Читать книгу The Counterplot - Hope Mirrlees - Страница 8

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Arnold Lane and Guy Cust had been great friends at Cambridge, in spite of having been at different colleges, and having cultivated different poses.

Guy, who was an Etonian, had gone in for intellectual and sartorial foppishness, for despising feminine society, for quoting “Mr. Pope” and “Mr. Gibbon,” and for frequenting unmarried dons.

Arnold had been less exclusive—had painted the town a “greenery-yellow” with discalceated Fabians, read papers on Masefield to the “Society of Pagans,” and frequently played tennis at the women’s colleges; he had also, rather shamefacedly, played a good deal of cricket and football.

Then, at the end of their last year, came the War, and they had both gone to the front.

The trenches had turned Arnold into an ordinary and rather Philistine young man.

As to Guy—he had undergone what he called a conversion to the “amazing beauty of modern life,” and, abandoning his idea of becoming a King’s don and leading that peculiar existence which, like Balzac’s novel, is a recherche de l’Absolu in a Dutch interior, when the War was over he had settled in London, where he tried to express in poetry what he called “the modern mysticism”—that sense, made possible by wireless and cables, of all the different doings of the world happening simultaneously: London, music-halls, Broad Street, Proust writing, people picking oranges in California, mysterious processes of growth or decay taking place in the million trees of the myriad forests of the world, a Javanese wife creeping in and stabbing her Dutch rival. One gets the sense a little when at the end of The Garden of Cyrus Sir Thomas Browne says: “The huntsmen are up in America and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.” Its finest expression, he said, was to be found in the Daily Mirror.

But early training and tastes are tenacious. We used to be taught that, while we ought not to wish for the palm without the dust, we should, nevertheless, keep Apollo’s bays immaculate; and, in spite of their slang, anacoluthons, and lack of metre, Guy’s poems struck some people (Teresa, for instance) as being not the bays but the aspidistras of Apollo—dusted by the housemaid every morning.

Towards five o’clock, the next day, their arrival was announced by ’Snice excitably barking at the front door, and by Concha—well, the inarticulate and loud noises of welcome with which Concha always greeted the return of her father, brother, or friends, is also best described by the word “barking.”

“It’s a friendly gift; I’m sure no ‘true woman’ is without it,” thought Teresa.

Arnold had his father’s short, sturdy body and his mother’s handsome head; Guy was small and slight, with large, widely-opened, china-blue eyes and yellow hair; he was always exquisitely dressed; he talked in a shrill voice, always at a tremendous rate. They were both twenty-seven years old.

As usual, they had tea out on the lawn; the Doña plying Arnold with wistful questions, in the hopes of getting fresh material for that exact picture of his life in London that she longed to possess, that, by its help, she might, in imagination, dog his every step, hear each word he uttered.

Up in the morning, say at eight (she hoped his landlady saw that his coffee was hot), then at his father’s office by nine, then ... but she never would be able to grasp the sort of things men did in offices, then luncheon—she hoped it was a good one (no one else had ever had any fears of Arnold’s not always doing himself well), then ... hazy outlines and details which she knew were all wrong, and, in spite of the many years she had spent in England, ridiculously like the life of a young Spaniard in her youth ... no, no, he would never begin his letters to young ladies ojos de mi corazon (eyes of my heart)—they would be more like this: Dear ——? Fed up. Have you read? Cheerio! Amazing performance! Quite. Allow me to remind you.... And then, perhaps, a Latin quotation to end up. No, it was no use, she would never be able to understand it all.

“A Scotch protégé of Dad’s is coming to-night,” said Concha; “he’ll probably travel down with Rory Dundas—I wonder if they’ll get on ... oh, Guy, I hadn’t noticed them before; what divine spats!”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Arnold, “it’s that chap Munroe, I suppose. Look here, I don’t come down here so often, I think I might be left alone when I do, Mother,” and he turned angrily to the Doña. It was only in moments of irritation that he called her “mother.”

“And I think so, too. I told your father that you would not be pleased.”

“Well, of course, it’s come to this, that I’ll give up coming home at all,” and he savagely hacked himself a large slice of cake.

A look of terror crept into the Doña’s eyes—her children vanishing slowly, steadily, over the brow of a hill, while she stood rooted to the ground, was one of her nightmares.

Trying to keep the anger out of her voice, Teresa said, “The last time you were here there were no visitors at all, and the time before it was all your own friends.”

“Quite. But that is no reason....”

“Poor angel!” cried Concha, plumping down on his knee, “you’re like Harry, who used to say that he’d call his house Yarrow that it might be ‘unvisited.’”

