Chapter XXIV.

by Aldous Huxley

　　It was noon. Denis, descending from his chamber, where he hadbeen making an unsuccessful effort to write something aboutnothing in particular, found the drawing-room deserted. He wasabout to go out into the garden when his eye fell on a familiarbut mysterious object--the large red notebook in which he had sooften seen Jenny quietly and busily scribbling. She had left itlying on the window-seat. The temptation was great. He pickedup the book and slipped off the elastic band that kept itdiscreetly closed."Private. Not to be opened," was written in capital letters onthe cover. He raised his eyebrows. It was the sort of thing onewrote in one's Latin Grammar while one was still at one'spreparatory school."Black is the raven, black is the rook,But blacker the theif who steals this book!"It was curiously childish, he thought, and he smiled to himself.He opened the book. What he saw made him wince as though he hadbeen struck.Denis was his own severest critic; so, at least, he had alwaysbelieved. He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisectorprobing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul; he wasBrown Dog to himself. His weaknesses, his absurdities--no oneknew them better than he did. Indeed, in a vague way he imaginedthat nobody beside himself was aware of them at all. It seemed,somehow, inconceivable that he should appear to other people asthey appeared to him; inconceivable that they ever spoke of himamong themselves in that same freely critical and, to be quitehonest, mildly malicious tone in which he was accustomed to talkof them. In his own eyes he had defects, but to see them was aprivilege reserved to him alone. For the rest of the world hewas surely an image of flawless crystal. It was almostaxiomatic.On opening the red notebook that crystal image of himself crashedto the ground, and was irreparably shattered. He was not his ownseverest critic after all. The discovery was a painful one.The fruit of Jenny's unobtrusive scribbling lay before him. Acaricature of himself, reading (the book was upside-down). Inthe background a dancing couple, recognisable as Gombauld andAnne. Beneath, the legend: "Fable of the Wallflower and theSour Grapes." Fascinated and horrified, Denis pored over thedrawing. It was masterful. A mute, inglorious Rouveyre appearedin every one of those cruelly clear lines. The expression of theface, an assumed aloofness and superiority tempered by a feebleenvy; the attitude of the body and limbs, an attitude of studiousand scholarly dignity, given away by the fidgety pose of theturned-in feet--these things were terrible. And, more terriblestill, was the likeness, was the magisterial certainty with whichhis physical peculiarities were all recorded and subtlyexaggerated.Denis looked deeper into the book. There were caricatures ofother people: of Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith; of HenryWimbush, of Anne and Gombauld; of Mr. Scogan, whom Jenny hadrepresented in a light that was more than slightly sinister, thatwas, indeed, diabolic; of Mary and Ivor. He scarcely glanced atthem. A fearful desire to know the worst about himself possessedhim. He turned over the leaves, lingering at nothing that wasnot his own image. Seven full pages were devoted to him."Private. Not to be opened." He had disobeyed the injunction;he had only got what he deserved. Thoughtfully he closed thebook, and slid the rubber band once more into its place. Sadderand wiser, he went out on to the terrace. And so this, hereflected, this was how Jenny employed the leisure hours in herivory tower apart. And he had thought her a simple-minded,uncritical creature! It was he, it seemed, who was the fool. Hefelt no resentment towards Jenny. No, the distressing thingwasn't Jenny herself; it was what she and the phenomenon of herred book represented, what they stood for and concretelysymbolised. They represented all the vast conscious world of menoutside himself; they symbolised something that in his studioussolitariness he was apt not to believe in. He could stand atPiccadilly Circus, could watch the crowds shuffle past, and stillimagine himself the one fully conscious, intelligent, individualbeing among all those thousands. It seemed, somehow, impossiblethat other people should be in their way as elaborate andcomplete as he in his. Impossible; and yet, periodically hewould make some painful discovery about the external world andthe horrible reality of its consciousness and its intelligence.The red notebook was one of these discoveries, a footprint in thesand. It put beyond a doubt the fact that the outer world reallyexisted.Sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, he ruminated thisunpleasant truth for some time. Still chewing on it, he strolledpensively down towards the swimming-pool. A peacock and his hentrailed their shabby finery across the turf of the lower lawn.Odious birds! Their necks, thick and greedily fleshy at theroots, tapered up to the cruel inanity of their brainless heads,their flat eyes and piercing beaks. The fabulists were right, hereflected, when they took beasts to illustrate their tractates ofhuman morality. Animals resemble men with all the truthfulnessof a caricature. (Oh, the red notebook!) He threw a piece ofstick at the slowly pacing birds. They rushed towards it,thinking it was something to eat.He walked on. The profound shade of a giant ilex tree engulfedhim. Like