Point Counter Point (10 page)

Webley shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dotty old lunatic!’ he said to himself, and aloud, ‘Parallel straight lines never meet, Lord Edward. So I’ll bid you goodnight.’ He took his leave.

A minute later the Old Man and his assistant were making their way up the triumphal staircase to their world apart.

‘What a relief!’ said Lord Edward, as he opened the door of his laboratory. Voluptuously, he sniffed the faint smell of the absolute alcohol in which the specimens were pickled. ‘These parties! One’s thankful to get back to science. Still, the music was really…’ His admiration was inarticulate.

Illidge shrugged his shoulders. ‘Parties, music, science—alternative entertainments for the leisured. You pays your money and you takes your choice. The essential is to have the money to pay.’ He laughed disagreeably.

Illidge resented the virtues of the rich much more than their vices. Gluttony, sloth, sensuality and all the less comely products of leisure and an independent income could be forgiven, precisely because they were discreditable. But disinterestedness, spirituality, incorruptibility, refinement of feeling and exquisiteness of taste—these were commonly regarded as qualities to be admired; that was why he so specially disliked them. For these virtues, according to Illidge, were as fatally the product of wealth as were chronic guzzling and breakfast at eleven.

‘These bourgeois,’ he complained, ‘they go about handing one another bouquets for being so disinterested—that is to say, for having enough to live on without being compelled to work or be preoccupied about money. Then there’s another bouquet for being able to afford to refuse a tip And another for having enough money to buy the apparatus of cultured refinement. And yet another for having the time to spare for art and reading and elaborate longdrawn love-making. Why can’t they be frank and say outright what they’re all the time implying-that the root of all their virtue is a five per cent. gilt-edged security?’

The amused affection which he felt for Lord Edward was tempered by a chronic annoyance at the thought that all the Old Man’s intellectual and moral virtues, all his endearing eccentricities and absurdities were only made possible by the really scandalous state of his bank balance. And this latent disapproval became acute whenever he heard Lord Edward being praised, admired or even laughed at by others. Laughter, liking and admiration were permitted to him, because he understood and could forgive. Other people did not even realize that there was anything to forgive. Illidge was always quick to inform them.

‘If the Old Man wasn’t the descendant of monastery-robbers,’ he would say to the praisers or admirers, ‘he’d be in the workhouse or the loony asylum.’

And yet he was genuinely fond of the Old Man, he genuinely admired his talents and his character. The world, however, might be excused for not realizing the fact. ‘Unpleasant’ was the ordinary comment on Lord Edward’s assistant.

But being unpleasant to and about the rich, besides a pleasure, was also, in Illidge’s eyes, a sacred duty. He owed it to his class, to society at large, to the future, to the cause of justice. Even the Old Man himself was not spared. He had only to breathe a word in favour of the soul (for Lord Edward had what his assistant could only regard as a shameful and adulterous passion for idealistic metaphysics); Illidge would at once leap out at him with a sneer about capitalist philosophy and bourgeois religion. An expression of distaste for hardheaded business men, of indifference to material interests, of sympathy for the poor, would bring an immediate reference, more or less veiled, but always sarcastic, to the Tantamount millions. There were days (and owing to the slip on the stairs and that snub from the General, this day was one of them) when even a reference to pure science elicited its ironic comment. Illidge was an enthusiastic biologist; but as a class-conscious citizen he had to admit that pure science, like good taste and boredom, perversity and platonic love, is a product of wealth and leisure. He was not afraid of being logical and deriding even his own idol.

‘Money to pay,’ he repeated. ‘That’s the essential.

The Old Man looked rather guiltily at his assistant.

These implied reproofs made him feel uncomfortable. He tried to change the subject. ‘What about our tadpoles? ‘ he asked

‘The asymmetrical ones.’ They had a brood of tadpoles hatched from eggs that had been kept abnormally warm on one side and abnormally cold on the other. He moved towards the glass tank in which they were kept. Illidge followed. ‘Asymmetrical tadpoles!’ he repeated.

‘Asymmetrical tadpoles! What a refinement! Almost as good as playing Bach on the flute or having a palate for wine.’ He thought of his brother Tom, who had weak lungs and worked a broaching machine in a motor factory at Manchester. He remembered washing days and the pink crinkled skin of his mother’s watersodden hands. ‘Asymmetrical tadpoles!’ he said once more and laughed.