Arnold grinned—the Boswellian possessive grin, automatically produced in every Trinity man when a sally of Dr. Sinclair’s was quoted.

“How I love family quarrels! By the way, where’s Mr. Lane?” said Guy.

“Playing golf,” answered the Doña curtly.

“The glorious life he leads! ‘The apples fall about his head!’ He does lead an amazingly beautiful life.”

“‘Beautiful,’ Guy?” and the Doña turned on him the look of pitying wonder his remarks were apt to arouse in her.

“Yes, successful, middle-aged business men,” cried Guy excitedly, beginning to wave his hands up and down, “they’re the only happy people ... they’re like Keats’ Nightingale, ‘no hungry generations tread them down, singing of....’”

“I’m not so sure of that,” laughed Arnold. “We’re certainly hungry, and we often trample on him—if that’s what it means,” and, getting up, he yawned, stretched himself, and, seizing the Doña’s hand, said, “Come and show me the garden.”

The Doña flushed with pleasure, and they strolled off towards the border, whither they were shortly followed by Concha.

Teresa and Guy sat on by the tea-table.

“I quite agree with you,” she said presently. “Dad’s life is pleasant to contemplate. Somehow, he belongs to this planet—he manages to be happy.”

“Yes, you see he doesn’t try to pretend that he belongs to a different scheme of evolution from beasts and trees and things, and he doesn’t dream. Do you think he ever thinks of his latter end?” and he gave a little squeak of laughter.

Teresa smiled absently, and for some seconds gazed in silence at the view. Then she said, “Think of all the things happening everywhere ... but there are such gaps that we can’t feel the process—even in ourselves; we can only register results and that isn’t living, and it’s frightfully unæsthetic.”

“But, my dear Teresa, that’s what I’m always preaching!” cried Guy indignantly. “It’s exactly this registering of results instead of living through processes that is so frightful. In a poem you shouldn’t say, ‘Hullo! There’s a lesser celandine!’ all ready-made, you know; and then start moralising about it: ‘In its unostentatious performance of its duty it reminds me of a Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman that I once knew’—you know the sort of thing. In your poem the lesser celandine should go through the whole process of growth—and then it should wither and die.”

“No, Guy; it can’t be done ... in music, perhaps, but that’s so vague.”

Guy felt a sudden sinking in his stomach: had he not himself invented a technique to do this very thing? He must find out at all costs what Teresa thought of his poetry.

“Don’t you think ...” he began nervously, “that modern poetry is getting much nearer to—to—er—processes?”

Teresa gave a little smile. So that was what it was all leading up to? Was there no one with whom she could discuss things simply and honestly for their own sake?

“Did you—er—ever by any chance read my poem on King’s Cross?”

“Yes. It was very good.”

She felt tempted to add, “It reminded me a little bit of Frith,” but she refrained. It would be very unkind and really not true.

Her praise, faint though it was, made Guy tingle all over with pleasure, and he tumbled out, in one breath, “Well, you see, it’s really a sort of trick (everything is). Grammar and logic must be thrown overboard, and it’s not that it’s easier to write without them, it’s much more difficult; Monsieur Jourdain was quite wrong in calling logic rébarbative; as a matter of fact, it’s damnably easy and seductive—so’s grammar; the Song of the Sirens was probably sung in faultless grammar ... and anyhow, it spoils everything. Now, just think of the most ridiculous line in the Prelude:

... and negro ladies in white muslin gowns.

Don’t you see it’s entirely the fault of the conjunction ‘and’? Try it this way. Oranges, churches, cabriolets, negro ladies in white muslin gowns.... It immediately becomes as significant and decorative as Manet’s negro lady is a white muslin gown in the Louvre—the one offering a bouquet to Olympia.”

He paused, and looked at her a little sheepishly, a smile lurking in the corner of his eyes.

“You’re too ridiculous,” laughed Teresa, “and theories about literature, you know, are rather dangerous, and allow me to point out that all the things that ... well, that one perhaps regrets in poor Wordsworth, whom you despise so much, that all these things are the result of his main theory, namely, that everything is equally interesting and equally poetic. While the other things—the incomparable things—happened in spite of his theories.”

“Oh, yes ... trudging over the moors through the rain, and he’s sniffing because he’s lost his handkerchief, and he’s thinking of tea—sent him by that chap in India or China, what was his name? You know ... the friend of Lamb’s—and of hot tea cakes.”

Teresa gave her cool, superior smile. “Poor Guy! You’ve got a complex about Wordsworth.”

