Point Counter Point (43 page)

But the John Bidlake they found sitting by the stove in his studio was not at all Olympian, seemed less instead of more than life size. He suffered himself to be kissed by his daughter, limply shook hands with Philip.

‘Good to see you again,’ he said. But there was no resonance in his voice; the undertone ofjovial thunders and jovial laughters was absent. He spoke without gusto. His eyes were without lustre, and bloodshot. He looked thin and grey.

‘How are you, father?’ Elinor was surprised and distressed. She had never seen her father like this before.

‘Not well,’ he answered, shaking his head, ‘not well. Something wrong with my insides.’ The old lion suddenly and recognizably roared. ‘Making us go through life with a barrow-full of tripes! I’ve always resented God’s practical jokes.’ The roar became plaintive. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to mine now. Something very unpleasant.’ It degenerated almost into a whine. ‘I feel wretched.’ Lengthily, the old man described his symptoms.

‘Have you seen a doctor?’ Elinor asked, when he had finished.

He shook his head. ‘Don’t believe in them. They never do one any good.’ The truth was that he had a superstitious terror of doctors. Birds of evil omen—he hated to see them in the house.

‘But you really ought.’ She tried to persuade him.

‘All right,’ he at last consented grumblingly.

‘Let the quacks come.’ But secretly he was rather relieved. He had been wanting to see the doctor for some time now; but his superstition had been stronger hitherto than his desire. The ill-omened medicine man was now to come, but not on his invitation; on Elinor’s. The responsibility was not his; not on him, therefore, would fall the bad luck. Old Bidlake’s private religion was obscurely complicated.

They began to talk of other things. Now that he knew he could consult a doctor in safety, John Bidlake felt better and more cheerful.

I’m worried about him,’ said Elinor, as they drove away.

Philip nodded. ‘Being seventy-three’s no joke. He’s begun to look his age.’

What a head! he was thinking. He wished he could paint. Literature couldn’t render it. One could describe it, of course, down to the last wrinkle. But where would one be then? Nowhere. Descriptions are slow. A face is instantaneously perceived. A word, a single phrase —that was what one needed. ‘The glory that was Greece, grown old.’ That, for example, would give you something of the man. Only of course it wouldn’t do. Quotations have something facetiously pedantic about them. ‘A statue in parchment’ would be better. ‘The parchment statue of what had once been Achilles was sitting, crumpled, near the stove.’ That was getting nearer the mark. No longwinded description. But for anyone who had ever seen a cast of the Discobolos, handled a vellum-bound book, heard of Achilles, John Bidlake was in that sentence visible. And for those who had never seen a Greek statue or read about Achilles in a book with a crinkly sheep-skin cover? Well, presumably they could go to the devil.

‘All the same,’ he thought, ‘it’s too literary. Too much culture.’

Elinor broke the silence. ‘I wonder how I shall find Everard, now that he’s become such a great man.’ With her mind’s eye she saw the keen face, the huge but agile body. Swiftness and violence. And he was in love with her. Did she like the man? Or did she detest him?

‘I wonder if he’s started pinching people’s ears, like Napoleon?’ Philip laughed. ‘Anyhow, it’s only a matter of time.’

‘All the same,’ said Elinor, ‘I like him.’ Philip’s mockery had answered her question for her.

‘So do I. But mayn’t I laugh at what I like?’

‘You certainly laugh at me. Is that because you like me?’

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘I adore you, and I never laugh at you. I take you perfectly seriously.’

Elinor looked at him, unsmiling. ‘You make me desperate sometimes. What would you do, if I went off with another man? Would you care two pins?’

‘I should be perfectly wretched.’

‘Would you?’ She looked at him. Philip was smiling; he was a thousand miles away. ‘I’ve a good mind to make the experiment,’ she added, frowning. ‘But
would
you be wretched? I’d like to be certain before I began.’

‘And who’d be your fellow experimenter?’

‘Ah, that’s the trouble. Most other men are so impossible.’

‘What a compliment!’

‘But you’re impossible too, Phil. The most impossible of them all, really. And the worst of it is I love you, in spite of it. And you know it. Yes, and exploit it too.’ The cab drew up at the curb. She reached for her umbrella. ‘But you be careful,’ she went on, as she rose to her feet. ‘I’m not indefinitely exploitable. I won’t go on giving something for nothing for ever. One of these days I shall start looking for somebody else.’ She stepped out on to the pavement.

‘Why not try Everard,’ he chaffed, looking out at her through the window of the cab.

‘Perhaps I shall,’ she answered. ‘I know Everard would ask nothing better.’

