John Powys - The Brazen Head

The sound of their names roused Sir Mort from the trance he’d fallen into, a trance, or a cessation of every bodily activity save breath and pulse and heart-beat, which was more familiar to his family than any other mood of his, but which covered in reality a much more consciously philosophical attitude to life than Lady Val or his three children realized.

Sir Mort was a queer mixture of a predatory animal with the sort of animal that predatory creatures, including men, are so addicted to hunting: and it now struck him that here was a supreme opportunity for an absolute escape from all those accompaniments of marriage that Lady Val would most certainly have insisted upon. It pleased him also to note that Lady Ulanda, who was now clinging to her husband’s arm with an expression of abandoned and doting felicity, was evidently beside herself with satisfaction at having caused the collapse of Roger Bacon’s Brazen Head, even if no further than to the ground.

It was a lucky thing for young John, this abrupt and unexpected summons of Lil-Umbra and her betrothed Raymond to this unpremeditated exchange of marriage vows; for Tilton and his bride had roused Sir Mort from his “hunter’s trance,” and were conversing eagerly with him, and there was no one immediately available to hold the horses of these new candidates for the marriage sacrament. So that it fell to the lot of young John to stand between these two horses, one of which was called “Rip” and the other “Strip”, and get a tight hold on both pairs of reins.

The impetuously well-meaning Albertus was himself just then a little bit worried by a tickling at the back of one of his ears, which he erroneously fancied to be due to some mis-arrangement of his head-dress, but which really was caused by the fluttering of a midge. And it was this small annoyance that made him completely forget to use one rather important sentence in the course of the ceremony, a sentence the omission of which made no real difference but had an odd effect. But though the excited Lil-Umbra did not notice this lapse, her calmer companion stored it up in his mind as one of those humorous accidents that seem intentionally to disturb the dignity of our human life upon earth as a professional fool rattles his bells.

Although the accident to the Brazen Head had set John weeping like a child it now became necessary for him to take the two horses down the hill, where he tied them, with the help of Lay-Brother Tuck, to Friar Bacon’s oak-tree.

It was a much less agitating meeting than he expected that young John had then with his adored master. The Friar treated him, he noticed, with deep pride and satisfaction, rather as a responsible fully grown-up man and as an equal, than as a pupil or disciple.

“You and I mustn’t let ourselves,” the Friar told him quietly, “get too agitated, whatever they do to our Brazen Head. We know he is, poor old dear, only about a fiftieth part of a real person. We’ve given him the power of calculation along certain lines; and I hope , though I am not quite sure about that, that in a great crisis he might even speak. But I am afraid the poor dear is still devoid of real life, for so far we haven’t learnt the art of creating life, though we may learn it before we’ve done.

“But we must remember that all living creatures, even worms and insects and sea-shells, have a consciousness of being themselves and only themselves, and have the power of saying to themselves like Jehovah, I am that I am . I wish I could believe that our poor old Brazen Head, whom an angry woman just now threw to the ground, has the power of saying to itself: ‘I am the Brazen Head, made by Roger Bacon. I am as much of a real conscious self as that daddy-long-legs now resting on my shoulder!’”

Young John couldn’t even smile at this, for the occasion was too serious. Pressing his knuckles against his own cheek to prevent the flush he felt mounting up under his skin, he boldly asked him a very delicate and crucial question.

“I needn’t tell you, Father,” he said, “how you have always taken the place for me since I was a boy of all other human loves and devotions. When I think of embracing anyone or of being embraced and of the closest intimacies”—at this point, as he felt his cheeks begin to burn, he thought with relief that, in the burning sun-ray that poured between those branches, nothing of what he experienced beneath his skin could possibly be observed—“I seem never able to think of anybody but of you, my beloved master. Now that Tilton, my elder brother, has found a mate, it’s not, I hope, my duty to marry anybody, or. to have children by anybody. Nor, as long as I feel no special call to join a religious order, is it, I hope, my duty to become a monk or a friar? What I want to do, master most dear, is to serve you and help you, until I die. When you let me take that ‘Opus’ of yours abroad and place it where I knew it would reach the Holy Father, I felt happier than I’d ever been in my life before. You don’t think, master, do you, that I’m shirking my duty by refusing to marry and have children?”

Friar Bacon only revealed by a very faint trembling in his voice how deeply he was affected by his pupil’s words. What he said was emphatic and definite.

“As long as we are considerate to other people,” he said, “and as kind and sympathetic towards them as our circumstances permit, we have all got to live to ourselves, for ourselves, in ourselves and by ourselves. This is how, as Aristotle teaches, matter produces us out of itself, as a product to satisfy its deep ‘privation’, or its desperate yearning and craving to possess what it feels could proceed from it, but what, so far in its long history, has not proceeded from it!

“You, my son, have so far dedicated your whole life to learning. And as long as you feel thus impelled, I think you should so continue. But on the other hand if by fate or chance you met a girl you loved, and who loved you, I would say you had better marry and use your education to help this old world of ours out of its ignorance in some practical and active way.

“As long as I am alive I shall cling to your help and hold fast to your love as the most precious help and the most sacred love that life has allowed me to know. And when death divides us, remember this. The fruits of a learning that has been harder than slavery to acquire will be sweeter than the roses of Sharon to enjoy.”

Ghosta had sunk down beside the Brazen Head the moment it was upon the ground, and she was still pressing the palms of her hands against its neck and against its shoulders and upon its implacably oracular chin. She wasn’t weeping as John had wept, but she was evidently affected by some strong interior emotion.

And it would have been clear to anyone present at this unusual scene, whose interest had been aroused by these two immigrants from Palestine, that the gigantic Peleg, who was standing over her, was not a little disturbed by this emotion of hers.

“Have mercy upon me Almighty Jehovah, Lord God of Israel, Lord God of Sarah and Leah, of Rachel and Rebecca!” this proud, reserved, and most beautiful daughter of Israel prayed. And as she prayed, she reminded herself that in a certain sense she had quite deliberately mingled her virginal life in a weird erotic ecstasy with the sub-human, sub-animal, sub-vegetable life of this Brazen Head beside her.

“Is there,” she allowed herself to whisper to the thing, “is there any way I can get rid of this mad terror I have of the passing of time?”

But Ghosta and Peleg weren’t the only pair of lovers brought to that place by the magnetism of “Little Pretty.”

“What is it my angel?” asked Raymond de Laon of Lil-Umbra, as in their new relation they descended the slope towards their horses. “Are you hurt? Are you afraid? Have you seen something? Have you thought of something?”