Point Counter Point, Page 35

  ‘How can I excuse myself?’ he cried, as he took her hands. ‘But if you knew what a whirl I live in! How marvellous it is to see you again! Not changed at all. As lovely as ever.’ He looked intently into her face. The same serene pale eyes, the same full and melancholy lips. ‘And looking so wonderfully well!’

  She smiled back at him. His eyes were a very dark brown; from a little distance they seemed all pupil. Fine eyes, but rather disquieting, she found, in their intent, bright, watchful fixity. She looked into them a moment, then turned away. ‘You too,’ she said, ‘just the same. But then I don’t know why we should be different.’ She glanced back into his face and found him still intently looking at her. ‘Ten months and travelling in the tropics don’t turn one into somebody else.’

  Everard laughed. ‘Thank heaven for that!’ he said. ‘Let’s come down to lunch.’

  ‘And Philip?’ he asked, when the fish had been served

  ‘Is he also the same as ever?’

  ‘A little more so, if possible.’

  Everard nodded. ‘A little more so. Quite. One would expect it. Seeing blackamoors walking about without trousers must have made him still more sceptical about the eternal verities than he was.’

  Elinor smiled, but at the same time was a little offended by his mockery. ‘And what’s been the effect on you of seeing so many Englishmen walking about in pea-green uniforms?’ she retorted.

  Everard laughed.’strengthened my belief in the eternal verities, of course.’

  ‘Of which you’re one?’

  He nodded. ‘Of which, naturally, I’m one.’ They looked at one another, smiling. It was Elinor again who first averted her eyes.

  ‘Thanks for telling me.’ She kept up the note of irony. ‘I mightn’t have guessed by myself.’ There was a little silence.

  ‘Don’t imagine,’ he said at last in a tone that was no more bantering, but serious, ‘that you can make me lose my temper by telling me that I’ve got a swelled head.’ He spoke softly; but you were conscious of huge reserves of power. ‘Other people might succeed perhaps. But then one doesn’t like to be bothered by the lower animals. One squashes them. But with fellow humans one discusses things rationally.’

  ‘I’m most relieved to hear it,’ laughed Elinor.

  ‘You think I’ve got a swelled head,’ he went on. ‘And I suppose it’s true in a way. But the trouble is, I know it’s justified—experimentally. Modesty’s harmful if it’s false. Milton said that “nothing profits more than self-esteem founded on just and right.” I know that mine is founded on just and right. I know, I’m absolutely convinced that I can do what I want to do. What’s the good of denying the knowledge? I’m going to be master, I’m going to impose my will. I have the determination and the courage. Very soon I shall have the organized strength. And then I shall take control. I know it; why should I pretend that I don’t?’ He leaned back in his chair and there was a long silence.

  ‘It’s absurd,’ Elinor was thinking, ‘it’s ridiculous to talk like that.’ It was the protest of her critical intellect against her feelings. For her feelings had been strangely moved. His words, the tone of his voice—so soft, yet with such vibrating latencies of power and passion divinable beneath its softness—had carried her away. When he had said, ‘I’m going to be master,’ it was as though she had taken a gulp of mulled wine—such a warmth had suddenly tingled through her whole body. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ she inwardly repeated, trying to avenge herself on him for his easy conquest, trying to punish the traitors within her own soul who had so easily surrendered. But what had been done could not wholly be undone. The words might be ridiculous; but the fact remained that, while he was uttering them, she had thrilled with sudden admiration, with excitement, with a strange desire to exult and laugh aloud.

  The servant changed the plates. They talked of indifferent matters—of her travels, of doings in London while she had been away, of common friends. The coffee was brought, they lit their cigarettes; there was a silence. How would it be broken? Elinor wondered apprehensively. Or rather did not wonder; for she knew and it was this prophetic knowledge that made her apprehensive. Perhaps she could forestall him by breaking the silence herself. Perhaps, if she rattled on, she could keep the conversation insignificant till it was time for her to go. But there seemed suddenly to be nothing to say. She felt as though paralysed by the approach of the inevitable event. She could only sit and wait. And at last the inevitable duly happened.

  ‘Do you remember,’ he said slowly, without looking up, ‘what I told you before you went away?’

  ‘I thought we’d agreed not to talk about it again.’

  He threw back his head with a little laugh. ‘Well, you thought wrong.’ He looked at her and saw in her eyes an expression of distress and anxiety, an appeal for mercy. But Everard was merciless. He planted his elbows on the table and leaned towards her. She dropped her eyes.

  ‘You said I hadn’t changed to look at,’ he said in his soft voice with its latencies of violence. ‘Well, my mind hasn’t changed either. It’s still the same, Elinor, still the same as it was when you went away. I love you just as much, Elinor. No, I love you more.’ Her hand lay limp on the table in front of her. He stretched out one of his and took it. ‘Elinor,’ he whispered.

