Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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‘But we don’t mind a bit,’ she said, not looking at her brother, but at the stranger. ‘Not a bit, when people come and are frank about it, like you.’ She smiled at him; but the young man’s face remained as proudly serious as ever. Looking into those serious bright eyes, she too suddenly became serious. It was no joke, she saw all at once, no joke. Grave issues were involved, important issues. But why grave and in what way important she did not know. She was only obscurely and profoundly aware that it was no joke. ‘Good-bye,’ she said in an altered voice, and held out her hand.
The stranger hesitated for a second, then took it. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’ll get out of the park as quick as I can.’ And turning round, he walked rapidly away.
‘What the devil!’ George began, turning angrily on his sister.
‘Oh, hold your tongue!’ she answered impatiently.
‘Shaking hands with the fellow,’ he went on protesting.
‘A bit of a pleb, wasn’t he?’ put in the military friend.
She looked from one to the other without speaking and walked away. What louts they were! The two young men followed.
‘I wish to God Mary would learn how to behave herself properly,’ said George, still fuming.
The military young man made deprecating noises. He was in love with her; but he had to admit that she was rather embarrassingly unconventional sometimes. It was her only defect.
‘Shaking that bounder’s hand!’ George went on grumbling.
That was their first meeting. Mary then was twenty-two and Mark Rampion a year younger. He had finished his second year at Sheffield University and was back at Stanton for the summer vacation. His mother lived in one of a row of cottages near the station. She had a little pension – her husband had been a postman – and made a few extra shillings by sewing. Mark was a scholarship boy. His younger and less talented brothers were already at work.
‘A very remarkable young man,’ the Rector insisted more than once in the course of his sketch of Mark Rampion’s career, some few days later.
The occasion was a church bazaar and charitable garden party at the Rectory. Some of the Sunday School children had acted a little play in the open air. The dramatist was Mark Rampion.
‘Quite unassisted,’ the Rector assured the assembled gentry. ‘And what’s more, the lad can draw. They’re a little eccentric perhaps, his pictures, a little … ah …’ he hesitated.
‘Weird,’ suggested his daughter, with an upper middle-class smile, proud of her incomprehension.
‘But full of talent,’ the Rector continued. ‘The boy’s a real cygnet of Tees,’ he added with a self-conscious, almost guilty laugh. He had a weakness for literary allusions. The gentry smiled perfunctorily.
The prodigy was introduced. Mary recognized the trespasser.
‘I’ve met you before,’ she said.
‘Poaching your view.’
‘You’re welcome to it.’ The words made him smile, a little ironically it seemed to her. She blushed, fearful lest she had said something that might have sounded rather patronizing. ‘But I suppose you’d go on poaching whether you were welcome or not,’ she added with a nervous little laugh.
He said nothing, but nodded, still smiling.
Mary’s father stepped in with congratulations. His praises went trampling over the delicate little play like a herd of elephants. Mary writhed. It was all wrong, hopelessly wrong. She could feel that. But the trouble, as she realized, was that she couldn’t have said anything better herself. The ironic smile still lingered about his lips. ‘What fools he must think us all!’ she said to herself.
And now it was her mother’s turn. ‘Jolly good’ was replaced by ‘too charming’. Which was just as bad, just as hopelessly beside the point.
When Mrs Felpham asked him to tea, Rampion wanted to refuse the invitation – but to refuse it without being boorish or offensive. After all, she meant well enough, poor woman. She was only rather ludicrous. The village Maecenas, in petticoats, patronizing art to the extent of two cups of tea and a slice of plum cake. The rôle was a comic one. While he was hesitating, Mary joined in the invitation.
‘Do come,’ she insisted. And her eyes, her smile expressed a kind of rueful amusement and an apology. She saw the absurdity of the situation. ‘But I can’t do anything about it,’ she seemed to say. ‘Nothing at all. Except apologize.’
‘I should like to come very much,’ he said, turning back to Mrs Felpham.
