Chapter III.

by Aldous Huxley

　　The terrace in front of the house was a long narrow strip ofturf, bounded along its outer edge by a graceful stonebalustrade. Two little summer-houses of brick stood at eitherend. Below the house the ground sloped very steeply away, andthe terrace was a remarkably high one; from the balusters to thesloping lawn beneath was a drop of thirty feet. Seen from below,the high unbroken terrace wall, built like the house itself ofbrick, had the almost menacing aspect of a fortification--acastle bastion, from whose parapet one looked out across airydepths to distances level with the eye. Below, in theforeground, hedged in by solid masses of sculptured yew trees,lay the stone-brimmed swimming-pool. Beyond it stretched thepark, with its massive elms, its green expanses of grass, and, atthe bottom of the valley, the gleam of the narrow river. On thefarther side of the stream the land rose again in a long slope,chequered with cultivation. Looking up the valley, to the right,one saw a line of blue, far-off hills.The tea-table had been planted in the shade of one of the littlesummer-houses, and the rest of the party was already assembledabout it when Denis and Priscilla made their appearance. HenryWimbush had begun to pour out the tea. He was one of thoseageless, unchanging men on the farther side of fifty, who mightbe thirty, who might be anything. Denis had known him almost aslong as he could remember. In all those years his pale, ratherhandsome face had never grown any older; it was like the palegrey bowler hat which he always wore, winter and summer--unageing, calm, serenely without expression.Next him, but separated from him and from the rest of the worldby the almost impenetrable barriers of her deafness, sat JennyMullion. She was perhaps thirty, had a tilted nose and a pink-and-white complexion, and wore her brown hair plaited and coiledin two lateral buns over her ears. In the secret tower of herdeafness she sat apart, looking down at the world through sharplypiercing eyes. What did she think of men and women and things?That was something that Denis had never been able to discover.In her enigmatic remoteness Jenny was a little disquieting. Evennow some interior joke seemed to be amusing her, for she wassmiling to herself, and her brown eyes were like very brightround marbles.On his other side the serious, moonlike innocence of MaryBracegirdle's face shone pink and childish. She was nearlytwenty-three, but one wouldn't have guessed it. Her short hair,clipped like a page's, hung in a bell of elastic gold about hercheeks. She had large blue china eyes, whose expression was oneof ingenuous and often puzzled earnestness.Next to Mary a small gaunt man was sitting, rigid and erect inhis chair. In appearance Mr. Scogan was like one of thoseextinct bird-lizards of the Tertiary. His nose was beaked, hisdark eye had the shining quickness of a robin's. But there wasnothing soft or gracious or feathery about him. The skin of hiswrinkled brown face had a dry and scaly look; his hands were thehands of a crocodile. His movements were marked by the lizard'sdisconcertingly abrupt clockwork speed; his speech was thin,fluty, and dry. Henry Wimbush's school-fellow and exactcontemporary, Mr. Scogan looked far older and, at the same time,far more youthfully alive than did that gentle aristocrat withthe face like a grey bowler.Mr. Scogan might look like an extinct saurian, but Gombauld wasaltogether and essentially human. In the old-fashioned naturalhistories of the 'thirties he might have figured in a steelengraving as a type of Homo Sapiens--an honour which at that timecommonly fell to Lord Byron. Indeed, with more hair and lesscollar, Gombauld would have been completely Byronic--more thanByronic, even, for Gombauld was of Provencal descent, a black-haired young corsair of thirty, with flashing teeth and luminouslarge dark eyes. Denis looked at him enviously. He was jealousof his talent: if only he wrote verse as well as Gombauldpainted pictures! Still more, at the moment, he envied Gombauldhis looks, his vitality, his easy confidence of manner. Was itsurprising that Anne should like him? Like him?--it might evenbe something worse, Denis reflected bitterly, as he walked atPriscilla's side down the long grass terrace.Between Gombauld and Mr. Scogan a very much lowered deck-chairpresented its back to the new arrivals as they advanced towardsthe tea-table. Gombauld was leaning over it; his face movedvivaciously; he smiled, he laughed, he made quick gestures withhis hands. From the depths of the chair came up a sound of soft,lazy laughter. Denis started as he heard it. That laughter--howwell he knew it! What emotions it evoked in him! He quickenedhis pace.In her low deck-chair Anne was nearer to lying than to sitting.Her long, slender body reposed in an attitude of listless andindolent grace. Within its setting of light brown hair her facehad a pretty regularity that was almost doll-like. And indeedthere were moments when she seemed nothing more than a doll; whenthe oval face, with its long-lashed, pale blue eyes, expressednothing; when it was no more than a lazy mask of wax. She wasHenry