Олдос Хаксли - Those Barren Leaves

‘Browning belonged to another species,’ Mr. Cardan corrected.

‘A foolish species, I insist,’ said Calamy.

‘Well, to tell the truth,’ Mr. Cardan admitted, closing his winking eye a little further, ‘I secretly agree with you about that. I’m not really as entirely tolerant as I should like to be.’

Calamy was frowning pensively over his own affairs, and without discussing the greater or less degree of Mr. Cardan’s tolerance he went on. ‘The question is, at the end of it all: what’s the way out? what’s to be done about it? For it’s obvious, as you say, that the little ravishments will turn up again. And appetite grows with fasting. And philosophy, which knows very well how to deal with past and future temptations, always seems to break down before the present, the immediate ones.’

‘Happily,’ said Mr. Cardan. ‘For, when all is said, is there a better indoor sport? Be frank with me; is there?’

‘Possibly not,’ said Calamy, while young Lord Hovenden smiled at Mr. Cardan’s last remark, but unenthusiastically, in a rather painful indecision between amusement and horror. ‘But the point is, aren’t there better occupations for a man of sense than indoor sports, even the best of indoor sports?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Cardan, with decision.

‘For you, perhaps, there mayn’t be. But it seems to me,’ Calamy went on, ‘that I’m beginning to have had enough of sports, whether indoor or out–of–door. I’d like to find some more serious occupation.’

‘But that’s easier said than done.’ Mr. Cardan shook his head. ‘For members of our species it’s precious hard to find any occupation that seems entirely serious. Eh?’

Calamy laughed, rather mournfully. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But at the same time the sports begin to seem rather an outrage on one’s human dignity. Rather immoral, I would say, if the word weren’t so absurd.’

‘Not at all absurd, I assure you, when used as you use it.’ Mr. Cardan twinkled more and more genially over the top of his glass. ‘As long as you don’t talk about moral laws and all that sort of thing there’s no absurdity. For, it’s obvious, there are no moral laws. There are social customs on the one hand, and there are individuals with their individual feelings and moral reactions on the other. What’s immoral in one man may not matter in another. Almost nothing, for example, is immoral for me. Positively, you know, I can do anything and yet remain respectable in my own eyes, and in the eyes of others not merely wonderfully decent, but even noble.

I won’t bore you with the rest of this epitaph which I composed for myself some little time ago. Suffice to say that I point out in the two subsequent stanzas that these things availed absolutely nothing and that, malgré tout , I remained the honest, sober, pure and high–minded man that every one always instinctively recognizes me to be.’ Mr. Cardan emptied his glass and reached out once more for the fiasco.

‘You’re fortunate,’ said Calamy. ‘It’s not all of us whose personalities have such a natural odour of sanctity that they can disinfect our septic actions and render them morally harmless. When I do something stupid or dirty I can’t help feeling that it is stupid or dirty. My soul lacks virtues to make it wise or clean. And I can’t dissociate myself from what I do. I wish I could. One does such a devilish number of stupid things. Things one doesn’t want to do. If only one could be a hedonist and only do what was pleasant! But to be a hedonist one must be wholly rational; there’s no such thing as a genuine hedonist, there never has been. Instead of doing what one wants to do or what would give one pleasure, one drifts through existence doing exactly the opposite, most of the time—doing what one has no desire to do, following insane promptings that lead one, fully conscious, into every sort of discomfort, misery, boredom and remorse. Sometimes,’ Calamy went on, sighing, ‘I positively regret the time I spent in the army during the war. Then, at any rate, there was no question of doing what one liked; there was no liberty, no choice. One did what one was told and that was all. Now I’m free; I have every opportunity for doing exactly what I like—and I consistently do what I don’t like.’

‘But do you know exactly what you do like?’ asked Mr. Cardan.

Calamy shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I suppose I should say reading, and satisfying my curiosity about things, and thinking. But about what, I don’t feel perfectly certain. I don’t like running after women, I don’t like wasting my time in futile social intercourse, or in the pursuit of what is technically known as pleasure. And yet for some reason and quite against my will I find myself passing the greater part of my time immersed in precisely these occupations. It’s an obscure kind of insanity.’

Young Lord Hovenden, who knew that he liked dancing and desired Irene Aldwinkle more than anything in the world, found all this a little incomprehensible. ‘I can’t see what vere is to prevent a man from doing what he wants to do. Except,’ he qualified, remembering the teaching of Mr. Falx, ‘economic necessity.’

‘And himself,’ added Mr. Cardan.

‘And what’s the most depressing of all,’ Calamy went on, without paying attention to the interruption, ‘is the feeling that one will go on like this for ever, in the teeth of every effort to stop. I sometimes wish I weren’t externally free. For then at any rate I should have something to curse at, for getting in my way, other than my own self. Yes, positively, I sometimes wish I were a navvy.’

‘You wouldn’t if you had ever been one,’ said Lord Hovenden, gravely and with a knowing air of speaking from personal experience.

Calamy laughed. ‘You’re perfectly right,’ he said, and drained his glass. ‘Shouldn’t we think of going to bed?’

To Irene fell the privilege every evening of brushing her aunt’s hair. For her these midnight moments were the most precious in the day. True, it was sometimes an agony for her to keep awake and the suppression of yawns was always painful; three years of incessant practice had not yet accustomed her to her Aunt Lilian’s late hours. Aunt Lilian used to twit her sometimes on her childish longing for sleep; at other times she used to insist, very solicitously, that Irene should rest after lunch and go to bed at ten. The teasing made Irene feel ashamed of her babyishness; the solicitude made her protest that she wasn’t a baby, that she was never tired and could easily do with five or six hours’ sleep a night. The important thing, she had found, was not to be seen yawning by Aunt Lilian and always to look fresh and lively. If Aunt Lilian noticed nothing there was neither teasing nor solicitude.

But in any case, every inconvenience was paid for a thousand times by the delights of these confidential conversations in front of the dressing–table mirror. While the young girl brushed and brushed away at the long tresses of pale golden–brown hair, Mrs. Aldwinkle, her eyes shut, and with an expression of beatitude on her face—for she took a cat’s pleasure in the brushing—would talk, spasmodically, in broken sentences, of the events of the day, of her guests, of the people they had met; or of her own past, of plans for the future—hers or Irene’s—of love. On all these subjects Mrs. Aldwinkle spoke intimately, confidentially, without reserve. Feeling that she was being treated by her Aunt Lilian as entirely grown–up and almost as an equal, Irene was proud and grateful. Without deliberately setting out to complete the subjugation of her niece, Mrs. Aldwinkle had discovered, in those midnight conversations, the most perfect means for achieving this end. If she talked like this to Irene, it was merely because she felt the need of talking intimately to some one, and because there was nobody else to talk to. Incidentally, however, she had contrived in the process to make the girl her slave. Made her Aunt Lilian’s confidante, invested, so to speak, with a title of honour, Irene felt a gratitude which strengthened her original childish attachment to her aunt.