting for the result of her plebiscite she walked rapidly towards the stairs.
I followed her. But before I had taken five steps, the floor, the walls of the room seemed to fade into the distance. There was a roaring in my ears. It grew suddenly dark. I felt myself falling. For the second time since breakfast I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was lying on the floor, with my head on Mrs. Aldwinkle’s knees; and she was dabbing my forehead with a wet sponge. The first objects of which I was aware were her bright blue eyes hanging over me, very close, very bright and alarming. ‘Poor fellow,’ she was saying, ‘poor fellow.’ Then, looking up, she shouted angrily to the owners of the various legs and skirts which I distinguished mistily to right and left of me: ‘Stand back, you must stand back! Do you want to suffocate the poor fellow?’
PART III. THE LOVES OF THE PARALLELS
CHAPTER I
DO ALL HE could, Lord Hovenden had somehow found it impossible, these last few days, to get Irene for a moment to himself. The change had come about almost suddenly, just after that fellow Chelifer had made his appearance. Before he came, there had been a time — beginning, strangely enough, almost as suddenly as it had ended — a time of blissful happiness. Whenever during those days an opportunity for a tête-à-tête presented itself Irene had been always at hand and, what was more, always delighted to seize the opportunity. They had been for long walks together, they had swum together far out into the sea, sat together in the gardens, sometimes talking, some
times silent; but very happy, whether they spoke or not. He had talked to her about motoring and dancing and shooting, and occasionally, feeling rather shamefaced and embarrassed by the disquieting gravity of the subject, about the working classes. And Irene had listened with pleasure to everything he said and had talked too. They found that they had many tastes in common. It had been an enchantment while it lasted. And then, all at once, with the coming of that creature Chelifer, it all came to an end. Irene was never on the spot when opportunities offered, she never suggested spontaneously, as once or twice, during the heavenly time, she had actually done, that they should go for a walk together. She had no time to talk to him; her thoughts, it seemed, were elsewhere, as with grave and preoccupied face she hurried mysteriously about the palace and the gardens. With an extreme anguish of spirit Lord Hovenden observed that it was always in the direction of Chelifer that Irene seemed to be hurrying. Did he slip out unobtrusively into the garden after lunch, Irene was sure, a moment later, to slip out after him. When he proposed a stroll with Calamy or Mr. Cardan, Irene always asked, shyly but with the pallid resolution of one who by an effort of will overcomes a natural weakness for the sake of some all-important cause, to be allowed to join the party. And if ever Chelifer and Miss Thriplow happened to find themselves for a moment together, Irene was always certain to come gliding silently after them.
For all this Lord Hovenden could find only one explanation. She was in love with the man. True, she never made any effort to talk to him when she was in his company; she seemed even rather intimidated by his polished silences, his pointedly insincere formulas of courtesy and compliment. And for his part Chelifer, as far as his rival could see, behaved with a perfect correctitude. Too correctly, indeed, in Hovenden’s opinion. He couldn’t tolerate the fellow’s sarcastic politeness; the man ought to be more human with little Irene. Lord Hovenden would have liked to wring his neck; wring it for two mutually exclusive offences — luring the girl on and being too damned stand-offish. And she looked so wretched. Looking out of its square window in the thick bright bell of copper hair, the little face, so childish in the largeness and limpidity of the eyes, in the shortness of the upper lip, had been, these last days, the face of a pathetic, not a merry child. Lord Hovenden could only suppose that she was pining with love for that creature — though what the devil she contrived to see in him he, for one, couldn’t imagine. And it was so obvious, too, that old Lilian was also quite gone on the fellow and making a fool of herself about him. Did she want to compete with her Aunt Lilian? There’d be the devil and all to pay if Mrs. Aldwinkle discovered that Irene was trying to cut her out. The more he thought of the wretched business, the wretcheder it seemed. Lord Hovenden was thoroughly miserable.
