“What an extraordinary face!” thought Mary as he approached. “But how ill he looks! So thin, so pale.” But his eyes forbade her to feel pity. They were bright with power.
He came to a halt in front of them, drawing up his thin body very rigidly, as though he were on parade. There was defiance in the attitude, an earnest defiance in the expression of his face. He looked at them fixedly with his bright eyes, turning from one to the other.
“Good afternoon,” he said. It was costing him an enormous effort to speak. But speak he must, just because of that insolent unawareness in their blank rich faces.
Mary answered for the others. “Good afternoon.”
“I’m trespassing here,” said the stranger. “Do you mind?” The seriousness of his defiance deepened. He looked at them sombrely. The young men were examining him from the other side of bars, from a long way off, from the vantage ground of another class. They had noticed his clothes. There was hostility and contempt in their eyes. There was also a kind of fear. “I’m a trespasser,” he repeated. His voice was rather shrill, but musical. His accent was of the country.
“One of the local cads,” George had been thinking.
“A trespasser.” It would have been much easier, much pleasanter to sneak out unobserved. That was why he had to affront them.
There was a silence. The military man turned away. He dissociated himself from the whole unpleasant business. It had nothing to do with him, after all. The park belonged to Mary’s father. He was only a guest. “I’ve gotta motta: Always merry and bright,” he hummed to himself as he looked out over the black town in the valley.
It was George who broke the silence. “Do we mind?” he said, repeating the stranger’s words. His face had gone very red.
“How absurd he looks!” thought Mary, as she glanced at him. “Like a bull calf. A blushing bull calf.”
“Do we mind?” Damned insolent little bounder! George was working up a righteous indignation. “I should just think we do mind. And I’ll trouble you to …”
Mary broke out into laughter. “We don’t mind at all,” she said. “Not in the least.”
Her brother’s face became even redder. “What do you mean, Mary?” he asked furiously. (“Always merry and bright,” hummed the military man, more starrily detached than ever.) “The place is private.”
“But we don’t mind a bit,” she said, not looking at her brother, but at the stranger. “Not a bit, when people come and are frank about it, like you.” She smiled at him; but the young man’s face remained as proudly serious as ever. Looking into those serious bright eyes, she too suddenly became serious. It was no joke, she saw all at once, no joke. Grave issues were involved, important issues. But why grave and in what way important she did not know. She was only obscurely and profoundly aware that it was no joke. “Goodbye,” she said in an altered voice, and held out her hand.
The stranger hesitated for a second, then took it. “Goodbye,” he said. “I’ll get out of the park as quick as I can.” And turning round, he walked rapidly away.
“What the devil!” George began, turning angrily on his sister.
“Oh, hold your tongue!” she answered impatiently.
“Shaking hands with the fellow,” he went on protesting.
“A bit of a pleb, wasn’t he?” put in the military friend.
She looked from one to the other without speaking and walked away. What louts they were! The two young men followed.
“I wish to God Mary would learn how to behave herself properly,” said George, still fuming.
The military young man made deprecating noises. He was in love with her; but he had to admit that she was rather embarrassingly unconventional sometimes. It was her only defect.
“Shaking that bounder’s hand!” George went on grumbling.
That was their first meeting. Mary then was twenty-two and Mark Rampion a year younger. He had finished his second year at Sheffield University and was back at Stanton for the summer vacation. His mother lived in one of a row of cottages near the station. She had a little pension—her husband had been a postman—and made a few extra shillings by sewing. Mark was a scholarship boy. His younger and less talented brothers were already at work.
“A very remarkable young man,” the Rector insisted more than once in the course of his sketch of Mark Rampion’s career, some few days later.
The occasion was a church bazaar and charitable garden party at the rectory. Some of the Sunday-school children had acted a little play in the open air. The dramatist was Mark Rampion.
“Quite unassisted,” the Rector assured the assembled gentry. “And what’s more, the lad can draw. They’re a little eccentric perhaps, his pictures, a little … ah …” he hesitated.
“Weird,” suggested his daughter, with an upper-middle-class smile, proud of her incomprehension.
“But full of talent,” the Rector continued. “The boy’s a real cygnet of Tees,” he added with a self-conscious, almost guilty laugh. He had a weakness for literary allusions. The gentry smiled perfunctorily.
The prodigy was introduced. Mary recognized the trespasser.
“I’ve met you before,” she said.
“Poaching your view.”
“You’re welcome to it.” The words made him smile, a little ironically it seemed to her. She blushed, fearful lest she had said something that might have sounded rather patronizing. “But I suppose you’d go on poaching whether you were welcome or not,” she added with a nervous little laugh.
He said nothing, but nodded, still smiling.
Mary’s father stepped in with congratulations. His praises went trampling over the delicate little play like a herd of elephants. Mary writhed. It was all wrong, hopelessly wrong. She could feel that. But the trouble, as she realized, was that she couldn’t have said anything better herself. The ironic smile still lingered about his lips. “What fools he must think us all!” she said to herself.
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
