Point Counter Point

  'That is kind of you,' she said. 'But I haven't finished exploiting you even now.' She held up the keys. 'When you see Philip this evening, give him these and tell him with my love that he's an imbecile. He wouldn't have been able to get in without them.' Spandrell took the keys in silence. 'And tell him why I've gone and that I'm expecting him to-morrow.' She got into the cab. 'And don't forget to ring up Webley. Before six. Because he was supposed to be meeting me here at six.'

  'Here?' he asked with an expression of sudden interest and curiosity which Elinor found rather offensive and embarrassing. Was he imagining something, was he daring to suppose...?

  'Yes, here,' she nodded curtly.

  'I won't forget,' he assured her emphatically, and there was still something about his expression which made her suspect a private significance behind the obvious words.

  'Thank you,' said Elinor, without cordiality. 'And now I must fly.' She gave the word to the driver. The taxi backed up the mews, under the archway, turned and was gone.

  Spandrell walked slowly up to Hyde Park Corner. From the public call-box in the station he telephoned to Illidge.

  Everard Webley was striding about the room, dictating. Sedentary composition he found impossible. 'How do people write when they're grafted to chairs all day long, year in year out?' He found it incomprehensible. 'When I'm sitting in a chair, or lying on a bed, I become like the furniture I've combined myself with--mere wood and stuffing. My mind doesn't move unless my muscles move.' On days when his correspondence was large, when there were articles to dictate, speeches to compose, Everard's working day was an eight-hour walking tour. 'Doing the lion,' was how his secretaries described his methods of dictation. He was doing the lion now--the restless lion, a little before feeding time--pacing from wall to wall of his big bare office.

  'Remember,' he was saying, frowning, as he spoke, at the grey carpet; under his secretary's pencil the shorthand scurried across the page, 'remember that the final authority is in all cases mine and that, so long as I remain at the head of the B. B. F., every attempt at insubordination will be promptly and ruthlessly suppressed. Yours etcetera.' He was silent and, walking back to his desk from the spot where the conclusion of his thoughtful and leonine pacing had left him, he turned over the scattered papers. 'That seems to be all,' he said and looked at his watch. It was just after a quarter to six. 'Have these last letters ready for me in the morning,' he went on. 'I'll sign them then.' He took his hat from the peg. 'Good evening.' And slamming the door, he descended the stairs two at a time. Outside the house he found his chauffeur waiting with the car. It was a powerful machine (for Everard was a lover of furious driving) and, since he also enjoyed the sensation of battling with the weather and the wind of his own speed, open. A tightly-stretched waterproof sheet covered the whole of the back part of the touring body like a deck, leaving only the two front seats available for passengers. 'I shan't need you anv more this evening,' he said to the chauffeur, as he settled into the driver's seat. 'You can go.'

  He touched the self-starter, threw the car into gear and shot off with a violent impetuosity. Several dozens of horses were bottled in the three litres of Everard's cylinders; he liked to make them work their hardest. Full speed ahead and then, a yard from the impending accident, jam on the brakes, that was his method. Driving with Everard in town was almost too exciting. Elinor had protested the last time he took her out. 'I don't so much mind dying,' she had said. 'But I really should object to passing the rest of my life with two wooden legs and a broken nose.' He had laughed. 'You're quite safe with me. I don't have accidents.'

  'You're above such things are you?' she had mocked. 'Well, if you like to put it like that' The brakes were applied with such violence that Elinor had had to clutch at the arms of her seat to prevent herself from being thrown against the wind-screen. 'Imbecile,' he had shouted at the bewildered old gentleman whose hen-like indecisions in the roadway had so nearly landed him under Everard's Dunlops. 'If you like to put it like that--' and the car had shot forward again with a jerk that flattened Elinor against the back of her seat--' you may. I don't have accidents. I manufacture my own luck.'

