CHAPTER XXVIII.
Towards sunset the fair itself became quiescent. It was the hour for thedancing to begin. At one side of the village of tents a space had beenroped off. Acetylene lamps, hung round it on posts, cast a piercingwhite light. In one corner sat the band, and, obedient to its scrapingand blowing, two or three hundred dancers trampled across the dryground, wearing away the grass with their booted feet. Round this patchof all but daylight, alive with motion and noise, the night seemedpreternaturally dark. Bars of light reached out into it, and every nowand then a lonely figure or a couple of lovers, interlaced, would crossthe bright shaft, flashing for a moment into visible existence, todisappear again as quickly and surprisingly as they had come.
Denis stood by the entrance of the enclosure, watching the swaying,shuffling crowd. The slow vortex brought the couples round and roundagain before him, as though he were passing them in review. Therewas Priscilla, still wearing her queenly toque, still encouraging thevillagers--this time by dancing with one of the tenant farmers. Therewas Lord Moleyn, who had stayed on to the disorganised, passoverishmeal that took the place of dinner on this festal day; he one-steppedshamblingly, his bent knees more precariously wobbly than ever, with aterrified village beauty. Mr. Scogan trotted round with another. Marywas in the embrace of a young farmer of heroic proportions; she waslooking up at him, talking, as Denis could see, very seriously. Whatabout? he wondered. The Malthusian League, perhaps. Seated in the corneramong the band, Jenny was performing wonders of virtuosity upon thedrums. Her eyes shone, she smiled to herself. A whole subterranean lifeseemed to be expressing itself in those loud rat-tats, those long rollsand flourishes of drumming. Looking at her, Denis ruefully rememberedthe red notebook; he wondered what sort of a figure he was cutting now.But the sight of Anne and Gombauld swimming past--Anne with her eyesalmost shut and sleeping, as it were, on the sustaining wings ofmovement and music--dissipated these preoccupations. Male and femalecreated He them...There they were, Anne and Gombauld, and a hundredcouples more--all stepping harmoniously together to the old tune of Maleand Female created He them. But Denis sat apart; he alone lacked hiscomplementary opposite. They were all coupled but he; all but he...
Somebody touched him on the shoulder and he looked up. It was HenryWimbush.
"I never showed you our oaken drainpipes," he said. "Some of the oneswe dug up are lying quite close to here. Would you like to come and seethem?"
Denis got up, and they walked off together into the darkness. The musicgrew fainter behind them. Some of the higher notes faded out altogether.Jenny's drumming and the steady sawing of the bass throbbed on, tunelessand meaningless in their ears. Henry Wimbush halted.
"Here we are," he said, and, taking an electric torch out of his pocket,he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sections of tree trunk,scooped out into the semblance of pipes, which were lying forlornly in alittle depression in the ground.
"Very interesting," said Denis, with a rather tepid enthusiasm.
They sat down on the grass. A faint white glare, rising from behind abelt of trees, indicated the position of the dancing-floor. The musicwas nothing but a muffled rhythmic pulse.
"I shall be glad," said Henry Wimbush, "when this function comes at lastto an end."
"I can believe it."
"I do not know how it is," Mr. Wimbush continued, "but the spectacleof numbers of my fellow-creatures in a state of agitation moves in mea certain weariness, rather than any gaiety or excitement. The fact is,they don't very much interest me. They're aren't in my line. You followme? I could never take much interest, for example, in a collection ofpostage stamps. Primitives or seventeenth-century books--yes. They aremy line. But stamps, no. I don't know anything about them; they're notmy line. They don't interest me, they give me no emotion. It's ratherthe same with people, I'm afraid. I'm more at home with these pipes."He jerked his head sideways towards the hollowed logs. "The trouble withthe people and events of the present is that you never know anythingabout them. What do I know of contemporary politics? Nothing. What do Iknow of the people I see round about me? Nothing. What they think ofme or of anything else in the world, what they will do in five minutes'time, are things I can't guess at. For all I know, you may suddenly jumpup and try to murder me in a moment's time."
"Come, come," said Denis.
"True," Mr. Wimbush continued, "the little I know about your past iscertainly reassuring. But I know nothing of your present, and neitheryou nor I know anything of your future. It's appalling; in livingpeople, one is dealing with unknown and unknowable quantities. One canonly hope to find out anything about them by a long series of the mostdisagreeable and boring human contacts, involving a terrible expenseof time. It's the same with current events; how can I find out anythingabout them except by devoting years to the most exhausting first-handstudy, involving once more an endless number of the most unpleasantcontacts? No, give me the past. It doesn't change; it's all therein black and white, and you can get to know about it comfortably anddecorously and, above all, privately--by reading. By reading I know agreat deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr. Johnson; a few weekshave made me thoroughly acquainted with these interesting characters,and I have been spared the tedious and revolting process of getting toknow them by personal contact, which I should have to do if they wereliving now. How gay and delightful life would be if one could get ridof all the human 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, the perfectibilityof machinery--then, perhaps, it will be possible for those who, likemyself, desire it, to live in a dignified seclusion, surrounded by thedelicate attentions of silent and graceful machines, and entirely securefrom any human intrusion. It is a beautiful thought."
"Beautiful," Denis agreed. "But what about the desirable human contacts,like love and friendship?"
The black silhouette against the darkness shook its head. "The pleasureseven of these contacts are much exaggerated," said the polite levelvoice. "It seems to me doubtful whether they are equal to the pleasuresof private reading and contemplation. Human contacts have been so highlyvalued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishmentand because books were scarce and difficult to reproduce. The world, youmust remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes moreand more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of peoplewill discover that books will give them all the pleasures of sociallife and none of its intolerable tedium. At present people in searchof pleasure naturally tend to congregate in large herds and to make anoise; in future their natural tendency will be to seek solitude andquiet. The proper study of mankind is books."
"I sometimes think that it may be," said Denis; he was wondering if Anneand Gombauld were still dancing together.
"Instead of which," said Mr. Wimbush, with a sigh, "I must go and see ifall is well on the dancing-floor." They got up and began to walk slowlytowards the white glare. "If all these people were dead," Henry Wimbushwent on, "this festivity would be extremely agreeable. Nothing would bepleasanter than to read in a well-written book of an open-air ball thattook place a century ago. How charming! one would say; how prettyand how amusing! But when the ball takes place to-day, when one findsoneself involved in it, then one sees the thing in its true light. Itturns out to be merely this." He waved his hand in the direction ofthe acetylene flares. "In my youth," he went on after a pause, "Ifound myself, quite fortuitously, involved in a series of the mostphantasmagorical amorous intrigues. A novelist could have made hisfortune out of them, and even if I were to tell you, in my bald style,the details of these adventures, you would be amazed at the romantictale. But I assure you, while they were happening--these romanticadventures--they seemed to me no more and no less exciting than anyother incident of actual life. To climb by night up a rope-ladder to asecond-floor window in an old house in Toledo seemed to me, while I wasactually performing this rather dangerous feat, an action as obvious, asmuch to
be taken for granted, as--how shall I put it?--as quotidian ascatching the 8.52 from Surbiton to go to business on a Monday morning.Adventures and romance only take on their adventurous and romanticqualities at second-hand. Live them, and they are just a slice of lifelike the rest. In literature they become as charming as this dismal ballwould be if we were celebrating its tercentenary." They had come tothe entrance of the enclosure and stood there, blinking in the dazzlinglight. "Ah, if only we were!" Henry Wimbush added.
Anne and Gombauld were still dancing together.