The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [227]
‘There is a destiny now possible to us — the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy which we must now finally betray or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive.’
Mountolive listened to her voice with astonishment, pity and shame. It was clear that what she saw in him was something like a prototype of a nation which existed now only in her imagination. She was kissing and cherishing a painted image of England. It was for him the oddest experience in the world. He felt the tears come into his eyes as she continued the magnificent peroration, suiting her clear voice to the melody of the prose. ‘Or will you, youths of
England, make your country again a royal throne of kings, a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions; a faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour, of goodwill towards men?’ The words began to vibrate in his skull.
‘Stop. Stop’ he cried sharply. ‘We are not like that any longer, Leila.’ It was an absurd book-fed dream this Copt had discovered and translated. He felt as if all those magical embraces had been somehow won under false pretences — as if her absurd thoughts were reducing the whole thing, diminishing the scale of it to something as shadowy and unreal as, say, a transaction with a woman of the streets. Can you fall in love with the stone effigy of a dead crusader?
‘You asked me why’ she said, still with contempt. ‘Because’
with a sigh ‘you are English, I suppose.’ (It surprised him each time he went over this scene in his mind and only an oath could express the astonishment of it. ‘Damn’.)
And then, like all the inexperienced lovers since the world began, he was not content to let things be; he must explore and evaluate them in his conscious mind. None of the answers she gave him was expected. If he mentioned her husband she at once became angry, interrupting him with withering directness: ‘I love him. I will not have him lightly spoken of. He is a noble man and I would never do anything to wound him.’
‘But … but …’ stammered the young Mountolive; and now, laughing at his perplexity, she once more put her arms about him saying ‘Fool. David, fool! It is he who told me to take you for a lover. Think — is he not wise in his way? Fearing to lose me altogether by a mischance? Have you never starved for love?
Don’t you know how dangerous love is?’ No, he did not know. What on earth was an Englishman to make of these strange patterns of thought, these confused and contending loyalties? He was struck dumb. ‘Only I must not fall in love and I won’t.’ Was this why she had elected to love Mountolive’s England through him rather than Mountolive himself? He could find no answer to
this. The limitations of his immaturity tongue-tied him. He closed his eyes and felt as if he were falling backwards into black space. And Leila, divining this, found in him an innocence which was itself endearing: in a way she set herself to make a man of him, using every feminine warmth, every candour. He was both a lover to her and a sort of hapless man-child who could be guided by her towards his own growth. Only (she must have made the reservation quite clearly in her own mind) she must beware of any possible resent-ment which he might feel at this tutelage. So she hid her own