  Remembering the incident, Everard smiled to himself as he drove along Oxford Street. A railway delivery van held up his progress. Horses oughtn't to be allowed in the streets. 'Either you take me,' he would say to her, 'and in the end that means you'll have to make the thing public--leave Philip and come to me'--(for he intended to be entirely honest with her; there were to be no false pretences of any kind); 'either that, or else...' There was an opportunity to pass the delivery van; he pressed the accelerator and darted forward with a swerve to the right and another, past the nose of the old and patiently trotting horse, to the left again. 'Or else we don't see one another again.' It was to be an ultimatum. Brutal. But Everard hated situations that were neither one thing nor the other. He preferred definite knowledge, however unpleasant, to even the most hopefully blissful of uncertainties. And in this case the uncertainty wasn't at all blissful. At the entry to Oxford Circus a policeman lifted his hand. It was seven minutes to six. She was too squeamish, he thought, looking round, too sensitive about these new buildings. Everard found nothing displeasing in the massively florid baroque of modern commerce. It was vigorous and dramatic; it was large, it was expensive, it symbolized progress. 'But it's so revoltingly vulgar!' she had protested. 'But it's difficult,' he had answered, 'not to be vulgar, when one isn't dead. You object to these people doing things. And I agree: doing things is rather vulgar.' She had the typical consumer's point of view, not the producer's. The policeman dropped his hand. Slowly at first, but with gathering impetus, the pent-up flood of traffic rumbled forward. A luxury mind--that was what she had; not a necessity mind. A mind that thought of the world only in terms of beauty and enjoyment, not of use; a mind preoccupied with sensations and shades of feeling, and preoccupied with them for their own sake, not because sharp eyes and intuition are necessary in the struggle for life. Indeed, she hardly knew that there was a struggle. He ought to have disapproved of her; and he would have disapproved (Everard smiled to himself as he made the reflection) if he hadn't been in love with her. He would have...Flop! from the roof of a passing 'bus a banana skin fell like a draggled star-fish on to the bonnet in front of him. A whoop of laughter sounded through the roaring. Lifting his eyes he saw two young girls looking down at him over the rail, open-mouthed, like a pair of pretty little gargoyles, and laughing, laughing as though there had never been a joke in the world before that moment. Everard shook his fist at them and laughed too. How much Elinor would have enjoyed that! he thought. She who so loved the streets and their comedies. What an eye she had for the odd, the amusing, the significant! Where he perceived only a mass of undifferentiated humanity, she distinguished individuals. And her talent for inventing life histories for her onceglimpsed oddities was no less remarkable than her detecting eye. She would have known all about those young girls--their class, the sort of homes they came from, where they bought their clothes and how much they paid for them, whether they were still virtuous, what books they read, and which were their favourite cinema actors. Imagining to himself what Elinor would have said, remembering her laughter and the look in her eyes and her tricks of speech, he was suddenly filled with so much tenderness, such a violent yet delicately affectionate longing to be with her, that he could hardly bear to be separated from her for even a moment longer. He hooted at the taxi in front of him, he tried to thrust past on the right. An obstructing street island compelled him to fall back, but not before the taxi-driver had had time to throw doubts on his legitimacy, his heterosexuality and his prospects of happiness in another world. With as much gusto and incomparably more originality, Everard swore back. He felt himself overflowing with life, extraordinarily vigorous and strong, inexplicably and (but for the fact that it would be at least five minutes before he saw Elinor) perfectly happy. Yes, perfectly happy; for he knew (with what calm conviction!) that she would say yes, that she loved him. An
d his happiness became more intense, more poignant and at the same time more serene, as he swung round past the Marble Arch into the Park. His prophetic conviction deepened into something like remembered certainty, as though the future were already history. The sun was low and wherever its rosily golden light touched earth, it was as if a premature and more luminous autumn had fired the leaves and grass. Great shafts of powdery radiance leaned down from the west between the trees and in the shadows the twilight was a mist of lavender, a mist of blue and darkening indigo, plane after plane into the hazy London distance. And the couples strolling across the grass, the children playing were alternately eclipsed and transfigured as they passed from shade to sunlight, were alternately insignificant and brilliantly miraculous. It was as though a capricious god, now bored and now enchanted by his creatures, had turned upon them at one moment an eye of withering indifference and at the next, with his love, had bestowed upon them some of his own divinity. The road stretched clear and polished before him; but Everard hardly exceeded the speed limit--in spite of his longing; in a sense because he loved her so much. For it was all so beautiful; and where beauty was, there too, for Everard, by some private logic, some personal necessity, was Elinor. She was with him now, because she would have enjoyed this loveliness so much. And because she would have wanted to prolong the pleasure, he crept along. The engine was turning at a bare fifteen hundred revolutions a minute; the dynamo was hardly charging. A Baby Austin passed him as though he were standing still. Let them pass! Everard was thinking of the phrases in which he would describe to her this marvel. Through the railings, the 'buses in Park Lane blazed scarlet and glittered like triumphal cars in a pageant. Faintly, through the noise of the traffic, a clock struck six; and before it had finished, another chimed in, melodious, sweet and with a touch of melancholy--the very voice of the bright evening and of his happiness. And now, for all his creeping, the marble gateways of Hyde Park Corner were before him. Offered, in spite of the nakedness and the more than Swedish development of his abdominal muscles, by the Ladies of England to the Victor of Waterloo, the bronze Achilles, whose flesh had once been Napoleon's cannons, stood with shield raised, sword brandished, menacing and defending himself against the pale and empty sky. It was almost regretfully, though he longed to be at his journey's end, that Everard left the Park. Once more the towering 'buses roared before him and behind. Rounding the archipelago of islands he vowed that to-morrow, if Elinor said Yes, he would send five pounds to St. George's Hospital. He knew she would. The money was as good as given already. He turned out of Grosvenor Place; the roaring faded behind him. Belgrave Square was an oasis of trees; the starlings chattered in a rural silence. Everard turned once, twice and yet again. On the left, between the houses was an archway. He passed it by a yard or two, stopped and, pulling the wheel over, backed under it into the mews, back, back to the very end of the blind alley. He stopped the car and got out. How charming the yellow curtains looked! His heart was beating very fast. He felt as he had felt when he made his first speech, halffrightened, half-exultant. Mounting the doorstep, he knocked and waited twenty heart-beats; the house gave forth no answering sound. He knocked again and, remembering what Elinor had told him of her terrors, accompanied the rap with a whistle and, as though in answer to the unspoken challenge of her fears, a call of 'Friend!' And then, suddenly, he noticed that the door was not latched, but only ajar. He pushed; it swung open. Everard stepped over the threshold.