The appointed day came. His tie as red as ever, Rampion presented himself. The men were out fishing; he was received by Mary and her mother. Mrs Felpham tried to rise to the occasion. The village Shakespeare, it was obvious, must be interested in the drama.
‘Don’t you love Barrie’s plays?’ she asked. ‘I’m so fond of them.’ She talked on; Rampion made no comment. It was only later, when Mrs Felpham had given him up as a bad job and had commissioned Mary to show him round the garden, that he opened his lips.
‘I’m afraid your mother thought me very rude,’ he said, as they walked along the smooth flagged paths between the roses.
‘Of course not,’ Mary protested with an excessive heartiness.
Rampion laughed. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘But of course she did. Because I was rude in order that I shouldn’t be ruder. Better say nothing than say what I thought about Barrie.’
‘Don’t you like his plays?’
‘Do I like them? I?’ He stopped and looked at her. The blood rushed up into her cheeks; what had she said? ‘You can ask that here.’ He waved his hand at the flowers, the little pool with the fountain, the high terrace, with the stonecrops and the aubretias growing from between the stones, the grey, severe Georgian house beyond. ‘But come down with me into Stanton and ask me there. We’re sitting on the hard reality down there, not with an air cushion between us and the facts. You must have an assured five pounds a week at least, before you can begin to enjoy Barrie. If you’re sitting on the bare facts, he’s an insult.’
There was a silence. They walked up and down among the roses – those roses which Mary was feeling that she ought to disclaim, to apologize for. But a disclaimer, an apology would be an offence. A big retriever puppy came frisking clumsily along the path towards them. She called its name; the beast stood up on its hind legs and pawed at her.
‘I think I like animals better than people,’ she said, as she protected herself from its ponderous playfulness.
‘Well, at least they’re genuine, they don’t live on air cushions like the sort of people you have to do with,’ said Rampion, bringing out the obscure relevance of her remark to what had been said before. Mary was amazed and delighted by the way he understood.
‘I’d like to know more of your sort of people,’ she said; ‘genuine people, people without air cushions.’
‘Well, don’t imagine I’m going to do the Cook’s guide for you,’ he answered ironically. ‘We’re not a Zoo, you know; we’re not natives in quaint costume, or anything of that sort. If you want to go slumming, apply to the Rector.’
She flushed very red. ‘You know I wasn’t meaning that,’ she protested.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked her. ‘When one’s rich, it’s difficult not to mean that. A person like you simply can’t imagine what it is not to be rich. Like a fish. How can a fish imagine what life out of the water is like?’
‘But can’t one discover, if one tries?’
‘There’s a great gulf,’ he answered.
‘It can be crossed.’
‘Yes, I suppose it can be crossed.’ But his tone was dubious.
They walked and talked among the roses for a few minutes longer; then Rampion looked at his watch and said he must be going.
‘But you’ll come again?’
‘Would there be much point in my coming again?’ he asked. ‘It’s rather like interplanetary visiting, isn’t it?’
‘I hadn’t felt it like that,’ she answered, and added, after a little pause, ‘I suppose you find us all very stupid, d
on’t you?’ She looked at him. He had raised his eyebrows, he was about to protest. She wouldn’t allow him to be merely polite. ‘Because, you know, we are stupid. Terribly stupid.’ She laughed, rather ruefully. With people of her own kind stupidity was rather a virtue than a defect. To be too intelligent was to risk not being a gentleman. Intelligence wasn’t altogether safe. Rampion had made her wonder whether there weren’t better things than gentlemanly safety. In his presence she didn’t feel at all proud of being stupid.
Rampion smiled at her. He liked her frankness. There was something genuine about her. She hadn’t been spoilt – not yet, at any rate.
‘I believe you’re an agent provocateur,’ he bantered, ‘trying to tempt me to say rude and subversive things about my betters. But as a matter of fact, my opinions aren’t a bit rude. You people aren’t stupider than anyone else. Not naturally stupider. You’re victims of your way of living. It’s put a shell round you and blinkers over your eyes. By nature a tortoise may be no stupider than a bird. But you must admit that its way of living doesn’t exactly encourage intelligence.’