Philip laughed and blew her a kiss. ‘Tell the man to drive to the Club,’ he said.

Everard kept her waiting nearly ten minutes. When she had finished re-powdering her face, Elinor wandered inquisitively about the room. The flowers were abominably arranged. And that cabinet full of old swords and daggers and inlaid pistols was hideous, like a thing in a museum; a monstrosity, but at the same time rather touchingly absurd. Everard had such a schoolboyish ambition to ride about on a horse and chop people’s heads off; the cabinet gave him away. So did that glass-topped table with the tray-full of coins and medals under the crystal lid. How proudly he had shown her his treasures! There was the Macedonian tetradrachm, with the head of Alexander the Great in the guise of Hercules; the sestertius of 44 B.C. with the formidable profile of Caesar, and next to it Edward iI.’s rose noble stamped with the ship that symbolized the beginning of England’s power at sea. And there, on Pisanello’s medal, was Sigismondo Malatesta, most beautiful of ruffians; and there was Queen Elizabeth in her ruff and Napoleon with laurels in his hair, and the Duke of Wellington. She smiled at them affectionately; they were old friends. The satisfactory thing about Everard, she reflected, was that you always knew where you were with him. He was always so definitely himself; he lived up to character. She opened the piano and played a couple of chords; out of tune, as usual. On the little table near the fireplace was a volume of Everard’s latest Speeches and Addresses. She picked it up, she turned over the pages. ‘The policy of the British Freemen,’ she read, ‘may be summarized as Socialism without Political Democracy, combined with Nationalism without insularity.’ That sounded excellent. But if he had written ‘ political democracy without socialism combined with insularity without nationalism’she would probably have admired just as sincerely. These abstractions! she shook her head and sighed. ‘I must be a fool,’ she thought. But really they meant nothing to her. They were quite empty. Words, nothing more. She turned a page. ‘The party system works well enough in cases where the parties are merely two groups of rival oligarchs, belonging to the same class and having fundamentally the same interests and ideals, competing with one another for power. But when parties become identified with classes and develop strict party principles, the system becomes an insanity. Because I sit on one side of the house and you sit on the other, I am compelled to believe in individualism to the exclusion of all state interference, you are compelled to believe in state interference to the exclusion of all individualism; I am compelled to believe in nationalism, even in economic nationalism (which is an imbecility), and you are compelled to believe in internationalism, even political internationalism (which is no less of an imbecility); I am compelled to believe in the dictatorship of the rich (to the exclusion of the intelligent), you are compelled to believe in the dictatorship of the poor (also to the exclusion of the intelligent). All this for the simple and politically irrelevant reason that I am on the Right and you are on the Left. In our parliaments the claims of topography are stronger than those of sense. Such are the blessings of the modern party system. It is the aim of the British Freemen to abolish that system, along with the corrupt and inefficient parliamentarism which is its corollary.’ That sounded all right, she thought; but she wondered, nevertheless, why people should bother about this sort of thing. Instead of just living. But apparently, if one were a man, one found just living dull. She reopened the book in the middle. ‘Every English liberty has been paid for by a new slavery. The destruction of feudalism strengthened the Crown. At the Reformation, we disposed of Papal infallibility, but we saddled ourselves with the divine right of kings. Cromwell smashed the divine right of kings, but imposed the tyranny of the landowners and the middle classes. The tyranny of the landowners and the middle classes is rapidly being destroyed, in order that we may have the dictatorship of the proletariat. A new infallibility, not of the Pope, but of the majority, has been propounded—an infallibility which we are compelled by law to believe in. The British Freemen are pledged to a new reformation and a new political revolution. We shall dispose of the dictatorship of the proletariat as our fathers disposed of the divine right of kings. We shall deny majority infallibility as they denied papal infallibility. The British Freemen stand for…’ Elinor had some difficulty in turning the page. Stand for what? she wondered. For the dictatorship of Everard and the infallibility of Webley? She blew at the recalcitrant pages; they fluttered apart. ‘…for justice and liberty. Their policy is that the best men shall rule, whatever their origin. Careers, in a word, must be fully open to talents. That is justice. They demand that every problem shall be dealt with on its own merits, intelligently, without reference to traditional party prejudices or the worthless opinion of stupid majorities. That is liberty. Those who imagine that liberty is synonymous with universal suffrage…’ A door banged; a loud voice resounded in the hall. There was a rush of feet on the stairs; the house shook. The door of the drawing-room burst open, as though a bomb had exploded on the outside. Everard Webley came in on a burst of loud apology and welcome.

‘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.