Page 123 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 123

to marry Paris. Helmholtz had been restless throughout the entire scene; but
when, pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out:

“Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away:

Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies .”
when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable
guffawing.
The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some
one she didn’t want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having some
one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smutty ab-
surdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He had managed, with a heroic
effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but “sweet mother”
(in the Savage’s tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying de-
ad, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument,
were too much for him. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down
his face-quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage, the Savage
looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued,
closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl
from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.
“And yet,” said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologi-
ze, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, “I know quite
well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can’t write really
well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propa-
ganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get
excited about. You’ve got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can’t think of
the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!” He
shook his head. “You can’t expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and
mothers. And who’s going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not ha-
ving her?” (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at
the floor, saw nothing.) “No.” he concluded, with a sigh, “it won’t do. We need
some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one
find it?” He was silent; then, shaking his head, “I don’t know,” he said at last,
“I don’t know.”

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