Moleyn, who had stayed on to the disorganised, passoverish meal that
took the place of dinner on this festal day; he one-stepped shamblingly, his
bent knees more precariously wobbly than ever, with a terrified village
beauty. Mr. Scogan trotted round with another. Mary was in the
embrace of a young farmer of heroic proportions; she was looking up at
him, talking, as Denis could see, very seriously. What about? he
wondered. The Malthusian League, perhaps. Seated in the corner
among the band, Jenny was performing wonders of virtuosity upon the
drums. Her eyes shone, she smiled to herself. A whole subterranean
life seemed to be expressing itself in those loud rat-tats, those long rolls
and flourishes of drumming. Looking at her, Denis ruefully remembered
the red notebook; he wondered what sort of a figure he was cutting now.
But the sight of Anne and Gombauld swimming past--Anne with her eyes
almost shut and sleeping, as it were, on the sustaining wings of movement
and music--dissipated these preoccupations. Male and female created He
them...There they were, Anne and Gombauld, and a hundred couples
156
more--all stepping harmoniously together to the old tune of Male and
Female created He them. But Denis sat apart; he alone lacked his
complementary opposite. They were all coupled but he; all but he...
Somebody touched him on the shoulder and he looked up. It was
Henry Wimbush.
"I never showed you our oaken drainpipes," he said. "Some of the
ones we dug up are lying quite close to here. Would you like to come
and see them?"
Denis got up, and they walked off together into the darkness. The
music grew fainter behind them. Some of the higher notes faded out
altogether. Jenny's drumming and the steady sawing of the bass throbbed
on, tuneless and meaningless in their ears. Henry Wimbush halted.
"Here we are," he said, and, taking an electric torch out of his pocket,
he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sections of tree trunk,
scooped out into the semblance of pipes, which were lying forlornly in a
little depression in the ground.
"Very interesting," said Denis, with a rather tepid enthusiasm.
They sat down on the grass. A faint white glare, rising from behind a
belt of trees, indicated the position of the dancing- floor. The music was
nothing but a muffled rhythmic pulse.
"I shall be glad," said Henry Wimbush, "when this function comes at
last to an end."
"I can believe it."
"I do not know how it is," Mr. Wimbush continued, "but the spectacle
of numbers of my fellow-creatures in a state of agitation moves in me a
certain weariness, rather than any gaiety or excitement. The fact is, they
don't very much interest me. They're aren't in my line. You follow me?
I could never take much interest, for example, in a collection of postage
stamps. Primitives or seventeenth-century books--yes. They are my line.
But stamps, no. I don't know anything about them; they're not my line.
They don't interest me, they give me no emotion. It's rather the same
with people, I'm afraid. I'm more at home with these pipes." He jerked
his head sideways towards the hollowed logs. "The trouble with the
people and events of the present is that you never know anything about
157
them. What do I know of contemporary politics? Nothing. What do I
know of the people I see round about me? Nothing. What they think of
me or of anything else in the world, what they will do in five minutes' time,
are things I can't guess at. For all I know, you may suddenly jump up
and try to murder me in a moment's time."
"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
158
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
159
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.
160
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
161
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
162
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
