Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [152]
‘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 â”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.