  'Elinor!' he called, thinking that she must be upstairs. 'Elinor!'

  There was still no answer. Or was she playing a joke? Would she suddenly pounce out at him from behind one of the screens. He smiled to himself at the thought and was advancing to explore the silent room, when his eye was caught by the papers pinned so conspicuously to a panel of the screen on the right. He approached and had just begun to read, 'The accompanying telegram will explain...' when a sound behind him made him turn his head. A man was standing within four feet of him, his hands raised; the club which they grasped had already begun to swing sideways and forward from over the right shoulder. Everard threw up his arm, too late. The blow caught him on the left temple. It was as though a light had suddenly been turned out. He was not even conscious of falling.

  Mrs. Quarles kissed her son. 'Dear Phil,' she said. 'It's good of you to have come so quickly.'

  'You're not looking very well, mother.'

  'A little tired, that's all. And worried,' she added after a moment's pause and with a sigh.

  'Worried?'

  'About your father. He's not well,' she went on, speaking slowly and as if with reluctance. 'He wanted very specially to see you. That was why I wired.'

  'He isn't dangerously ill?'

  'Not physically,' Mrs. Quarles replied. 'But his nerves.... It's a kind of breakdown. He's very excited. Very unstable.'

  'But what's the cause?'

  Mrs. Quarles was silent. And when at last she spoke it was with an obvious effort, as though each word had to force its way past some inward barrier. Her sensitive face was fixed and strained. 'Something has happened to upset him,' she said. 'He's had a great shock.' And slowly, word by word, the story came out.

