Free Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley Page B

Conquistador’, there had been a startled turning of heads, a craning of necks from every corner of the room. The people who came to this Soho restaurant because it was, notoriously, so ‘artistic’, looked at one another significantly and nodded; they were getting their money’s worth, this time. And Lypiatt, with a fine air of rapt unconsciousness, went on with his recitation.
    â€˜Look down on Mexico, Conquistador’ – that was the refrain.
    The Conquistador, Lypiatt had made it clear, was the Artist, and the Vale of Mexico on which he looked down, the towered cities of Tlacopan and Chalco, of Tenochtitlan and Iztapalapan symbolized – well, it was difficult to say precisely what. The universe, perhaps?
    â€˜Look down,’ cried Lypiatt, with a quivering voice.
    â€˜Look down, Conquistador!
    There on the valley’s broad green floor,
    There lies the lake; the jewelled cities gleam;
    Chalco and Tlacopan
    Await the coming Man.
    Look down on Mexico, Conquistador,
    Land of your golden dream.’
    â€˜Not “dream”,’ said Gumbril, putting down the glass from which he had been profoundly drinking. ‘You can’t possibly say “dream”, you know.’
    â€˜Why do you interrupt me?’ Lypiatt turned on him angrily. His wide mouth twitched at the corners, his whole long face worked with excitement. ‘Why don’t you let me finish?’ He allowed his hand, which had hung awkwardly in the air above him, suspended, as it were, at the top of a gesture, to sink slowly to the table. ‘Imbecile!’ he said, and once more picked up his knife and fork.
    â€˜But really,’ Gumbril insisted, ‘you can’t say “dream”. Can you now, seriously?’ He had drunk the best part of a bottle of Burgundy and he felt good-humoured, obstinate and a little bellicose.
    â€˜And why not?’ Lypiatt asked.
    â€˜Oh, because one simply can’t.’ Gumbril leaned back in his chair, smiled and caressed his drooping blond moustache. ‘Not in this year of grace, nineteen twenty-two.’
    â€˜But why?’ Lypiatt repeated, with exasperation.
    â€˜Because it’s altogether
too
late in the day,’ declared precious Mr Mercaptan, rushing up to his emphasis with flutes and roaring, like a true Conquistador, to fall back, however, at the end of the sentence rather ignominiously into a breathless confusion. He was a sleek, comfortable young man with smooth brown hair parted in the centre and conducted in a pair of flowing curves across the temples, to be looped in damp curls behind his ears. His face ought to have been rather more exquisite, rather more refinedly
dix-huitième
than it actually was. It had a rather gross, snouty look, which was sadly out of harmony with Mr Mercaptan’s inimitably graceful style. For Mr Mercaptan had a style and used it, delightfully, in his middle articles for the literary weeklies. His most precious work, however, was that little volume of essays, prose poems, vignettes and paradoxes, in which he had so brilliantly illustrated his favourite theme – the pettiness, the simian limitations, the insignificance and the absurd pretentiousness of
Homo
soidisant
sapiens.
Those who met Mr Mercaptan personally often came away with the feeling that perhaps, after all, he was right in judging so severely of humanity.
    â€˜Too late in the day,’ he repeated. ‘Times have changed.
Sunt lacrymae rerum, nos et mutamur in illis.’
He laughed his own applause.
    â€˜Quot hominess, tot disputandum est,’
said Gumbril, taking another sip of his Beaune Supérieure. At the moment, he was all for Mercaptan.
    â€˜But
why
is it too late?’ Lypiatt insisted.
    Mr Mercaptan made a delicate gesture. ‘
Ça se sent, mon cher ami,’
he said, ‘
ça ne s’explique pas
.’ Satan, it is said, carries hell in his heart; so it was with Mr Mercaptan – wherever he