Read Online After the Fireworks by Aldous Huxley - Free Book Online

directness. But whether it won’t be rather frightful when they’re older is another question. But then almost everything is rather frightful when people are older.”
    â€œThank you,” said Dodo. “And what about you?”
    â€œOh, an old satyr,” he answered with that quick, brilliantly mysterious smile of his. “A superannuated faun. I know it; only too well. But at the same time, most intolerably, a Higher Person. Which is what draws the spiritual vamps. Even the youngest ones. Not to talk to me about the Divine Mind, of course, or their views about Social Reform. But about themselves. Their Individualities, their Souls, their Inhibitions, their Unconsciouses, their Pasts, their Futures. For them, the Higher Things are all frankly and nakedly personal. And the function of the Higher Person is to act as a sort of psychoanalytical father confessor. He exists to tell them all about their strange and wonderful psyches. And meanwhile, of course, his friendship inflates their egotism. And if there should be any question of love, what a personal triumph!”
    â€œWhich is all very well,” objected Dodo. “But what about the old satyr? Wouldn’t it also be a bit of a triumph for him? You know, Miles,” she added gravely, “it would really be scandalous if you were to take advantage. . . .”
    â€œBut I haven’t the slightest intention of taking any advantages. If only for my own sake. Besides, the child is too ingenuously absurd. The most hair-raising theoretical knowledge of life, out of books. You should hear her prattling away about inverts and perverts and birth control—but prattling from unplumbed depths of innocence and practical ignorance. Very queer. And touching too. Much more touching than the old-fashioned innocences of the young creatures who thought babies were brought by storks. Knowing all about love and lust, but in the same way as one knows all about quadratic equations. And her knowledge of the other aspects of life is really of the same kind. What she’s seen of the world she’s seen in her mother’s company. The worst guide imaginable, to judge from the child’s account. (Dead now, incidentally.) The sort of woman who could never live on top gear, so to speak—only at one or two imaginative removes from the facts. So that, in her company, what was nominally real life became actually just literature—yet more literature. Bad, inadequate Balzac in flesh and blood instead of genuine, good Balzac out of a set of nice green volumes. The child realizes it herself. Obscurely, of course; but distressfully. It’s one of the reasons why she’s applied to me: she hopes I can explain what’s wrong. And correct it in practice. Which I won’t do in any drastic manner, I promise you. Only mildly, by precept—that is, if I’m not too bored to do it at all.”
    â€œWhat’s the child’s name?” Dodo asked.
    â€œPamela Tarn.”
    â€œTarn? But was her mother by any chance Clare Tarn?”
    He nodded. “That was it. She even made her daughter call her by her christian name. The companion stunt.”
    â€œBut I used to know Clare Tarn quite well,” said Dodo in an astonished, feeling voice. “These last years I’d hardly seen her. But when I was more in London just after the War . . .”
    â€œBut this begins to be interesting,” said Fanning. “New light on my little friend. . . .”
    â€œWhom I absolutely forbid you,” said Dodo emphatically, “to . . .”
    â€œTamper with the honour of,” he suggested. “Let’s phrase it as nobly as possible.”
    â€œNo, seriously, Miles. I really won’t have it. Poor Clare Tarn’s daughter. If I didn’t have to rush off to-morrow I’d ask her to come and see me, so as to warn her.”
    Fanning laughed. “She wouldn’t thank you. And besides if any one is to be