  Bent forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, Philip listened. After a first glance at his mother's face, he kept his eyes fixed on the ground. He felt that to look at her, to meet her eyes would be the infliction of an unnecessary embarrassment. Speaking was already a pain to her and a humiliation; let her at least speak unseen, as though there were nobody there to witness her distress. His averted eyes left her a kind of spiritual privacy. Word after word, in a colourless soft voice, Mrs. Quarles talked on. Incident succeeded sordid incident. When she began to tell the story of Gladys's visit of two days before, Philip could not bear to listen any longer. It was too humiliating for her; he could not permit her to go on.

  'Yes, yes, I can imagine,' he said, interrupting her. And jumping up, he limped with quick nervous steps to the window.'don't go on.' He stood there for a minute, looking out at the lawn and the thick yew-tree walls and the harvest-coloured hills beyond, on the further side of the valley. The scene was almost exasperatingly placid. Philip turned, limped back across the room and standing for a moment behind his mother's chair laid a hand on her shoulder; then walked away again.

  'Don't think about it any more,' he said. 'I'll do whatever has to be done.' He looked forward with an enormous distaste to loud and undignified scenes, to disputes and vulgar hagglings. 'Perhaps I'd better go and see father,' he suggested.

  Mrs. Quarles nodded. 'He was very anxious to see you.'

  'Why?'

  'I don't quite know. But he's been insisting.'

  'Does he talk about...well, this business?'

  'No. Never mentions it. I have the impression that he forgets about it deliberately.'

  'Then I'd better not speak about it.'

  'Not unless he begins,' Mrs. Quarles advised. 'Mostly he talks about himself. About the past, about his health--pessimistically. You must try to cheer him.' Philip nodded. 'And humour him,' his mother went on;'don't contradict. He easily flares up. It isn't good for him to get excited.'

  Philip listened. As though he were a dangerous animal, he was thinking; or a naughty child. The misery of it, the anxiety, the humiliation for his mother!

  'And don't stay too long,' she added.

  Philip left her. The fool, he said to himself as he crossed the hall, the damned fool! The sudden anger and contempt with which he thought of his father were tempered by no previous affection. Neither, for that matter, were they exacerbated by any previous hatred. Up to this time Philip had neither loved nor disliked his father. Unreflectingly tolerant or, at the worst, with a touch of amused resignation, he had just accepted his existence. There was nothing in his memories of childhood to justify more positive emotions. As a father, Mr. Quarles had shown himself no less erratic and no less ineffectual than as a politician or as a man of business. Brief periods of enthusiastic interest in hi
s children had alternated with long periods, during which he almost ignored their existence. Philip and his brother had preferred him during the seasons of neglect; for he had ignored them benevolently. They liked him less when he was interested in their wellbeing. For the interest was generally not so much in the children as in a theory of education or hygiene. After meeting an eminent doctor, after reading the latest book on pedagogical methods, Mr. Quarles would wake up to the discovery that, unless something were drastically done, his sons were likely to grow up into idiots and cripples, weak-minded and with bodies poisoned by the wrong food and distorted by improper exercise. And then, for a few weeks, the two boys would be stuffed with raw carrots or overdone beef (it depended on the doctor Mr. Quarles happened to have met); would be drilled, or taught folk-dancing and eurhythmics; would be made to learn poetry by rote (if it happened to be the memory that was important at the moment) or else (if it happened to be the ratiocinative faculties) would be turned out into the garden, told to plant sticks in the lawn and, by measuring the shadow at different hours of the day, discover for themselves the principles of trigonometry. While the fit lasted, life for the two boys was almost intolerable. And if Mrs. Quarles protested, Sidney flew into a rage and told her that she was a selfishly doting mother, to whom the true welfare of her children meant nothing. Mrs. Quarles did not insist too strongly; for she knew that, thwarted, Sidney would probably become more obstinate; humoured, he would forget his enthusiasm. And in fact, after a few weeks, Sidney would duly tire of labours which produced no quick and obvious results. His hygiene had not made the boys perceptibly larger or stronger; they had not grown appreciably more intelligent for his pedagogy. All that they quite indubitably were was a daily and hourly bore. 'Affairs of greater moment' would occupy more and more of his attention, until gradually, like the Cheshire cat, he had faded altogether out of the world of the schoolroom and the nursery into higher and more comfortable spheres. The boys settled down again to happiness.