  She shook her head, without looking at him.

  Softly and passionately he talked on. ‘You don’t know what love can be,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what I can give you. Love that’s desperate and mad, like a forlorn hope. And at the same time tender, like a mother’s love for a sick child. Love that’s violent and gentle, violent like a crime and as gentle as sleep.’

  ‘Words,’ Elinor was thinking, ‘absurd melodramatic words.’ But they moved her, as his boasting had moved her

  ‘Please, Everard,’ she said aloud,’ no more.’ She didn’t want to be moved. With an effort she held her glance steady while she looked into his face, into those bright and searching eyes. She essayed a laugh, she shook her head. ‘Because it’s impossible, and you know it.’

  ‘All I know,’ he said slowly, ‘is that you’re afraid. Afraid of coming to life. Because you’ve been half dead all these years. You haven’t had a chance to come fully alive. And you know I can give it you. And you’re afraid, you’re afraid.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ she said. It was just ranting and melodrama.

  ‘And perhaps you’re right, in a way,’ he went on. ‘Being alive, really alive, isn’t entirely a joke. It’s dangerous. But by God,’ he added, and the latent violence in his soft voice suddenly broke out into ringing actuality, ‘it’s exciting.’

  ‘If you knew what a fright you gave me!’ she said.’shouting like that!’ But it was not only a fright she had had. Her nerves and her very flesh still crept and quivered with the obscure and violent exultations which his voice had evoked in her. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ she assured herself. But it was as though she had heard the voice directly with her body. The echoes of it seemed to vibrate at her very midriff. ‘Ridiculous,’ she repeated. And then what was this love he talked about so thrillingly? Just an occasional brief violence in the intervals of business. He despised women, resented them because they wasted a man’s time and energy. She had often heard him say that he had no time for love-making. His advances were almost an insult—the propositions one makes to a woman of the streets.

  ‘Do be reasonable, Everard,’ she said.

  Everard withdrew his hand from hers and, with a laugh, leaned back in his chair. ‘Very well,’ he answered. ‘For to-day.’

  ‘For every day.’ She felt profoundly relieved. ‘Besides,’ she added, quoting a phrase of his, with a little ironical smile, ‘you’re not a member of the leisured class. You’ve got more important things to do than make love.’

  Everard looked at her for a little in silence and his face was grave with a kind of lowering thoughtfulness. More important things to do? It was true, of course. He was angry with himself for wanting so much to have her. Angry with Elinor fo
r keeping him unsatisfied.’shall we talk about Shakespeare?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘Or the musical glasses?’

  The fare was three-and-six. Philip gave the driver two half-crowns and climbed the steps of the club’s pillared portico pursued by the sound of thanks. He made a habit of overtipping. It was not out of ostentation or because he had asked, or meant to ask, special services. (Indeed, few men could have demanded less of their servants than did Philip, could have been more patient to put up with bad service, and more willing to excuse remissness.) His overtipping was the practical expression of a kind of remorseful and apologetic contempt. ‘My poor devil!’ the superfluous gratuity seemed to imply, ‘I’m sorry to be your superior.’ And perhaps also there was a shilling’s worth of apology for his very considerateness as an employer. For if he was unexacting in his demands, that was due as much to a dread and dislike of unnecessary human contacts as to consideration and kindness. From those who served him Philip demanded little, for the good reason that he wanted to have as little as possible to do with them. Their presence disturbed him. He did not like to have his privacy intruded upon by alien personalities. To be compelled to speak with them, to have to establish a direct contact—not of intelligences, but of wills, feelings, intuitions—with these intruders was always disagreeable to him. He avoided it as much as he could; and when contact was necessary, he did his best to dehumanize the relation. Philip’s generosity was in part a compensation for his inhuman kindness towards its recipients. It was conscience money.

  The doors stood open; he entered. The hall was vast, dim, pillared and cool. Sir Francis Chantrey’s allegorical marble group of Science and Virtue subduing the Passions writhed with classical decorum in a niche on the stairs. He hung up his hat and went to the smokingroom to look at the papers and await the arrival of his guests. Spandrell was the first to arrive.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Philip, as soon as the greetings were over and the vermouth ordered, ‘tell me quickly, before he comes, what about my absurd young brother-in-law. What’s happening with him and Lucy Tantamount?’

  Spandrell shrugged his shoulders. ‘What does usually happen on these occasions? And in any case, is this the place and time to go into details?’ He indicated the other occupants of the smokingroom. A cabinet minister, two judges and a bishop were within earshot.