They met again several times in the course of that summer. Most often they walked together over the moors. ‘Like a force of nature,’ he thought as he watched her with bent head tunnelling her way through the damp wind. A great physical force. Such energy, such strength and health – it was magnificent. Rampion himself had been a delicate child, constantly ailing. He admired the physical qualities he did not himself possess. Mary was a sort of berserker Diana of the moors. He told her as much one day. She liked the compliment.
‘Wass für ein Atavismus! That was what my old German governess always used to say about me. She was right, I think. I am a bit of an Atavismus.’
Rampton laughed. ‘It sounds ridiculous in German. But it isn’t at all absurd in itself. An atavismus – that’s what we all ought to be. Atavismuses with all modern conveniences. Intelligent primitives. Big game with a soul.’
It was a wet cold summer. On the morning of the day fixed for their next meeting, Mary received a letter from him. ‘Dear Miss Felpham,’ she read, and this first sight of his handwriting gave her a strange pleasure. ‘I’ve idiotically gone and caught a chill. Will you be more forgiving than I am – for I can’t tell you how inexpressibly disgusted and angry I am with myself – and excuse me for putting you off till to-day week?’
He looked pale and thin, when she next saw him, and was still troubled by a cough. When she enquired about his health, he cut her short almost with anger. ‘I’m quite all right,’ he said sharply, and changed the subject.
‘I’ve been re-reading Blake,’ he said. And he began to speak about the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
‘Blake was civilized,’ he insisted, ‘civilized. Civilization is harmony and completeness. Reason, feeling, instinct, the life of the body – Blake managed to include and harmonize everything. Barbarism is being lop-sided. You can be a barbarian of the intellect as well as of the body. A barbarian of the soul and the feelings as well as of sensuality. Christianity made us barbarians of the soul, and now science is making us barbarians of the intellect. Blake was the last civilized man.’
He spoke of the Greeks and those naked sunburnt Etruscans in the sepulchral wall paintings. ‘You’ve seen the originals?’ he said. ‘My word, I envy you.’
Mary felt terribly ashamed. She had seen the painted tombs at Tarquinia; but how little she remembered of them! They had just been curious old works of art like all those other innumerable old works of art she had dutifully seen in company with her mother on their Italian journey the year before. They had really been wasted on her. Whereas if he could have afforded to go to Italy …
‘They were civilized,’ he was saying, ‘they knew how to live harmoniously and completely, with their whole being.’ He spoke with a kind of passion, as though he were angry – with the world, with himself, perhaps. ‘We’re all barbarians,’ he began; but was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing. Mary waited for the paroxysm to subside. She felt anxious and at the same time embarrassed and ashamed, as one feels when one has come upon a man off his guard and displaying a weakness which at ordinary times he is at pains to conceal. She wondered whether she ought to say something sympathetic about the cough, or pretend that she hadn’t noticed it. He solved her problem by referring to it himself.
‘Talk of barbarism,’ he said, when the fit was over. He spoke in a tone of disgust, his smile was wry and angry. ‘Have you ever heard anything more barbarous than that cough? A cough like that wouldn’t be allowed in a civilized society.’
Mary proffered solicitude and advice. He laughed impatiently.
‘My mother’s very words,’ he said. ‘Word for word. You women are all the same. Clucking like hens after their chickens.’
‘But think how miserable you’d be if we didn’t cluck!’
A few days later – with some misgivings – he took her to see his mother. The misgivings were groundless; Mary and Mrs Rampion seemed to find no difficulties in making spiritual contact. Mrs Rampion was a woman of about fifty, still handsome and with an expression on her face of calm dignity and resignation. Her speech was slow and quiet. Only once did Mary see her manner change and that was when, Mark being out of the room preparing the tea, she began to talk about her son.
‘What do you think of him?’ she asked, leaning forward towards her guest with a sudden brightening of the eyes.