So too was Irene. But not for the reasons Lord Hovenden supposed. It was true that she had spent most of her days since Chelifer’s arrival in following the new guest like an unhappy shadow. But it had not been on her own account, not at her own desire. Chelifer did indeed intimidate her; so far Lord Hovenden had guessed aright. He had been hopelessly at fault in imagining that Irene adored the man in spite of her fear of him. If she followed him about, it was because Mrs. Aldwinkle had asked her to. And if she looked unhappy, it was because Aunt Lilian was unhappy — and a little, too, because the task which Aunt Lilian had set her was a disagreeable one; disagreeable not only in itself, but because it prevented her from continuing those pleasant talks with Hovenden. Ever since that evening when Aunt Lilian twitted her on her coldness and her blindness, Irene had made a point of seeing Hovenden as much as she could. She wanted to prove that Aunt Lilian had been wrong. She wasn’t cold, she wasn’t blind; she could see as clearly as any one when people liked her, and she could be as warmly appreciative. And really, after the episodes with Jacques, Mario and Peter, it wasn’t fair of Aunt Lilian to tease her like that. It simply wasn’t. Moved by an indignant desire to confute Aunt Lilian as quickly as possible, she had positively made advances to Hovenden; he was so shy that, if she hadn’t, it would have been months before she could have offered her aunt anything like convincing rebuttal of her imputation. She had talked with him, gone for walks with him, quite prepared to feel at any moment the infinitude of passion. But the affair passed off, somehow, very differently from the others. She began to feel something indeed, but something quite unlike that which she had felt for Peter and Jacques. For them it had been a fizzy, exciting, restless feeling, intimately connected with large hotels, jazz bands, coloured lights and Aunt Lilian’s indefatigable desire to get everything out of life, her haunting fear that she was missing something, even in the heart of the fun. ‘Enjoy yourself, let yourself go,’ Aunt Lilian was always telling her. And ‘How handsome he is! what a lovely fellow!’ she would say as one of the young men passed. Irene had done her best to take Aunt Lilian’s advice. And it had seemed to her, sometimes, when she was dancing and the lights, the music, the moving crowd had blended together into a single throbbing whole, it had seemed to her that she had indeed climbed to the peak of happiness. And the young man, the Peter or Jacques whom Aunt Lilian had hypnotized her into thinking a marvel among young men, was regarded as the source of this bliss. Between the dances, under the palm trees in the garden, she had even suffered herself to be kissed; and the experience had been rather momentous. But when the time came for them to move on, Irene departed without regret. The fizzy feeling had gone flat. But with Hovenden it was different. She just liked him quietly, more and more. He was so nice and simple and eager and young. So young — she liked that particularly. Irene felt that he was really younger, in spite of his age, than she. The other ones had all been older, more knowing and accomplished; all rather bold and insolent. But Hovenden wasn’t in the least like that. One felt very secure with him, Irene thought. And there was somehow no question of love when one was with him — at any rate the question wasn’t at all pressing or urgent. Aunt Lilian used to ask her every evening how they were getting on and if it were getting exciting. And Irene never quite knew what to answer. She found very soon that she didn’t want to talk about Hovenden; he was so different from the others, and their friendship had nothing infinite about it. It was just a sensible friendship. She dreaded Aunt Lilian’s questions; and she found herself almost disliking Aunt Lilian when, in that dreadful bantering way of hers, she ruthlessly insisted on putting them. In some ways, indeed, the coming of Chelifer had been a relief; for Aunt Lilian became at once so profoundly absorbed in her own emotions that she had no time or inclination to think of any one else’s. Yes, that had been a great relief. But on the other hand, the work of supervision and espionage to which Aunt Lilian had set her made it all but impossible for Irene ever to talk to Hovenden. She might as well not be there, Irene sadly reflected. Still, poor Aunt Lilian was so dreadfully unhappy. One must do all one could for her. Poor Aunt Lilian!
‘I want to know what he thinks of me,’ Aunt Lilian had said to her in the secret hours of the night. ‘What does he say about me to other people?’ Irene answered that she had never heard him say anything about her. ‘Then you must listen, you must keep your ears open.’
But however much she listened, Irene never had anything to report. Chelifer never mentioned Aunt Lilian. For Mrs. Aldwinkle that was almost worse than if he had spoken badly of her. To be ignored was terrible. ‘Perhaps he likes Mary,’ she had suggested. ‘I thought I saw him looking at her to-day in a strange, intent sort of way.’ And Irene had been ordered to watch them. But for all she could discover, Mrs. Aldwinkle’s jealousies were utterly unfounded. Between Chelifer and Mary Thriplow there passed no word or look that the most suspicious imagination could interpret in terms of amorous intimacy. ‘He’s queer, he’s an extraordinary creature.’ That was the refrain of Mrs. Aldwinkle’s talk about him. ‘He seems to care for nothing. So cold, such a fixed, frigid mask. And yet one has only to look at him — his eyes, his mouth — to see that underneath . . .’ And Mrs. Aldwinkle would shake her head and sigh. And her speculations about him would go rambling
on and on, round and round, treading the same ground again and again, arriving nowhere. Poor Aunt Lilian! She was dreadfully unhappy.
In her own mind Mrs. Aldwinkle had begun by saving Chelifer’s life. She saw herself standing there on the beach between sea and sky, and with the mountains in the middle distance, looking like one of those wonderfully romantic figures who, in the paintings of Augustus John, stand poised in a meditative and passionate ecstasy against a cosmic background. She saw herself — a John down even to her flame-coloured tunic and her emerald-green parasol. And at her feet, like Shelley, like Leander washed up on the sands of Abydos, lay the young poet, pale, naked and dead. And she had bent over him, had called him back to life, had raised him up and, figuratively speaking, had carried him off in maternal arms to a haven of peace where he should gather new strength and, for his poetry, new inspiration.
Such were the facts as they appeared to Mrs. Aldwinkle, after passing through the dense refractive medium of her imagination. Given these facts, given the resultant situation, given her character, it was almost necessary and inevitable that Mrs. Aldwinkle should feel romantically towards her latest guest. The mere fact that he was a new arrival, hitherto unknown, and a poet at that, would have been enough in any circumstances to make Mrs. Aldwinkle take a lively interest in the young man. But seeing that she had saved him from a watery grave and was now engaged in supplying him with inspiration, she felt something more than interest. She would have been disobeying the laws of her being if she had not fallen in love with him. Moreover, he made it easier for her by being so darkly and poetically handsome. And then he was queer — queer to the point of mysteriousness. His very coldness attracted while it filled her with despair.
‘He can’t really be so utterly indifferent to everything and everybody as he makes out,’ she kept insisting to Irene.