Chapter I.

by Aldous Huxley

　　Along this particular stretch of line no express had ever passed.All the trains--the few that there were--stopped at all thestations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart.Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delawarr, Knipswich for Timpany, WestBowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where healways got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward,goodness only knew whither, into the green heart of England.They were snorting out of West Bowlby now. It was the nextstation, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack andpiled them neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futileproceeding. But one must have something to do. When he hadfinished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. It wasextremely hot.Oh, this journey! It was two hours cut clean out of his life;two hours in which he might have done so much, so much--writtenthe perfect poem, for example, or read the one illuminating book.Instead of which--his gorge rose at the smell of the dustycushions against which he was leaning.Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might bedone in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundredsof hours, and what had he done with them? Wasted them, spilt theprecious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible.Denis groaned in the spirit, condemned himself utterly with allhis works. What right had he to sit in the sunshine, to occupycorner seats in third-class carriages, to be alive? None, none,none.Misery and a nameless nostalgic distress possessed him. He wastwenty-three, and oh! so agonizingly conscious of the fact.The train came bumpingly to a halt. Here was Camlet at last.Denis jumped up, crammed his hat over his eyes, deranged his pileof baggage, leaned out of the window and shouted for a porter,seized a bag in either hand, and had to put them down again inorder to open the door. When at last he had safely bundledhimself and his baggage on to the platform, he ran up the traintowards the van."A bicycle, a bicycle!" he said breathlessly to the guard. Hefelt himself a man of action. The guard paid no attention, butcontinued methodically to hand out, one by one, the packageslabelled to Camlet. "A bicycle!" Denis repeated. "A greenmachine, cross-framed, name of Stone. S-T-O-N-E.""All in good time, sir," said the guard soothingly. He was alarge, stately man with a naval beard. One pictured him at home,drinking tea, surrounded by a numerous family. It was in thattone that he must have spoken to his children when they weretiresome. "All in good time, sir." Denis's man of actioncollapsed, punctured.He left his luggage to be called for later, and pushed off on hisbicycle. He always took his bicycle when he went into thecountry. It was part of the theory of exercise. One day onewould get up at six o'clock and pedal away to Kenilworth, orStratford-on-Avon--anywhere. And within a radius of twenty milesthere were always Norman churches and Tudor mansions to be seenin the course of an afternoon's excursion. Somehow they neverdid get seen, but all the same it was nice to feel that thebicycle was there, and that one fine morning one really might getup at six.Once at the top of the long hill which led up from Camletstation, he felt his spirits mounting. The world, he found, wasgood. The far-away blue hills, the harvests whitening on theslopes of the ridge along which his road led him, the treelesssky-lines that changed as he moved--yes, they were all good. Hewas overcome by the beauty of those deeply embayed combes,scooped in the flanks of the ridge beneath him. Curves, curves:he repeated the word slowly, trying as he did so to find someterm in which to give expression to his appreciation. Curves--no, that was inadequate. He made a gesture with his hand, asthough to scoop the achieved expression out of the air, andalmost fell off his bicycle. What was the word to describe thecurves of those little valleys? They were as fine as the linesof a human body, they were informed with the subtlety of art...Galbe. That was a good word; but it was French. Le galbe evasede ses hanches: had one ever read a French novel in which thatphrase didn't occur? Some day he would compile a dictionary forthe use of novelists. Galbe, gonfle, goulu: parfum, peau,pervers, potele, pudeur: vertu, volupte.But he really must find that word. Curves curves...Those littlevalleys had the lines of a cup moulded round a woman's breast;they seemed the dinted imprints of some huge divine body that hadrested on these hills. Cumbrous locutions, these; but throughthem he seemed to be getting nearer to what he wanted. Dinted,dimpled, wimpled--his mind wandered down echoing corridors ofassonance and alliteration ever further and further from thepoint. He was enamoured with the beauty of words.Becoming once more aware of the outer world, he found himself onthe crest of a descent. The road plunged down, steep andstraight, into a considerable valley. There, on the oppositeslope, a little higher up the valley, stood Crome, hisdestination. He put on his brakes; this view of Crome waspleasant to linger over. The facade with its three projectingtowers rose precipitously from among the dark trees of thegarden. The house basked in full sunlight; the old brick rosilyglowed. How ripe and rich it was, how superbly mellow! And atthe same time, how austere! The hill was becoming steeper andsteeper; he was gaining speed in spite of his brakes. He loosedhis grip of the levers, and in a moment was rushing headlongdown. Five minutes later he was passing through the gate of thegreat courtyard. The front door stood hospitably open. He lefthis bicycle leaning against the wall and walked in. He wouldtake them by surprise.