  Philip laughed. ‘But I only wanted to know how serious the affair really was, how long it’s likely to last…’

  ‘Very serious as far as Walter’s concerned. As for duration—who knows? But Lucy’s going abroad very soon.’

  ‘Thank heaven for small mercies! Ah, here you are!’ It was Walter. ‘And there’s Illidge.’ He waved his hand. The newcomers refused an aperitive. ‘Let’s come and eat at once, then,’ said Philip.

  The dining-room at Philip’s club was enormous. A double row of stucco Corinthian pillars supported a gilded ceiling. From the pale chocolate-brown walls, the portraits of distinguished members, now deceased, glared down. Curtains of claretcoloured velvet were looped up at either side of the six windows, a claretcoloured carpet muffled the floor and in their claretcoloured liveries the waiters darted about almost invisibly, like leaf-insects in a forest.

  ‘I always like this room,’ said Spandrell as they entered. ‘It’s like a scene for Belshazzar’s feast.’

  ‘But a very Anglican Belshazzar,’ Walter qualified.

  ‘Gosh!’ exclaimed Illidge, who had been looking round

  ‘This is the sort of thing that really does make me feel pleb-ish.’

  Philip laughed, rather uncomfortably. Changing the subject, he pointed out the protectively coloured waiters. They proved the Darwinian hypothesis. ‘Survival of the fittest,’ he said as they sat down at their appointed table. ‘The men in other colours must have been killed off by infuriated members.’ One of the claretcoloured survivors brought the fish. They began to eat.

  ‘It’s curious,’ said Illidge, pursuing the train of thought suggested by his first impressions of the room, ‘it’s really extraordinary that I should be here at all. Sitting with you, at any rate, as a guest. For there wouldn’t have been anything so very surprising about my being here in one of these wine-coloured coats. That at least would have been in harmony with what the parsons would call “my station in life.”’ He uttered a brief resentful laugh. ‘But to be sitting with you—that’s really almost incredible. And it’s all due to the fact that a Manchester shopkeeper had a son with tendencies to scrofula. If Reggie Wright had been normally healthy, I’d probably be cobbling shoes in Lancashire. But luckily Reggie had tubercle bacilli in his lymph-system. The doctors prescribed a country life. His father took a cottage in our village for his wife and child, and Reggie went to the village school. But his father was ambitious for Reggie. (What a disgusting little rat he was!) ‘ Illidge remarked parenthetically. ‘Wanted him to go to Manchester Grammar School, later on. With a scholarship. Paid our schoolmaster to give him special coaching. I was a bright boy; the master liked me. While he was coaching Reggie, he thought he might as well coach me. Gratis, what’s more. Wouldn’t let my mother pay a penny. Not that she could have done so very easily, poor woman. The time came, and it was I who got the scholarship. Reggie failed.’ Illidge laughed. ‘Miserable scrofulous little squit! But I’m eternally grateful to him and the busy bacilli in his glands. But for them I’d be carrying on my uncle’s cobbling business in a Lancashire village. And that’s the sort of thing one’s life hinges on—some absolutely absurd, million-to-one chance. An irrelevance, and youi life’s altered.’

  ‘Not an irrelevance,’ objected Spandrell. ‘Your scholarship wasn’t irrelevant; it was very much to the point, it was in harmony with you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have won it, you wouldn’t be here. I doubt if anything is really irrelevant. Everything that happens Jis intrinsically like the man it happens to.’

  ‘That’s a bit oracular, isn’t it?’ Philip objected. ‘Perceiving events, men distort them—put it like that—so that what happens seems to be like themselves.’

  Spandrell shrugged his shoulders. ‘There may be that sort of distortion. But I believe that events come ready-made to fit the people they happen to.’

  ‘What rot!’ said Illidge, disgustedly.

  Philip dissented more politely. ‘But many people can be influenced by the same event in entirely different and characteristic ways.’

  ‘I know,’ Spandrell answered. ‘But in some indescribable way the event’s modified, qualitatively modified, so as to suit the character of each person involved in it. It’s a great mystery and a paradox.’

  ‘Not to say an absurdity and impossible,’ put in Illidge.

  ‘Absurd, then, and impossible,’ Spandrell agreed. ‘But all the same, I believe that’s how it happens. Why should things be logically explainable?’

  ‘Yes, why indeed? ‘ Walter echoed.

  ‘Still,’ said Philip, ‘your providence that makes the same event qualitatively different for different peopleisn’t that a bit thick?’

  ‘No thicker than our being here at all. No thicker than all this.’ With a wave of his hand he indicated the Belshazzaresque dining-room, the eaters, the plumcoloured waiters and the Perpetual Secretary of the British Academy, who happened at that moment to be entering the room with the Professor of Poetry at the University of Cambridge.