After a little pause, she went on, “Literature, I think, ought to transpose life ... turn it into a new thing. It has to come pushing up through all the endless labyrinths of one’s mind—like catechumens in the ancient Mysteries wandering through cave after cave of strange visions, and coming out at the other end new men. I mean ... oh, it’s so difficult to say what I mean ... but one looks at—say, that view, and the result is that one writes—well, the love story of King Alfred, or ... a sonnet on a sun-dial. I remember I once read a description by a psychologist of the process that went on in the mind of a certain Italian dramatist: he would be teased for months by some abstract philosophical idea and gradually it would turn itself into, and be completely lost in an action—living men and women doing things. It seems to me an extraordinarily beautiful process—really creative.... Transubstantiation, that’s what it is really; but the bad writers are like priests who haven’t proper Orders—they can scream hoc est corpus till they are hoarse, but nothing happens.”

Guy had wriggled impatiently during this monologue; and now he said, in a very small voice, “You ... you do like my poetry, don’t you, Teresa?”

She looked at him; of course, he deserved to be slapped for his egotism and vanity, but his eager, babyish face was so ridiculous—like Jasper’s—and when Jasper climbed on to the chest of drawers and shouted, “Look at me, Teresa! Teresa! Look at me!” as if he had achieved the ascent of Mount Everest, she always feigned surprise and admiration.

So, getting up, she said with a smile, “I think you’re an amazingly brilliant creature, Guy—I do really. Now I must go.”

He felt literally intoxicated with gratification. “I think you’re an amazingly brilliant creature; I think you’re an amazingly brilliant creature; an amazingly brilliant creature”—he sucked each word as if it were a lollipop.

Then, the way she affectionately humoured him—that was the way women always treated geniuses: geniuses were apt to seem a trifle ridiculous; probably the impression he made on people was somewhat similar to Swinburne’s.

He got up and tripped across the lawn to a clump of fuchsias.

Yes; he had certainly been very brilliant with Teresa: the song of the sirens was, I am sure, in faultless grammar; the song of the sirens was, I am sure, in faultless grammar; the song of the ... and how witty he had been about the negro ladies!

He really must read a paper on his own views on poetry—to an audience mainly composed of women: The cultivated have, without knowing it, become the Philistines, and, scorning the rude yet lovely Saturnalia of modern life, have refused an angel the hospitality of their fig-tree; Tartuffe, his long, red nose pecksniffing—the day of the Puritans is over; but for the sake of the Lady of Christ’s, let them enjoy undisturbed their domestic paradise regained; then all these subjects locked up so long and now let loose by modern poetry ... yes, it would go like this: The harems have been thrown open, and, though as good reactionaries we may deplore the fact, yet common humanity demands that we should lend a helping hand to the pretty lost creatures in their embroidered shoes; then, about anacoluthons and so on; surely one’s sentences need not hold water if they hold the milk of Paradise; oh, yes ... of course ... and he would end up by reading them a translation of Pindar’s first Olympian Ode, ... Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ ..., and now, ladies and gentlemen, which of you will dare to subscribe to Malherbe’s ‘ce galimatias de Pindare’?

Loud applause; rows of indulgent, admiring, cultured smiles—like the Cambridge ladies when the giver of the Clark lectures makes a joke.

“Guy! I have told you before, I will not have you cracking the fuchsia buds.”

It was the Doña, calling out from the border where, deserted by Arnold but joined by Dick, she was examining and commenting upon each blossom separately, in the manner of La Bruyère’s amateur of tulips.

“All right,” he called back in a small, weak voice, and went up to say, “How d’ye do” to Dick.

“Hullo, Guy! Been writing any more poetry?”

This was Dick’s invariable greeting of him.

Then he wandered off towards the house—a trifle crestfallen. “I think you’re an amazingly brilliant creature.” Yes; but wasn’t that begging the question, the direct question he had asked whether she liked his poetry? And one could be “an amazingly brilliant creature,” and, at the same time, but an indifferent writer. Marie Bashkirsteff, for instance, whose journal he had come upon in an attic at home, mouldering away between a yellow-backed John Strange Winter and a Who’s Who of the nineties; no one could deny that socially she must have been extremely brilliant, but, to him, it had seemed incredible that the world should have failed to perceive that her “self-revelations” were to a large extent faked, and her imagination a tenth-rate one. And now, both as painter and writer, Time had shown her up, together with the other pompiers whose work had made such a brave show in the Salons of the eighties, or had received such panegyrics in the Mercure de France.

He felt sick as he thought of time, in fifteen years ... ten years ... having corroded the brilliant flakes of contemporary paint, faded the arabesque of strange words and unexpected thoughts, and revealed underneath the grains of pounce.

Brilliant ... there was Oscar Wilde, of course ... but then, Oscar Wilde!

He must find out what value exactly she attached to brilliancy.