‘Strange,’ said Mrs. Betterton, ‘strange that a great artist should be such a cynic.’ In Burlap’s company she preferred to believe that John Bidlake had meant what he said. Burlap on cynicism was uplifting and Mrs. Betterton liked to be uplifted. Uplifting too on greatness, not to mention art. ‘For you must admit,’ she added, ‘he is a great artist.’

Burlap nodded slowly. He did not look directly at Mrs. Betterton, but kept his eyes averted and downcast as though he were addressing some little personage invisible to everyone but himself, standing to one side of her—his private daemon, perhaps; an emanation from himself, a little doppelganger. He was a man of middle height with a stoop and a rather slouching gait. His hair was dark, thick and curly, with a natural tonsure as big as a medal showing pink on the crown of his head. His grey eyes were very deeply set, his nose and chin pronounced but well shaped. his mouth full-lipped and rather wide. A mixture, according to old Bidlake, who was a caricaturist in words as well as with the pencil, of a movie villain and St. Anthony of Padua by a painter of the baroque, of a cardsharping Lothario and a rapturous devotee.

‘Yes, a great artist,’ he agreed, ‘but not one of the greatest.’ He spoke slowly, ruminatively, as though he were talking to himself. All his conversation was a dialogue with himself or that little doppelgdnger which stood invisibly to one side of the people he was supposed to be talking to; Burlap was unceasingly and exclusively selfconscious. ‘Not one of the greatest,’ he repeated slowly. As it happened, he had just been writing an article about the subject-matter of art for next week’s number of the Literary World. ‘Precisely because of that cynicism.’ Should he quote himself? he wondered.

‘How true that is!’ Mrs. Betterton’s applause exploded perhaps a little prematurely; her enthusiasm was always on the boil. She clasped her hands together. ‘How true!’ She looked at Burlap’s averted face and thought it so spiritual, so beautiful in its way.

‘How can a cynic be a great artist?’ Burlap went on, having decided that he’d spout his own article at her and take the risk of her recognizing it in print next Thursday. And even if she did recognize it, that wouldn’t efface the personal impression he’d made by spouting it. ‘Though why you want to make an impression,’ a mocking devil had put in, ‘unless it’s because she’s rich and useful, goodness knows!’ The devil was pitchforked back to where he came from. ‘One has responsibilities,’ an angel hastily explained. ‘The lamp mustn’t be hidden under a bushel. One must let it shine, especially on people of good will.’ Mrs. Betterton was on the side of the angels; her loyalty should be confirmed. ‘A great artist,’ he went on aloud, ‘is a man who synthesizes all experience. The cynic sets out by denying half the facts—the fact of the soul, the fact of ideals, the fact of God. And yet we’re aware of spiritual facts just as directly and indubitably as we’re aware of physical facts.’

‘Of course, of course!’ exclaimed Mrs. Bidlake

‘It’s absurd to deny either class of facts.’ ‘Absurd to deny me,’ said the demon, poking out his head into Burlap’s consciousness.

‘Absurd!’

‘The cynic confines himself to only half the world of possible experience. Less than half. For there are more spiritual than bodily experiences.’

‘Infinitely more!’

‘He may handle his limited subject-matter very well. Bidlake, I grant you, does. Extraordinarily well. He has all the sheer ability of the most consummate artists. Or had, at any rate.’

‘Had,’ Mrs. Betterton sighed. ‘When I first knew him.’ The implication was that it was her influence that had made him paint so well.

‘But he’s always applied his powers to something small. What he synthesizes in his art was limited, comparatively unimportant.’

‘That’s what I always told him,’ said Mrs. Betterton, reinterpreting those youthful arguments about Pre-Raphaelitism in a new and, for her own reputation, favourable light. ‘Consider Burne-Jones, I used to say.’ The memory of John Bidlake’s huge and Rabelaisian laughter reverberated in her ears

‘Not that Burne-Jones was a particularly good painter,’ she hastened to add. (‘He painted,’ John Bidlake had said—and how shocked she had been, how deeply offended!—’as though he had never seen a pair of buttocks in the whole of his life.’) ‘But his subjects were noble. If you had his dreams, I used to tell John Bidlake, if you had his ideals, you’d be a really great artist.’

Burlap nodded, smiling his agreement. Yes, she’s On the side of the angels, he was thinking; she needs encouraging. One has a responsibility. The demon winked. There was something in his smile, Mrs. Betterton reflected, that reminded one of a Leonardo or a Sodoma—something mysterious, subtle, inward.

