Those Barren Leaves, Aldous Huxley [best ereader for textbooks .txt] 📗

cease to think, in which case the trolley reconverts itself into the swivel chair, the floor closes up and the hours at the desk seem once more to be hours passed in a perfectly reasonable manner; or else, more rarely, flee in panic horror from the office to bury their heads like ostriches in religion or whatnot. For a strong-minded and intelligent person both courses are inadmissible; the first because it is stupid and the second because it is cowardly. No self-respecting man can either accept unreflectingly or, having reflected upon it, irresponsibly run away from the reality of human life. The proper course, I flatter myself, is that which I have adopted. Having sought out the heart of reality⁠—Gog’s Court, to be explicit⁠—I have taken up my position there; and though fully aware of the nature of the reality by which I am surrounded, though deliberately keeping myself reminded of the complete imbecility of what I am doing, I yet remain heroically at my post. My whole time is passed on the switchback; all my life is one unceasing slide through nothing.

All my life, I insist; for it is not merely into Gog’s Court that I magically introduce the fun of the fair. I so arrange my private life that I am sliding even out of office hours. My heart, to borrow the poetess’s words, is like a singing bird whose nest is permanently in a water-shoot. Miss Carruthers’s boardinghouse in Chelsea is, I assure you, as suitable a place to slither in as any east of Temple Bar. I have lived there now for four years. I am a pillar of the establishment and every evening, when I sit down to dinner with my fellow guests, I feel as though I were taking my place in a specially capacious family trolley on the switchback railway. All aboard! and away we go. With gathering momentum the trolley plunges down into vacancy.

Let me describe an evening on the Domestic water-shoot. At the head of the table sits Miss Carruthers herself; thirty-seven, plump though unmarried, with a face broadening towards the base and very flabby about the cheeks and chin⁠—bull-doggy, in a word; and the snub nose, staring at you out of its upward-tilted nostrils, the small brown eyes do not belie the comparison. And what activity! never walks, but runs about her establishment like a demoniac, never speaks but shrilly shouts, carves the roast beef with scientific fury, laughs like a giant woodpecker. She belongs to a distinguished family which would never, in its days of glory, have dreamed of allowing one of its daughters to become what Miss Carruthers calls, applying to herself the most humiliating of titles and laughing as she does so, to emphasize the picturesque contrast between what she is by birth and what circumstance has reduced her to becoming, “a common lodging-house keeper.” She is a firm believer in her class, and to her more distinguished guests deplores the necessity under which she labours to admit into her establishment persons not really, really⁠ ⁠… She is careful not to mix people of different sorts together. Her most genteel guests sit the closest to her at table; it is implied that, in the neighbourhood of Miss Carruthers, they will feel at home. For years I have had the honour of sitting at her left hand; for if less prosperous than Mrs. Cloudesley Shove, the broker’s widow (who sits in glory on the right), I have at least attended in my youth an ancient seat of learning.

The gong reverberates; punctually I hurry down to the dining-room. With fury and precision, like a conductor immersed in a Wagner overture, Miss Carruthers is carving the beef.

“Evening, Mr. Chelifer,” she loudly calls, without interrupting her labours. “What news have you brought back with you from the city today?”

Affably I smile, professionally I rub the hands. “Well, I don’t know that I can think of any.”

“Evening, Mrs. Fox. Evening, Mr. Fox.” The two old people take their places near the further end of the table. They are not quite, quite⁠ ⁠… “Evening, Miss Monad.” Miss Monad does responsible secretarial work and sits next to the Fox’s. “Evening, Mr. Quinn. Evening, Miss Webber. Evening, Mrs. Crotch.” But the tone in which she responds to Mr. Dutt’s courteous greeting is much less affable. Mr. Dutt is an Indian⁠—a black man, Miss Carruthers calls him. Her “Evening, Mr. Dutt” shows that she knows her place and hopes that the man of the inferior race knows his. The servant comes in with a steaming dish of greens. Crambe ripetita⁠—inspiring perfume! Mentally I burst into song.

These like remorse inveterate memories,
Being of cabbage, are prophetic too
Of future feasts, when Mrs. Cloudesley Shove
Will still recall lamented Cloudesley.
Still
Among the moonlit cedars Philomel
Calls back to mind, again, again,
The ancient pain, the everlasting pain;
And still inveterately the haunted air
Remembers and foretells that roses were
Red and tomorrow will again be red,
But, “Cloudesley, Cloudesley!” Philomel in vain
Sobs on the night; for Cloudesley Shove is dead.⁠ ⁠…

And in the flesh, as though irresistibly summoned by my incantation, Mrs. Cloudesley Shove blackens the doorway with her widowhood.

“Not a very naice day,” says Mrs. Cloudesley, as she sits down.

“Not at all,” Miss Carruthers heartily agrees. And then, without turning from the beef, without abating for an instant the celerity of her carving, “Fluffy!” she shouts through the increasing din, “don’t giggle like that.”

Politely Mr. Chelifer half raises himself from his chair as Miss Fluffy comes tumbling, on the tail end of her giggle, into the chair next to his. Always the perfect gent.

“I wasn’t giggling, Miss Carruthers,” Fluffy protests. Her smile reveals above the roots of her teeth a line of almost bloodless gums.

“Quite true,” says young Mr. Brimstone, following her less tumultuously from the door and establishing himself in the seat opposite, next to Mrs. Cloudesley. “She wasn’t giggling. She was merely cachinnating.”

Everybody laughs uproariously, even Miss Carruthers, though she does not cease to carve. Mr. Brimstone remains perfectly grave. Behind his rimless pince-nez there is hardly so much as a twinkle. As for Miss Fluffy, she fairly collapses.

“What a horrible