Chapter XXVIII.

by Aldous Huxley

　　Towards sunset the fair itself became quiescent. It was the hourfor the dancing to begin. At one side of the village of tents aspace had been roped off. Acetylene lamps, hung round it onposts, cast a piercing white light. In one corner sat the band,and, obedient to its scraping and blowing, two or three hundreddancers trampled across the dry ground, wearing away the grasswith their booted feet. Round this patch of all but daylight,alive with motion and noise, the night seemed preternaturallydark. Bars of light reached out into it, and every now and thena lonely figure or a couple of lovers, interlaced, would crossthe bright shaft, flashing for a moment into visible existence,to disappear again as quickly and surprisingly as they had come.Denis stood by the entrance of the enclosure, watching theswaying, shuffling crowd. The slow vortex brought the couplesround and round again before him, as though he were passing themin review. There was Priscilla, still wearing her queenly toque,still encouraging the villagers--this time by dancing with one ofthe tenant farmers. There was Lord Moleyn, who had stayed on tothe disorganised, passoverish meal that took the place of dinneron this festal day; he one-stepped shamblingly, his bent kneesmore precariously wobbly than ever, with a terrified villagebeauty. Mr. Scogan trotted round with another. Mary was in theembrace of a young farmer of heroic proportions; she was lookingup at him, talking, as Denis could see, very seriously. Whatabout? he wondered. The Malthusian League, perhaps. Seated inthe corner among the band, Jenny was performing wonders ofvirtuosity upon the drums. Her eyes shone, she smiled toherself. A whole subterranean life seemed to be expressingitself in those loud rat-tats, those long rolls and flourishes ofdrumming. Looking at her, Denis ruefully remembered the rednotebook; he wondered what sort of a figure he was cutting now.But the sight of Anne and Gombauld swimming past--Anne with hereyes almost shut and sleeping, as it were, on the sustainingwings of movement and music--dissipated these preoccupations.Male and female created He them...There they were, Anne andGombauld, and a hundred couples more--all stepping harmoniouslytogether to the old tune of Male and Female created He them. ButDenis 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 wasHenry Wimbush."I never showed you our oaken drainpipes," he said. "Some of theones we dug up are lying quite close to here. Would you like tocome and see them?"Denis got up, and they walked off together into the darkness.The music grew fainter behind them. Some of the higher notesfaded out altogether. Jenny's drumming and the steady sawing ofthe bass throbbed on, tuneless and meaningless in their ears.Henry Wimbush halted."Here we are," he said, and, taking an electric torch out of hispocket, he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sectionsof tree trunk, scooped out into the semblance of pipes, whichwere 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 frombehind 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 comesat last to an end.""I can believe it.""I do not know how it is," Mr. Wimbush continued, "but thespectacle of numbers of my fellow-creatures in a state ofagitation moves in me a certain weariness, rather than any gaietyor excitement. The fact is, they don't very much interest me.They're aren't in my line. You follow me? I could never takemuch 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 myline. They don't interest me, they give me no emotion. It'srather the same with people, I'm afraid. I'm more at home withthese pipes." He jerked his head sideways towards the hollowedlogs. "The trouble with the people and events of the present isthat you never know anything about them. What do I know ofcontemporary politics? Nothing. What do I know of the people Isee round about me? Nothing. What they think of me or ofanything else in the world, what they will do in five minutes'time, are things I can't guess at. For all I know, you maysuddenly 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 pastis certainly reassuring. But I know nothing of your present, andneither you nor I know anything of your future. It's appalling;in living people, one is dealing with unknown and unknowablequantities. One can only hope to find out anything about them bya long series of the most disagreeable and boring human contacts,involving a terrible expense of time. It's the same with currentevents; how can I find out anything about them except by devotingyears to the most exhausting first-hand study, involving oncemore an endless number of the most unpleasant contacts? No, giveme the past. It doesn't change; it's all there in black andwhite, and you can get to know about it comfortably anddecorously and, above all, privately--by reading. By reading Iknow a great deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr.Johnson; a few weeks have made me thoroughly acquainted withthese interesting characters, and I have been spared the tediousand revolting process of getting to know them by personalcontact, which I should have to do if they were living now. Howgay and delightful life would be if one could get rid of all thehuman contacts! Perhaps, in the future, when machines haveattained to a state of perfection--for I confess that I am, likeGodwin and Shelley, a believer in perfectibility, theperfectibility of machinery--then, perhaps, it will be possiblefor those who, like myself, desire it, to live in a dignifiedseclusion, surrounded by the delicate attentions of silent andgraceful machines, and entirely secure from any human intrusion.It is a beautiful thought.""Beautiful," Denis agreed. "But what about the desirable humancontacts, like love and friendship?"The black silhouette against the darkness shook its head. "Thepleasures even of these contacts are much exaggerated," said thepolite level voice. "It seems to me doubtful whether they areequal to the pleasures of private reading and contemplation.Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past onlybecause reading was not a common accomplishment and because bookswere scarce and difficult to reproduce. The world, you mustremember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomesmore and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing numberof people will discover that books will give them all thepleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium. Atpresent people in search of pleasure naturally tend to congregatein large herds and to make a noise; in future their naturaltendency will be to seek solitude and quiet. The proper study ofmankind is books.""I sometimes think that it may be," said Denis; he was wonderingif Anne and Gombauld were still dancing together."Instead of which," said Mr. Wimbush, with a sigh, "I must go andsee if all is well on the dancing-floor." They got up and beganto walk slowly towards the white glare. "If all these peoplewere dead," Henry Wimbush went on, "this festivity would beextremely agreeable. Nothing would be pleasanter than to read ina well-written book of an open-air ball that took place a centuryago. How charming! one would say; how pretty and how amusing!But when the ball takes place to-day, when one finds oneselfinvolved in it, then one sees the thing in its true light. Itturns out to be merely this." He waved his hand in the directionof the acetylene flares. "In my youth," he went on after apause, "I found myself, quite fortuitously, involved in a seriesof the most phantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist couldhave made his fortune out of them, and even if I were to tellyou, in my bald style, the details of these adventures, you wouldbe amazed at the romantic tale. But I assure you, while theywere happening--these romantic adventures--they seemed to me nomore 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 anold house in Toledo seemed to me, while I was actually performingthis rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, as much to betaken for granted, as--how shall I put it?--as quotidian ascatching the 8.52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Mondaymorning. Adventures and romance only take on their adventurousand romantic qualities at second-hand. Live them, and they arejust a slice of life like the rest. In literature they become ascharming as this dismal ball would be if we were celebrating itstercentenary." They had come to the entrance of the enclosureand stood there, blinking in the dazzling light. "Ah, if only wewere!" Henry Wimbush added.Anne and Gombauld were still dancing together.