Wimbush's own niece; that bowler-like countenance was oneof the Wimbush heirlooms; it ran in the family, appearing in itsfemale members as a blank doll-face. But across this dollishmask, like a gay melody dancing over an unchanging fundamentalbass, passed Anne's other inheritance--quick laughter, lightironic amusement, and the changing expressions of many moods.She was smiling now as Denis looked down at her: her cat'ssmile, he called it, for no very good reason. The mouth wascompressed, and on either side of it two tiny wrinkles had formedthemselves in her cheeks. An infinity of slightly maliciousamusement lurked in those little folds, in the puckers about thehalf-closed eyes, in the eyes themselves, bright and laughingbetween the narrowed lids.The preliminary greetings spoken, Denis found an empty chairbetween Gombauld and Jenny and sat down."How are you, Jenny?" he shouted to her.Jenny nodded and smiled in mysterious silence, as though thesubject of her health were a secret that could not be publiclydivulged."How's London been since I went away?" Anne inquired from thedepth of her chair.The moment had come; the tremendously amusing narrative waswaiting for utterance. "Well," said Denis, smiling happily, "tobegin with...""Has Priscilla told you of our great antiquarian find?" HenryWimbush leaned forward; the most promising of buds was nipped."To begin with," said Denis desperately, "there was theBallet...""Last week," Mr. Wimbush went on softly and implacably, "we dugup fifty yards of oaken drain-pipes; just tree trunks with a holebored through the middle. Very interesting indeed. Whether theywere laid down by the monks in the fifteenth century, orwhether..."Denis listened gloomily. "Extraordinary!" he said, when Mr.Wimbush had finished; "quite extraordinary!" He helped himselfto another slice of cake. He didn't even want to tell his taleabout London now; he was damped.For some time past Mary's grave blue eyes had been fixed uponhim. "What have you been writing lately?" she asked. It wouldbe nice to have a little literary conversation."Oh, verse and prose," said Denis--"just verse and prose.""Prose?" Mr. Scogan pounced alarmingly on the word. "You've beenwriting prose?""Yes.""Not a novel?""Yes.""My poor Denis!" exclaimed Mr. Scogan. "What about?"Denis felt rather uncomfortable. "Oh, about the usual things,you know.""Of course," Mr. Scogan groaned. "I'll describe the plot foryou. Little Percy, the hero, was never good at games, but he wasalways clever. He passes through the usual public school and theusual university and comes to London, where he lives among theartists. He is bowed down with melancholy thought; he carriesthe whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. He writes anovel of dazzling brilliance; he dabbles delicately in Amour anddisappears, at the end of the book, into the luminous Future."Denis blushed scarlet. Mr. Scogan had described the plan of hisnovel with an accuracy that was appalling. He made an effort tolaugh. "You're entirely wrong," he said. "My novel is not inthe least like that." It was a heroic lie. Luckily, hereflected, only two chapters were written. He would tear them upthat very evening when he unpacked.Mr. Scogan paid no attention to his denial, but went on: "Whywill you young men continue to write about things that are soentirely uninteresting as the mentality of adolescents andartists? Professional anthropologists might find it interestingto turn sometimes from the beliefs of the Blackfellow to thephilosophical preoccupations of the undergraduate. But you can'texpect an ordinary adult man, like myself, to be much moved bythe story of his spiritual troubles. And after all, even inEngland, even in Germany and Russia, there are more adults thanadolescents. As for the artist, he is preoccupied with problemsthat are so utterly unlike those of the ordinary adult man--problems of pure aesthetics which don't so much as presentthemselves to people like myself--that a description of hismental processes is as boring to the ordinary reader as a pieceof pure mathematics. A serious book about artists regarded asartists is unreadable; and a book about artists regarded aslovers, husbands, dipsomaniacs, heroes, and the like is reallynot worth writing again. Jean-Christophe is the stock artist ofliterature, just as Professor Radium of "Comic Cuts" is its stockman of science."'I'm sorry to hear I'm as uninteresting as all that," saidGombauld."Not at all, my dear Gombauld," Mr. Scogan hastened to explain."As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a mostfascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you musthonestly admit it, you're a bore.""I entirely disagree with you," exclaimed Mary. She was somehowalways out of breath when she talked. And her speech waspunctuated by little gasps. "I've known a great many artists,and I've always found their mentality very interesting.Especially in Paris. Tschuplitski, for example--I saw a greatdeal of Tschuplitski in Paris this spring...""Ah, but then you're an exception, Mary, you're an exception,"said Mr. Scogan. "You are a femme superieure."A flush of pleasure turned Mary's face into a harvest moon.