Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [184]
‘What the body loses, the soul gains. Wasn’t it Paul Bourget who pointed that out in his Psychologie Contemporaine? A bad novelist,’ she added, finding it necessary to apologize for quoting from so very old-fashioned and disreputed an author; ‘but good as an essayist, I always find. Wasn’t it Paul Bourget?’ she repeated.
‘I should think it must have been Paul Bourget,’ said Philip wearily.
‘The energy which wanted to expend itself in physical passion is diverted and turns the mills of the soul.’ (‘Turn the mills of the soul’ was perhaps a shade too romantic, Victorian, Meredithian, she felt as she pronounced the words.)’ The body’s dammed and canalized,’ she emended, ‘and made to drive the spiritual dynamos. The thwarted unconscious finds vent in making consciousness more intense.’
‘But does one want one’s consciousness intensified?’ asked Philip, looking angrily at the rather luscious figure at the other end of the sofa. ‘I’m getting a bit tired of consciousness, to tell you the truth.’ He admired her body, but the only contact she would permit was with her much less interesting and beautiful mind. He wanted kisses, but all he got was analytical anecdotes and philosophic epigrams. ‘Thoroughly tired,’ he repeated. It was no wonder.
Molly only laughed. ‘Don’t start pretending you’re a paleolithic cave-man,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t suit you. Tired of consciousness, indeed! You! Why, if you’re tired of consciousness, you must be tired of yourself.’
‘Which is exactly what I am,’ said Philip. ‘You’ve made me tired of myself. Sick to death.’ Still irritated, he rose to take his leave.
‘Is that an insult?’ she asked, looking up at him. ‘Why have I made you tired of yourself?’
Philip shook his head. ‘I can’t explain. I’ve given up explaining.’ He held out his hand. Still looking enquiringly into his face, Molly took it. ‘If you weren’t one of the vestal virgins of civilization,’ he went on, ‘you’d understand without any explaining. Or rather, there wouldn’t be any explaining to do. Because you wouldn’t have made me feel tired of myself. And let me add, Molly, that if you were really and consistently civilized, you’d take steps to make yourself less desirable. Desirability’s barbarous. It’s as savage as pouncing and clawing. You ought to look like George Eliot. Goodbye.’ And giving her hand a final shake, he limped out of the room. In the street he gradually recovered his temper. He even began to smile to himself. For it was a joke. The spectacle of a biter being bitten is always funny, even when the bitten biter happens to be oneself. Conscious and civilized, he had been defeated by someone even more civilized than himself. The justice was poetic. But what a warning! Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms. In Molly he perceived a kind of Max Beerbohm version of himself. The spectacle was alarming. Having smiled, he became pensive.
‘I must be pretty awful,’ he thought.
Sitting on a chair in the Park, he considered his shortcomings. He had considered them before, often. But he had never done anything about them. He knew in advance that he wouldn’t do anything about them this time. Poor Elinor! That rigmarole of Molly’s about platonic relations and Paul Bourget gave him a notion of what she had to put up with. He decided to tell her of his adventure with Molly—comically, for it was always easier to talk unseriously—and then go on to talk about themselves. Yes, that was what he’d do. He ought to have spoken before. Elinor had been so strangely and unnaturally silent of late, so far away. He had been anxious, had wanted to speak, had felt he ought to have spoken. But about what? The ridiculous episode with Molly provided him with an opening gambit.
‘I saw Molly d’Exergillod this afternoon,’ he began, when he saw Elinor. But the tone of her ‘Did you?’ was so coldly uninterested, that he went no further. There was a silence. Elinor went on with her reading. He glanced