a great wooden octopus, it spread its long armsabroad."Under the spreading ilex tree..."He tried to remember who the poem was by, but couldn't."The smith, a brawny man is he,With arms like rubber bands."Just like his; he would have to try and do his Muller exercisesmore regularly.He emerged once more into the sunshine. The pool lay before him,reflecting in its bronze mirror the blue and various green of thesummer day. Looking at it, he thought of Anne's bare arms andseal-sleek bathing-dress, her moving knees and feet."And little Luce with the white legs,And bouncing Barbary..."Oh, these rags and tags of other people's making! Would he everbe able to call his brain his own? Was there, indeed, anythingin it that was truly his own, or was it simply an education?He walked slowly round the water's edge. In an embayed recessamong the surrounding yew trees, leaning her back against thepedestal of a pleasantly comic version of the Medici Venus,executed by some nameless mason of the seicento, he saw Marypensively sitting."Hullo!" he said, for he was passing so close to her that he hadto say something.Mary looked up. "Hullo!" she answered in a melancholy,uninterested tone.In this alcove hewed out of the dark trees, the atmosphere seemedto Denis agreeably elegiac. He sat down beside her under theshadow of the pudic goddess. There was a prolonged silence.At breakfast that morning Mary had found on her plate a picturepostcard of Gobley Great Park. A stately Georgian pile, with afacade sixteen windows wide; parterres in the foreground; huge,smooth lawns receding out of the picture to right and left. Tenyears more of the hard times and Gobley, with all its peers, willbe deserted and decaying. Fifty years, and the countryside willknow the old landmarks no more. They will have vanished as themonasteries vanished before them. At the moment, however, Mary'smind was not moved by these considerations.On the back of the postcard, next to the address, was written, inIvor's bold, large hand, a single quatrain."Hail, maid of moonlight! Bride of the sun, farewell!Like bright plumes moulted in an angel's flight,There sleep within my heart's most mystic cellMemories of morning, memories of the night."There followed a postscript of three lines: "Would you mindasking one of the housemaids to forward the packet of safety-razor blades I left in the drawer of my washstand. Thanks.--Ivor.Seated under the Venus's immemorial gesture, Mary considered lifeand love. The abolition of her repressions, so far from bringingthe expected peace of mind, had brought nothing but disquiet, anew and hitherto unexperienced misery. Ivor, Ivor...She couldn'tdo without him now. It was evident, on the other hand, from thepoem on the back of the picture postcard, that Ivor could verywell do without her. He was at Gobley now, so was Zenobia. Maryknew Zenobia. She thought of the last verse of the song he hadsung that night in the garden."Le lendemain, Phillis peu sageAurait donne moutons et chienPour un baiser que le volageA Lisette donnait pour rien."Mary shed tears at the memory; she had never been so unhappy inall her life before.It was Denis who first broke the silence. "The individual," hebegan in a soft and sadly philosophical tone, "is not a self-supporting universe. There are times when he comes into contactwith other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance ofthe existence of other universes besides himself."He had contrived this highly abstract generalisation as apreliminary to a personal confidence. It was the first gambit ina conversation that was to lead up to Jenny's caricatures."True," said Mary; and, generalising for herself, she added,"When one individual comes into intimate contact with another,she--or he, of course, as the case may be--must almost inevitablyreceive or inflict suffering.""One is apt, Denis went on, "to be so spellbound by the spectacleof one's own personality that one forgets that the spectaclepresents itself to other people as well as to oneself."Mary was not listening. "The difficulty," she said, "makesitself acutely felt in matters of sex. If one individual seeksintimate contact with another individual in the natural way, sheis certain to receive or inflict suffering. If on the otherhand, she avoids contacts, she risks the equally grave sufferingsthat follow on unnatural repressions. As you see, it's adilemma.""When I think of my own case," said Denis, making a more decidedmove in the desired direction, "I am amazed how ignorant I am ofother people's mentality in general, and above all and inparticular, of their opinions about myself. Our minds are sealedbooks only occasionally opened to the outside world." He made agesture that was faintly suggestive of the drawing off of arubber band."It's an awful problem," said Mary thoughtfully. "One has tohave had personal experience to realise quite how awful it is.""Exactly." Denis nodded. "One has to have had first-handexperience." He leaned towards her and slightly lowered hisvoice. "This very morning, for example..." he began, but hisconfidences were cut short. The deep voice of the gong, temperedby distance to a pleasant booming, floated down from the house.It was lunch-time. Mechanically Mary rose to her feet, andDenis, a little hurt that she should exhibit such a desperateanxiety for her food and so slight an interest in his spiritualexperiences, followed her. They made their way up to the housewithout speaking.