Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [56]
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 role 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. 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.