‘What do I think?’ Mary laughed. ‘I’m not impertinent enough to set up as a judge of my betters. But he’s obviously somebody, somebody that matters.’
Mrs Rampion nodded, smiling with pleasure. ‘He’s somebody,’ she repeated. ‘That’s what I’ve always said.’ Her face became grave. ‘If only he were stronger! If I could only have afforded to bring him up better. He was always delicate. He ought to have been brought up more carefully than I could do. No, not more carefully. I was as careful as I could be. More comfortably, more healthily. But there, I couldn’t afford it.’ She shook her head. ‘There you are.’ She gave a little sigh and, leaning back in her chair, sat there in silence, with folded arms, looking at the floor.
Mary made no comment; she did not know what to say. Once more she felt ashamed, miserable and ashamed.
‘What did you think of my mother?’ Rampion asked later, when he was escorting her home.
‘I liked her,’ Mary answered. ‘Very much indeed. Even though she did make me feel so small and petty and bad. Which is another way of saying that I admired her, and liked her because of my admiration.’
Rampion nodded. ‘She is admirable,’ he said. ‘She’s courageous and strong and enduring. But she’s too resigned.’
‘But I thought that was one of the wonderful things about her.’
‘She has no right to be resigned,’ he answered, frowning. ‘No right. When you’ve had a life like hers, you oughtn’t to be resigned. You ought to be rebellious. It’s this damned religion. Did I tell you she was religious?’
‘No; but I guessed it, when I saw her,’ Mary answered.
‘She’s a barbarian of the soul,’ he went on. ‘All soul and future. No present, no past, no body, no intellect. Only the soul and the future and in the meantime resignation. Could anything be more barbarous? She ought to rebel.’
‘I should leave her as she is,’ said Mary. ‘She’ll be happier. And you can rebel enough for two.’
Rampion laughed. ‘I’ll rebel enough for millions,’ he said.
At the end of the summer Rampion returned to Sheffield, and a little later the Felphams moved southwards to their London house. It was Mary who wrote the first letter. She had expected to hear from him; but he did not write. Not that there was any good reason why he should. But somehow she had expected that he would write; she was disappointed when he did not. The weeks passed. In the end she wrote to ask him the name of a book about which he had spoken in one of their conversations. The pretext was flimsy; but it served. He answered; she thanked him; the correspondence became an establ
ished fact.
At Christmas Rampion came up to London; he had had some things accepted by the newspapers and was unprecedentedly rich – he had ten pounds to do what he liked with. He did not let Mary know of his proximity till the day before his departure.
‘But why didn’t you tell me before?’ she asked reproachfully, when she heard how many days he had already been in London.
‘I didn’t want to inflict myself on you,’ he answered.
‘But you knew I should have been delighted.’
‘You have your own friends.’ Rich friends, the ironical smile implied.
‘But aren’t you one of my friends?’ she asked, ignoring the implication.
‘Thank you for saying so.’
‘Thank you for being so,’ she answered without affectation or coquetry.
He was moved by the frankness of her avowal, the genuineness and simplicity of her sentiment. He knew, of course, that she liked and admired him; but to know and to be told are different things.
‘I’m sorry, then, I didn’t write to you before,’ he said, and then regretted his words. For they were hypocritical. The real reason why he had kept away from her was not a fear of being badly received; it was pride. He could not afford to take her out; he did not want to accept anything.
They spent the afternoon together and were unreasonably, disproportionately happy.
‘If only you’d told me before,’ she repeated when it was time for her to go. ‘I wouldn’t have made this tiresome engagement for the evening.’
‘You’ll enjoy it,’ he assured her with a return of that ironical tone in which all his references to her life as a member of the monied class were made. The expression of happiness faded from his face. He felt suddenly rather resentful at having been so happy in her company. It was stupid to feel like that. What was the point of being happy on opposite sides of a gulf? ‘You’ll enjoy it,’ he repeated, more bitterly. ‘Good food and wine, distinguished people, witty conversation, the theatre afterwards. Isn’t it the ideal evening?’ His tone was savagely contemptuous.