‘Though, mind you,’ he said regurgitating his article slowly, phrase by phrase, ‘the subject doesn’t make the work of art. Whittier and Longfellow were fairly stuffed with Great Thoughts. But what they wrote was very small poetry.’

‘How true!’

‘The only generalization one can risk is that the greatest works of art have had great subjects; and that works with small subjects, however accomplished, are never so good as…’

‘There’s Walter,’ said Mrs. Betterton, interrupting him. ‘Wandering like an unlaid ghost. Walter!’

At the sound of his name, Walter turned. The Betterton—good Lord! And Burlap! He assumed a smile. But Mrs. Be and his colleague on the Literary World were among the last people he wanted at this moment to see.

‘We were just discussing greatness in art,’ Mrs. Betterton explained. ‘Mr. Burlap was saying such profound things.’

She began to reproduce the profundities for Walter’s benefit.

He meanwhile was wondering why Burlap’s manner towards him had been so cold, so distant, shut, even hostile. That was the trouble with Burlap. You never knew where you stood with him. Either he loved you, or he hated. Life with him was a series of scenes—scenes of hostility or, even more trying in Walter’s estimation, scenes of affection. One way or the other, the emotion was always flowing. There were hardly any intervals of comfortably slack water. The tide was always running. Why was it running now towards hostility?

Mrs. Betterton went on with her exposition of the profundities. To Walter they sounded curiously like certain paragraphs in that article of Burlap’s, the proof of which he had only that morning been correcting for the printers. Reproduced—explosion after enthusiastic explosion—from Burlap’s spoken reproduction, the article did sound rather ridiculous. A light dawned. Could that be the reason? He looked at Burlap. His face was stony.

‘I’m afraid I must go,’ said Burlap abruptly, when Mrs. Betterton paused.

‘But no,’ she protested. ‘But why?’

He made an effort and smiled his Sodoma smile. ‘The world is too much with us,’ he quoted mysteriously. He liked saying mysterious things, dropping them surprisingly into the middle of the conversation.

‘But you’re not enough with us,’ flattered Mrs. Betterton.

‘It’s the crowd,’ he explained. ‘After a time, I get into a panic. I feel they’re crushing my soul to death. I should begin to scream if I stayed.’ He took his leave.

‘Such a wonderful man!’ Mrs. Betterton exclaimed before he was well out of earshot. ‘It must be wonderful for you to work with him.’

‘He’s a very good editor,’ said Walter.

‘But I was thinking of his personality. How shall I say? The spiritual quality of the man.’

Walter nodded and said, ‘Yes,’ rather vaguely. The spiritual quality of Burlap was just the thing he wasn’t very enthusiastic about.

‘In an age like ours,’ Mrs. Betterton continued, ‘he’s an oasis in the desert of stupid frivolity and cynicism.’

‘Some of his ideas are first rate,’ Walter cautiously agreed.

He wondered how soon he could decently make his escape.

‘There’s Walter,’ said Lady Edward.

‘Walter who?’ asked Bidlake. Borne by the social currents, they had drifted together again.

‘Your Walter.’

‘Oh, mine.’ He was not much interested, but he followed the direction of her glance. ‘What a weed!’ he said. He disliked his children for growing up; growing, they pushed him backwards, year after year, backwards towards the gulf and the darkness. There was Walter; it was only yesterday he was born. And yet the fellow must be five-and-twenty, if he was a day.

‘Poor Walter; he doesn’t look at all well.’

‘Looks as though he had worms,’ said Bidlake ferociously.

‘How’s that deplorable affair of his going?’ she asked.

Bidlake shrugged his shoulders. ‘As usual, I suppose.’

‘I never met the woman.’

‘I did. She’s awful.’

‘What, vulgar? ‘

‘No, no. I wish she were,’ protested Bidlake. ‘She’s refined, terribly refined. And she speaks like this.’ He spoke into a drawling falsetto that was meant to be an imitation of Marjorie’s voice. ‘Like a sweet little innocent girlie. And so serious, such a highbrow. He interrupted the imitation with his own deep laugh,’Do you know what she said to me once? I may mention that she always talks to me about Art. Art with a capital A. She said’: (his voice went up again to the babyish falsetto) ‘“I think there’s a place for Fra Angelico and Rubens.”’ He laughed again, homerically. ‘What an imbecile! And she has a nose that’s at least three inches too long.’